"Curiosity killed the uncool cat, ya dig?" - Chad Ghostal

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a first-person horror game where your character wakes up in an abandoned building and has to solve paint-by-numbers puzzles while armed with a flashlight that has limited battery power.

In Sound Mind makes a poor first impression, its opening oddly lifeless for a game touting the collaboration of The Living Tombstone and presenting itself with psychedelic cover art. However, as I got my bearings in its first hour, hunting down a cassette tape that would whisk me away to its first proper level, I remained hopeful that the game would make good on its promise. I pet my cat before I left and got a trophy, "GOTY 10/10." Bad sign.

Protagonist Desmond Wales is as poor a therapist as he is a pet owner, inviting poisonous plants into his home and staring out the window while his patients doom spiral. Now you have to repair their broken psyches and give them closure while unraveling a conspiracy involving the highly psychoactive drug Agent Rainbow, which led to their deaths. What this means from a gameplay perspective is that each level centers around a specific patient in a location pertinent to them, such as... an abandoned grocery store. An abandoned lighthouse. An abandoned factory. An abandoned military base. This may all be the doing of Agent Rainbow, but each of these locations are drab, downright colorless both in aesthetic and flavor, occupied only by cookie-cutter enemies (of which there are three variants through the whole game) and uninspired puzzles.

Desmond's patients also haunt their respective levels, having mutated after succumbing to their inner-demons. You can't just shoot them like your typical fodder-type enemies and will need to employ more inventive methods to counteract them, with most of these encounters doubling as a means to solve environmental puzzles, like luring Max Nygaard - now a disembodied mechanical bull head - into breakable walls.

The problem is that much like all the other puzzles you run into, once the solution has been presented to you, you're expected to repeat it ad infinitum. Shining a light to scare away Allen Shore (nice Alan Wake reference) loses all its tension when you find yourself doing it a dozen different times, never once iterating on the mechanic after its introduction. The third level has you ferrying three CPUs between power panels to unlock doors, and by that point I became conditioned enough to know that would be my main method of progression through the next two hours of game. Everything you're tasked with feels like it was written out for you on a torn piece of notebook paper and stuck to the fridge, just a list of chores no more engaging than taking out the trash.

Speaking of trash: this game's performance. Something about open environments is incredibly disagreeable with the framerate, and unfortunately most of In Sound Mind takes place outdoors, so the game is constantly choking to death. It also has a tendency to checkpoint you in the middle of hazards, nearly locking me in a death loop once as I was stuck respawning on top of a toxic puddle while getting hit by an enemy with 30% of my HP remaining. I managed to wriggle my way out of that after multiple attempts, despawn the mob, and then ate a candy bar which made Desmond go "Nom~" in a cutesy voice. Almost shut the game off there.

And I wish I had, because In Sound Mind's technical problems ultimately resulted in the game becoming unbeatable. During the last leg of the final boss, all objects became non-interactive, something that permeated through several earlier saves and which could not be resolved by restarting the app or the console. Just locking me minutes from rolling credits, something it could've had the decency to do hours earlier. I don't normally rate games I abandon, but considering the conditions under which I did and how close I was at the end, I'm comfortable giving this a 1/5. Would've clocked it at a 2/5 before that.

We Create Stuff is an aptly named studio, because "stuff" is such a vague, "whatever" term for an end product that there's no promise of it being worthwhile. In Sound Mind is just that, a cobbled together collection of rote design elements scraped off the bottom of the first-person horror barrel, served up with no imagination, neither invested in saying anything or being fun, it's just stuff. Great job, guys.

I've had to let this one stew for a bit, honestly.

I picked it up for myself as a late birthday present out of curiosity more than anything. I'd heard a lot of unflattering comparisons to Vampire Survivors (a game I very much despise) and clicker games (which I also despise! Wow, patterns!) which had put me on edge, so I was a little surprised to find out that none of those comparisons are apt.

I can understand being skeeved out by the direct usage of Poker iconography and terminology on display, but the truth that's apparent to me is that Balatro is ultimately another roguelike deckbuilder. You match symbols together, try to play to synergies, and pray for one of your random drops/powerups to be the one that enables a certain playstyle or tactics. If anything, despite my relative apathy towards deckbuilders (I play YGO, so slapping a roguelite aspect on just repels me) I admire this game for its honesty and relative lack of illusions.

Still, I find myself in an odd position.

Despite admiring it, I'm not really smitten with it.

One of those games where I can see why it's considered a mindmelting trap for people with ADHD, but I personally don't get much out of it. Would honestly rather play Suika Game. Incremental micro-unlocks and "pick one of 3" powerups and glorified slot machines in the form of card packs don't really enthuse me.

At a base level, the basest of all levels, I do think the mechanics are somewhat engaging despite the simplicity and comparison to blackjack more than poker. Compared to its contemporaries I also think it has infinitely more impactful decision making, especially with how finite money is and how little shops actually offer.
But Balatro - and indeed, nearly the entire roguelite genre - has an awful habit of playing their entire mechanical hand early on and then hoping it's enough to hook you. While it works for some games (Isaac, FTL, Dead Cells, Synthetik) I don't find it works so well for deckbuilders. There aren't enough interesting twists on the core mechanics for me to want to keep playing, and if anything its iconographical honesty might actually make it worse.

Sure, the game is addictive, but I'm older now dude. I creak when I wake up, I say "Mmm scrumptious" when I buy a pastry from Greggs, I tend a garden, I play Granblue Fantasy, I've got an inanimate object I collect.

'Addictive' is no longer enough to satisfy me. Life is addictive, pastries are addictive, math is addictive, the world I live in is addictive.

[Semi-related ramble that I was gonna post as a comment on someone else's Balatro review before remembering I don't like to barge into other people's posts and go "Nuh uh".]

I so direly wish higher profile indie games would have a design core that isn't just "addictive". Having seen roguelites come into existence over a decade ago, it feels like every other popular indie game is trying to make players chase the same kind of high that Binding of Isaac or FTL did all those years ago. In turn, they miss out on just being good games at their core.

Fucked up that Hitman: Freelancer is the best of these games I've played in years, and it was free DLC.

Video game royalty in terms of movie tie-in games, the 007 films have spawned a surprising amount of great shooters, with Night-fire, Secret Agent and Goldeneye being some of my favourites. Unfortunately, after the 360 generation, the fairly constant stream of 007 game releases seems to have dried up, so these 360 releases are some of the most recent games for Bond fans. This one is based on the movie of the same name, which I barely remember, featuring the likenesses of Bond and I presume all the other characters. I have to admit I wasn't really interested in the story, I was mainly looking for a nice short FPS campaign, and that is exactly what I got. QoS is not going to blow you away, but it is a very decent shooter. It has a nice variety of detailed levels and a story to move the action along and explain what you are doing in each location. The gameplay itself is really fun. It blends first person shooting with some third person cover action and the good level of difficulty and decent AI make it work well. There are some collectables here and there but it isn't too complicated. It gives off a nice and simple Night-fire style feel and is a nice change from modern games without feeling dated or archaic. My only major complaint is the controls, which were unresponsive and a little frustrating but didn't ruin the fun. This one is a great shout for FPS fans, bond fans and in general people who enjoy a nice short linear campaign with a decent story. Grab it.

Estava um tanto quanto relutante de jogar o tal do Rondo of Blood Júnior, não vou mentir. Após ouvir umas várias críticas controversas sobre Castlevania: Dracula X, achei que seria um joguinho bem do mal feito e amador, porém, em minha teimosia de querer zerar todos os classicvanias, e em minha recente obsessão pelo Richter Belmont, não podia deixar esse rapazinho de fora, e olha, esse jogo não promete nada, e entrega tudo.
Primeiro de tudo, joguei essa bomba com save states, se isso é uma redflag pra você, nem termine esse review; enfim, sendo um classicvania, a jogabilidade segue sendo a mesma de sempre, ande pra frente, e bata em tudo o que se move, a esse ponto já to tão acostumado, com as escadas, movimentação travada, e dificuldade cuzona dessa franquia, que já nem reclamo mais, afinal, esse jogo não inova em nada, assim sendo, o game é bastante divertido, oferece bons visuais pro SNES (dá-lhe chip mode 7), e uma excelente trilha sonora, além de bosses muitos bacanas e que não enchem o saco além da conta (exceto, claro, o Drácula, aquilo é de fato o pior ponto dessa experiência).
Não resgatei as donzelas.

(I'm logging the Tiger version beacuse the cover is cooler, and it's the closest one to the original release, I played the Requiem version for PS4).
Wow, just wow, I'm speechless, I was reluctant to play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, afet not enjoying so much Aria of Sorrow (usually placed in the same standart as SotN), but I'm glad this is indeed one of the best games I've ever played. I played this game non-stop for over 3 days, beating it in around 10 hours, using some walkthroughs when I got stuck for too long, I genuinelly can't remember when was the last time I got so hooked to a game, RDR2 maybe.
Once Alucard jumps that fucking bridge I literally couldn't stop playing, this might be the best metroidvania I've ver experienced, rivalizing with Hollow Knight only (which is more metroid than vania). This game is flooded with content, tons and tons of items (so many that it's actually confusing to navigate through your inventory sometimes), an abrouptly large bestiary, TWO fucking castles that are extremely fun to explore, and WHAT IS A MAN?
I'd absolutely recommend this to anyone and everyone.

Not only this game is absurdly bad, but it also gets even worse when in comparison to its predecessor.
If the first game is a surprisingly polished and well-made adventure, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 throws it all off the window, with one of the worst level designs I've ever seen; poorly made bosses which you'll most likely defeat with luck; 2 usuless characters that are just supports, and pretty much defenseless on their own; and they even managed to make an irritating soundtrack.
I dragged myself through the last 2 stages just to get this beaten, and there's absolutely no chance I'm doing any of the other episodes to the true ending. You can tell me to git gud, I don't care, to me, this game sits alongside Castlevania Judgement as one of Koji Igarashi's worst works.

I was pretty excited to try this one. There are so many military shooters and boring brown open world games on the console. A bright colourful fairy-tale themed hack and slash where you spill the blood of your enemies with 3 friends, sign me up! It's a great idea that we don't really see much on the console, harking back to the good old days of streets of rage and games with some humor. The problem is, this fun lasts for about 5 minutes and then you start to realise how painful this game really is. The levels are colourful, but extremely bland and linear. Most levels have you walking right. That's it. The combat is terrible. It could be due to the awkward controls, which make it difficult, but even if it controlled well, its very basic stuff. You flick the right stick around to slash and link some combos up. This doesn't make for fun gameplay. The coop gameplay doesn't make the game much better. It's difficult to see whats going on with 1 player on the screen, let alone 2 or even 3. One of the most shallow games on the console, don't be fooled by the cute graphics or unique concept.