Graphics are good, controls are tight and sound/music is on point. Iconoclasts is a solid metroidvania that focuses more on puzzles and a lot of bang for the buck when it comes to world size. I think it stands out the most with its dark and intricate lore. It'd be 5 stars but the game is a bit slow in giving abilities, you only get a few throughout the game and the tweak system is a bit lackluster.
This is indeed a "Myst-like" Adventure game. It has a similar style of wandering through unique landscapes, interacting with machinery and generally being confused about what's happening. With a little work it could have been pretty great but falls a bit flat as a whole package. Like Myst games there is no inventory and the primary hurdle is usually getting from A to B The latter part hurts this game some in that unlike it's predecessors Obduction is full roam 3D and often suffers from what I call "poor barriers" Many times you will do a load of puzzling or work simply because your character can't scramble over a small rock pile, scooch down a small cliff, climb up a small wall or reach through a gap to unlock a door from the other side. It can be a bit immersion breaking being blocked by such contrivances. Story wise it starts pretty strong but leaves a bit too much out to make the end feel satisfying, Overall what hurts the game the most is a handful of tedious puzzles and a few situations where the path forward seems arbitrarily blocked and unblocks for poor reasons. I will say there is indeed one puzzle near the end that is not terribly difficult to solve but is so abysmally designed that it might take you an hour to actually execute the damn solution. The mechanisms of the puzzle are far apart requiring walking, mechanical interaction, waiting for animations, and continuously sends you back and forth through loading zones making the whole thing a grindy slog.
Stacking is a neat and very unique puzzler. It's not super hard or super long but those aren't really cons. Its great for a refreshing change of pace. It's also suitable for younger players.
Ghost 1.0 isn't anything spectacular but comes across as a decent metroidvania. Some of the weapons are a bit lackluster and the rate at which you get "money" doesn't let you upgrade everything unless you grind. challenge is moderate Of one note is there's a "souls" mechanic in the game where in most rooms you can trigger these specks to appear. collecting them gives you rewards. collecting all of them in each area yields special rewards. some of the trigger mechanisms are so obscure i'm not sure how you would ever find them all without a guide.
SR3 is by far the best in the series for me. 2 has a more .. um grounded story .. but overall comes across as a GTA clone. 4 is way out there and almost a completely different type of game. 3 is in the Goldilocks zone. It's grounded enough that things mostly make sense but has lots of fun characters and most importantly crazy action. I came to SR3 for the first time just after giving up on GTA4. by that time GTA had gotten too "realistic" you walked slow, it took hours to even get a single house with a garage and even then GTA garages just let you keep one car till you blow it up. Weapons were boring and overall it felt that the game was doing all it could to keep me from actually having any fun in my city sandbox. Jump into SR3 and it's the complete opposite. There's an array of great weapons and great upgrades, the garage not only stores as many cars as you want you can retrieve them over and over. Great for actually using that fun car and for collecting them. In every way GTA feels like it tries to keep you from having fun SR3 says "why not? have fun, go tear up the town!".
Gat Out of hell is basically SR4 (super powers and all) but stripped down to just a sandbox world with a bunch of the sidequest/deed type things to do. It's not terrible but lacks any real story missions or depth, which is a shame since there are some fun weapons and some cool designs. The pacing is a bit weird , I'm not sure what triggers the main quest segments and i beat the game long before I did most of the activities. All in all it comes across as a pretty weak entry but if you want some Saints Row type action without any of the overhead you can fire this bad-boy up, kill a few hours, and satiate your need for mayhem.
Rebel Galaxy is a pretty good game , if you're looking for a Privateer/Freelamcer kinda experience it's worth a go. The soundtrack is solid, graphics decent. The action is satisfying enough for most of the game. Occasionally the "locked into 2d plane" can be annoying since NPC ships can sometimes fly above or below you in a way that makes them hard to target but overall isn't to huge a detraction. Where the game does suffer is that it stagnates a bit in the late game and lacks variety in areas like weapons. Afetr a while you will settle into a combat pattern where you will fire off your broadsides, blowing away the enemy and battles can feel pretty much the same from one to the next. Also really there are a small number of weapons, while you get upgrades that do a bit more damage in the end it kinda levels out so really just pick one of the categories and stick with it (like beams or one of the projectile weapons)
