It's good. Undertale has fun music, interesting bullet hell gameplay, many funny moments with the characters, and a touching message about being kind and helping others. Thumbs up :)
Witcher 1 is my first exposure to the witcher franchise, and it's sold me on it. The combat was a little off, the character models are and body language are somewhat distracting, the movement is a bit awkward at times, but beyond that the Witcher 1 is a perfectly fine RPG with great writing, voice acting, and visuals that I'd argue, still look pretty good to this day. Well worth trying out!
Died over 100 times before I finished the game because I'm bad at games, never gave up because it's just so interesting. Pathologic 2 tries a lot of uncommon things that are difficult and stresses the player out. This game really succeeds in making you feel negative emotions (I mean this in a good way), which is a rarity in games. Not for everyone, and I really have to be in the mood to play it. Pathologic 2 is worth playing because there is almost nothing else that resembles it, even Pathologic 1 is different.
Fallout 3 is the weakest entry in the franchise •An unappealing aesthetic, most of the game has a colour palette of greens, greys, and browns, it gets a tad bit tiring •Too many plot points for the main quest ripped straight from the FO1 and 2 (kicked out of a vault to solve a water problem, a super mutant problem arises, you need a GECK, you meet the president of the US who wants to use the FEV to poison everyone who isn't a pure human. Too derivative to be interesting, but I suppose who plays the main story in bethesda games? •Searching things for items and inventory management got tedious, I assume it's because it's slow to do. Whilst the pipboy is a clever menu in concept, it can get awkward to use •Poorly thought-out world, why is dad so concerned with creating purified water when bottles of it can be found everywhere in the world? Why is there so much rubble and mess in peoples houses and in populated areas? etc. Not a huge issue, but it adds up •Level design can be poorly telegraphed, sometimes the only way to know where to go is to follow the compass, or maybe I feel that way because the compass is on screen the entire time. A chicken or the egg situation. •Bugs and other oddities - clipping objects, NPC awkwardness, unusual enemy AI. Considering how Fallout 3 was released from a major developer with a large budget (and it's over 10 years old, and Bethesda never patched it), Fallout 3 should not have been considered acceptable to be released in this condition, it's pretty funny then that this is the most polished and least glitchy Bethesda Fallout game, the bugs only gets worse from this entry onwards. All in all, I wouldn't recommend playing Fallout 3, I spent way too much time playing the game, yet I don't remember much of it, I was more occupied than engaged, and that isn't good enough for a game that can take over 50 hours to complete, life is simply too short.
Firewatch has great stylised visuals and a world designed to feel like it could fit into ours. It also has two lovely personalities who interact well with each other. And if the entire game was a chill and casual interactive podcast-type thing with collect-a-thon-esque gameplay I'd probably like it a lot more. The begining days of Firewatch shows this could have made for a great game, where the player is sent on light-hearted trips around the forest to complete some innocent task, with playful banter between the two characters and occasional drops into their lives and personal problems. Towards the middle of the game Firewatch seems to lose focus, and becomes more of a mystery game. Missing teenagers, the past of former fire guards, wire-tapping, a locked off area of the forest controlled by the government. They all felt interesting when first experienced, but as a result of the games ending, which I felt did not make good use of those story elements, the mysteries only seemed to be a distraction from the calm hiking simulator the game set itself up to be. I don't think I can recommend Firewatch to people when there are many other games which did what Firewatch was trying to do in it's latter acts better and the greatest strength I thought the game had was half-abandoned towards the middle of the experience. Not every game needs to have a grand and action-packed story and I think Firewatch was one of them.
[Spoilers in the review, play Obra Dinn first, seriously the game is fantastic] Return of the Obra Dinn is brilliant. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's looked at a photo and said something like 'I wish I could go inside here for a better look', this game more than satisfies that urge. The mystery solving is top-notch, and it's actually quite difficult, but it's the fair kind of difficult (most of the time). The artstyle is one-of-a-kind and I enjoyed toying with the different colour-schemes, it was clear who was who and what the things were supposed to be, all while looking minimalisticly simple. The main gameplay hook is so abstract and unorthordox, yet I understood it all without even thinking about it because the tutorial was so well done. I did have some gripes, but for the most part this game was incredible. If I had to state some issues (and I'm trying hard to find them), then it's probably how unclear some things can be. I don't mean the 'check the crew's shoes' type of unclear, but the 'does the book mean "speared by a beast" or "spiked by a beast"?' type of unclear, it wasn't very frequent though, but it was kind of annoying, throw in the fact that one chapter is missing for the entire game and I found myself asking 'am I even able to figure this out now or not?'. Don't get me wrong though, I still think this game is fantastic and worth your time. And by the way, the book prefers 'spiked by a beast' ;).
You could never tell Riven was made in 1997 because nothing about it has been outdated. Clicking around Riven is very enjoyable to play and explore, every location and screen feels like it had a lot of thought put into it. The audio is very well done; the sound design is top-notch and the soundtrack is great, combine the audio with the shockingly good visuals and animations and Riven becomes a very immersive experience, even if the animations can feel slow at times. Riven is far better than Myst if you ask me, but you should still play Myst. Thanks to a certain Irish YouTube review-man for recomending the Myst series back in 2017.
It's a shame that most of the reviews are judging the version released almost a decade ago, and none of the reviewers have ever gone back. Most of the top reviews saying the GOG copy of Myst isn't compatible with a modern Windows OS are currently wrong! The devs updated their games, but the reviewers haven't updated their reviews (which makes sense, the users did write them almost 10 years ago). Myst is on iOS, Android, and Nintendo 3DS for goodness sake, of course it works for modern Windows! (As of 2019 at least) As for the game, it's terrific! Heavily recommended. I'd love to list the things I enjoyed about the game, but, if you haven't played it, I really don't want to spoil anything for you. Take the risk and play Myst! And big thanks to Matthewmatosis for introducing the Myst series to me!
Psychonauts is a wonderful and imaginative game. At no point does the game run out of ideas. It doesn't require an expensive pc to run, and the controls work very well for a 3D platformer with a keyboard and mouse. Well worth your time!
I'd have loved to give this a rave review, and enjoy a critically acclaimed game, but I can't. Can't get the game to work, searched online, done some compatibility stuff, added it to a DEP list. Best I can get is a completly silent game that stops accepting inputs after a few seconds. I won't request a refund or waste the Gog staff's time, wouldn't be fair to them.
