I completed CP2077 a couple of times and Phantom Liberty once. In all cases I was reminded of other games with similar features that I had more fun with. Watch Dogs 1 and 2 for driving and hacking. Deus Ex everything for cyberpunk features. The Witcher series for storytelling. The city was not fun to drive in, nothing flowed, the missions were OK and all in all I was left with a Stephanie Sterling "It's fine" 7/10 experience.
Sundered is one of the Metroidvanias I will always come back to. It's beautiful, eerie, fluid, and has a difficulty scale. On that last point: As someone nearing my first half-century, I don't have so much time to dedicate to git gud like I used to, and my reactions are not great. I love games that are more accessible like this. I will leave the owning metroidvanias at challenginig difficulties to my daughter, and enjoy being able to succeed at my own level!
Objectively, Cyberpunk 2077 was a computer game, in that I could interact with the world and achieve goals set for me by the game. Subjectively Deus Ex had a better cyberpunk feel, and Watch Dogs gave me better driving and hacking, and I remember more of those series than anything from here. The only memorable parts were the cyberpsycho missions, and the tarot cards. And the end, I suppose, but that was because I felt it gave itself an ending the plot of the game did not lead up to, and it didn't deserve. The best part of CP2077 is the Edgerunners animated series on Netflix. I won't comment on the city layout / design, because I don't think there was any.
First point, the 3 out of 5 is purely because of technical issues that should not exist in a commercially released game, not because of the gameplay. I will address the technical issues first, here: 1) Sound. The sound coming through on my headphones was unbalanced. Music and ambient sounds came from opposite speakers. 2) Controls. I played with a gamepad, and this worked well enough, though it seemed that it very easily bumped to the menu. 3) Mouse in the menus. That is, there is no mouse control in the menu system! 4) Screen timing out. While playing in full screen the monitor shut off repeatedly, as though I wasn't playing anything. Onto the gameplay. I would give a 5 out of 5 for the gameplay. It is very easy to die in Schein, like in Limbo, though Schein doesn't quite have the same pathos to the main character's death. You manipulate your environment with a wisp, a magical light, to solve puzzles by making hidden objects appear or disappear. The name, Schein, is a bilingual pun. It sounds like "shine" in English. However, schein translates from German as "seem". "Es scheint" means it seems. This is a hint to how the wisp makes the world around seem different. The wisp and the man talk throughout the journey. It reminds me, if anything, of the conversations between Zoya, Amadeus and Pontius from Trine, although sadder (the man has lost his son after all). I will say that I am enjoying this game very much, despite the technical glitches.
is still the single most scary level I have ever played. I am not going to rehash the positive or negative reviews saying that it wasn't the same as Thief DP/Gold and The Metal Age, complaints about console porting or anything. The thing that Thief: Deadly Shadows gave me was an immersive atmostphere (yes, even with the horrible level transitions). And the best atmosphere came from creeping through the Shalebridge Cradle. I don't do scary. I hate scary. I'll admit it, I'm a wimp and when the zombie apocalypse comes I'll be one of the first turned. When I first played the Cradle I finished it in the middle of the day, with the lights on because it scared the living snot out of me, I was that sucked in. And that is the mark of a good game.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Unmechanical. The simple controls and otherworldly atmosphere made for a very enjoyable game. There were a wide variety of puzzles and while it was easy to work out what one had to do to overcome the challenges there was a good element of skill required to actually achieve the goals. If I was to have any criticism at all it was that the game only lasted a very short time. I wasn't counting but I think it only took me about six hours at the most to complete the game. More chapters would have been wonderful! Sadly, I think this game will also be a once off for me, at least for the foreseeable future, however it was very well done and I am happy to give five stars for what I played.
I have very fond memories of Nox. I still have my original discs, along with the manual and other paraphernalia. When others were playing through Diablo 2 I was playing Nox. And loved it! Nox excelled in some areas where the other slashers didn't and I think some of this comes from how the story played out for each character. There were no generated levels, where each entry into a new area built levels from scratch. However, instead of starting off at the same point with your character class and playing from there, Nox had you choose a class and then gave you a story to follow that was different from what the other classes whould experience. Almost the entire game was unique for each class, which encouraged playing through for each one just to see what they were given. The graphics were not bad either. The world was drawn beautifully. Character development was not really there. It was possible to develop skills in spells or such as you leveled up, but by and large you just got stronger as you went along. However, this wasn't a bad thing, and it didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the game. At $5.99 Nox is well worth a try!
