Man, this game is so interesting and I am really glad I finally decided to play it on a whim without really knowing what it was about.
The narrative structure is fascinating and generally works incredibly well with the story it tells, stitching together roadtrips with vignettes featuring a distinct cast of characters. These vignettes offer great variety in settings and tones and the narrative puzzle revealed bit by bit through these character moments is genuinely interesting to follow because you never know for sure what you will get with each new vignette. I really can't say enough nice things about the narrative design, structure and gameplay loop of Road 96.

So... why this score?

Well, I didn't talk about the actual contents of the game yet. Road 96 is unabashedly political through every fiber of its narrative. And therein lies the problem. I adore games willing to take on politics and having the guts to stand for something.
The politics of Road 96 are messy and not supported or conveyed by the most amazing writing I have seen around, to be generous. The chosen characters and their roles in the world are certainly diverse and interesting, but it often dips into territories you wouldn't go with as the player, lacking the meaningful application of player agency and the hamfisted parallels to the real world are played for laughs and irony for the most part but can't help but reveal the superficial depth we can expect from its handling of politics. The performances are emotional for sure in key moments, but also really do not stand out as anything but servicable for the most part.

The main issue I had around the narrative problems was the lack of reactivity or guidance from characters and the game on what my decisions mean. Disappointing a staunch anarchist by choosing the moderate dialogue option got me a disappointed one-liner but...okay? There are generally three options you get, 1. everyone for themselves, 2. fuck the system 3. go vote pwease, which seem to accumulate in the background for something...maybe? I am not sure if there are even any consequences to these flavor choices you make, maybe it's so seamless that I didn't notice, but in any case there is just this total lack of bite and reaction to every choice because of this, leaving the player in this ambigous space where they just play along until credits roll.

Maybe, that's just me. It is still absolutely worth it to play this game, I can't emphasize this enough, Road 96 fascinates me to no end and it has a lot going for it, if you are at all on the fence about it, I will absolutely recommend it, at the very least you will find a lot to like, maybe even dismissing my criticisms, in which case this game could be loved by a lot of people, I believe.

The defining achievement of Neon White seems to be turning people with no speedrunning or highscore-chasing ambitions around to do just that. That's certainly the case with me.
I didn't chase for the global leaderboards, shaving off milliseconds, but I made it a mission to get every Ace medal and collectible in every level, because doing that is less of a challenge to perfectly take each corner but instead distinct puzzle solving of how to use the tools available to you to get to a seemingly unreachable spot or solve the alternative path that is highlighted in the built-in hint system.
The reason why I was striving for the completion of every challenge is the excellent game feel and fantastic soundtrack, effortlessly putting you into a flow state within seconds. You also quickly learn that you can rely on the game being fair to you, gradually increasing the intensity but never forcing you to beat your head against a wall or requiring pixel perfect precision.
The writing I unfortunately didn't care for at all, it is -very much- woven out of internet culture, memes and tropes and while it combined with the voice acting probably evokes a semi ironic nostalgia for beloved english anime dubs, it certainly failed to make me care for the characters at all and the little vignettes that you unlock by collecting gifts in the levels felt hollow and pointless for the most part unfortunately.
This would normally be a bigger deal breaker for me than it actually ended up being, just because of the strength of all the surrounding elements. It is just so unbelievably fun and I can't help but love Neon White in its entirety because of that.

This game is so weirdly good. The setting is an absolute star here, feeling so totally opposed but also perfectly natural to the cutesy Kirby presentation and doing a lot of heavy lifting in pushing and pulling this game into a unique and fresh direction. The combat is unexpectedly nuanced with decently deep mechanics on many of the available forms and a fantastic upgrade system turns these abilities into fascinating variations. An ability fusion system like in Kirby 64 would have probably cemented this into a masterpiece for me, though. Maybe next time. Still, this was an absolutely delightful time and I really hope this is a stepping stone for the future of Kirby.

A banal 2.5D action-RPG with a heavy "disappointing Kickstarter game circa 2014" aura to it which isn't even that far from the truth considering its origins. Tries to evoke some Muramasa: The Demon Blade (and Suikoden, I'd imagine) vibes but feels way more like something akin to Indivisible which is most definitely not a compliment. Tiresome fetch quests and backtracking galore, the game opens up at such a glacial pace that even if you were into the throwback style and narrative you'd still be mashing through most of the pop-ups to get to the "good stuff." I did catch a glimmer of nostalgic charm in the characters' dialogue at first, sure, but like everything else in the game it wore out its welcome sooner than later and there's way too much of it. So much so that two-thirds of the way through I just started skipping every bit of text on-screen.

The visuals aren't as repugnant as Square Enix's HD-2D output but the art style still looks quite cheap and inconsistent. Combat is okay and there is some depth and variety to it in the form of character-specific attacks, linked combos and elemental damage but the enemies are such dull sponges that your battle tactics barely come into play. The moment you do get hit, however, the combat instantly feels off and floaty; it's like they forgot to implement a short period of invulnerability - or lessen the knockback - for the characters. The primary protagonist's movement controls felt decent, couldn't say the same for the other two.

Overall just an unfocused mess designwise, the game really can't decide whether it wants to be a colorful take on an Igavania or a nostalgia bait RPG with town-building elements tacked on. The light, fun premise tricked me into playing this and by the time I realized I'd been duped I just put on some podcast (no, no noteworthy music either in the game) and powered through. Very lackluster but not truly terrible. I wouldn't recommend this even though it's on Game Pass but I don't know, your mileage may vary.

What looks like a nostalgia-driven Zelda clone on the surface turns out be so much more than that or rather invokes the nostalgia in more creative ways than you would expect. It calls back on the era of extensive game manuals and obtuse game mechanics and channels the experience of playing imported games in languages you don't understand, which is such a specific but untapped experience that is wonderfully translated into a fully formed puzzle-adventure. It is to many parts a player knowledge based puzzle box of figuring out the possibility space and (mechanical) language of the game more often than not feeling closer to an Outer Wilds, The Witness or Fez than its more obvious surface level Zelda or Dark Souls inspirations.
It isn't perfect, though. Hiding all the basic elements of your game and putting tutorials behind obscure scribbles on manual pages leads to many magical revelations but can easily in turn leave you stumped at what to do or how to interpret something when you don't know what the full possibility space of the game is yet. The more traditional meat of the game, mainly the combat never truly felt as responsive or fun as I wanted and there is an overall clunkyness in interactions with the world through weird perspective issues caused by the isometric camera, annoying inventory management and floaty combat. Nevertheless I would probably universally recommend this game to anyone even remotely interested. The in-game manual and related puzzle mechanics are such cool systems and breath of fresh air that absolutely need to be experienced. Even if you don't have nostalgia for this era of games and the surrounding games culture of reading manuals and importing japanese games, Tunic will make sure that you wish that you experienced that era.

Norco absolutely rules. One of the best written games I have ever played, feauturing a gorgeously realized and mesmerizing setting so confident in every step that you can't help but be sucked into the fever dream it is presenting. I stopped playing the demo after 10 minutes because I knew immediately that this would be amazing and I am glad I was right. Feels right at home next to a Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium, which completes an interesting trifecta of games to recommend if you have played any one of these.

Imagine, if you will, a real-time strategy game where buildings could be constructed instantly, and didn’t require the use of workers. How could the game even function? As soon as a wall would go down another could take its place, and with no workers to micromanage, even the least experienced player could create an unbreakable defense.

Well, as you probably predicted, Stronghold Crusader is exactly that game, but this odd design decision actually makes it uniquely fun. Just looking at the box could tell you that the goal was to create a siegecraft RTS, and instantaneous construction plays with other mechanics to achieve that in a pretty elegant way. For one, if enemies are too close to a building zone, nothing can be constructed. This prevents enemies from just hammering the walls at long range without putting their own units at risk, since it will take them so much time and ammo to break down structures which pop back up anyway. That in turn means that walls aren’t the best target, the farms outside would be the better choice. These farms can’t be enclosed within the keep because they need to be built in grasslands, which often aren’t enclosed within building range for walls. So, just through the basic mechanics, players are actually attacking each other in little sieges: surrounding a town with their artillery, destroying the farms outside, waiting for their advantage to grow, and establishing a beachhead near weak points during assaults. Meanwhile, the players under siege can lower the food ration for a penalty, which can hopefully buy enough time to build up a force and break the siege. Trebuchets and catapults can be destroyed easily, and breaking into a castle even with ladders, assassins, tunnels, and stones takes a lot of planning, so each commander has to be clever with their strategy.

When compared to something like StarCraft or Age of Empires, Stronghold Crusader is a very simple RTS, but the way its simplicity creates such a unique flavor is something that impresses me year after year. I always revisit it when I need to relax, since it’s so fun to play in the classic childhood way of setting up the most defensive base ever and holding out as long as possible, or seeing if you can beat an alliance of eight easy bots. It’s not the best for dedicated and focused play, thanks to the slow pace and propensity of the AI to bug out, but the relaxing blend of creative defense and methodical attack gives it a meditative quality. With the genre being in something of a drought, I would love to see people give this game a second look, and take inspiration on how there’s more to the genre than being competitive.

This game broke me. I rarely play games, and especially not AAA games, where I am genuinely unsure whether I can finish them. Returnal had multiple of these moments where hour long intense runs would come crashing down in an instant of brutal punishment and were it not for the incredible game feel and atmosphere I would have quickly abandoned it many times over.
But I didn't. In the end it was quite an anticlimactic final stretch where certain lucky perks meant that I was essentially invincible, rolling through the last two biomes and final boss after struggling for days on end beforehand to even make any progress. This inconsistency of experience is certainly an issue that frustrated me, cursing at the screen after being stuck with a run-killing malfunction (a risk system tied to certain items and chests where you can get a random penalty ranging from mildly inconvenient to disastrous, the removal of them being tied to equally random challenges, ranging similarly from easily doable to completely out of your control) or losing to a random enemy after not finding any health pickups in three rooms.
The intense difficulty combined with insanely long runs also heavily discourages experimentation, which is a shame because the weapon system allows you to unlock certain perks for weapons you use, heavily modifying the feel of a weapon. In the later runs this meant for me that I would always use my faithful carbine with four unlocked perks instead of trying my hand at a new weapon where I still have to unlock perks one by one. The randomized distribution of weapons of course means you won't always get the weapon you want, which lead in turn to cool moments of unlocking a perk like Full Auto on the rocket launcher, which wasn't a weapon I favored at all now becoming an absolute killing machine, completely altering the weapon. I just wish there was maybe an option to choose your starting weapon, encouraging experimentation at least a little bit more.
In conclusion, this is a fantastic game with extremely rough edges that fully envelops all of its mechanics and interactions in its haunting atmosphere and world building, surely to be appreciated even years from now.

Right before bed, I took a cursory look at my recent playtime with Spiritfarer and immediately recoiled. "Jesus Christ," I thought, only a lot more drawn out and horrified.

It is, in the grand scheme of things, nothing spectacular; 20 hours of gameplay is essentially the bare minimum to "get" a game... but considering I only started playing three days ago and for various reasons, I tend to flux between 10-14 hours of sleep... that 20 hours squished between 72 becomes the meat of my past waking days.

I actually haven't... finished Spiritfarer yet (shh!) but I wanted to get my "initial thoughts" in some kind of readable fashion.

Firstly, let's talk about one fun thing about Spiritfarer! It is being ported to every device imaginable, as if it dares to rival Doom! But that high flexibility means low optimization - and, oh, boy, is Spiritfarer not the most polished product. At some point, Spiritfarer will crash on you, or you'll need to exit the game to fix a bug, etc... I would not recommend the console experience at all.

Yaaay.

Furthermore, the game's jankiness is... everywhere. For me particularly the most glaring... input delay? Input miscalculation? I have no idea what this problem is called - okay, this is going to sound like baby's first review, but the only way I can describe it is: sumtim I button press and the game doesn't game right.

I have to explain. So, I will be trying or mine, or I will sing to my crops and... the game's central ingrained timing is off. The game doesn't think I'm close enough to the stone, or the song mismatches with the music sheet. It's really, really minor, but it's really, really aggravating when you're just trying to do this extended minigame or you just want a crop to grow for something on the ship.

So, it's not the most developed game. Spiritfarer asks for a lot of patience, smiling and silently begging you to please ignore all of these tiny little errors. It's funny when your guest can't climb a ladder! Oh, look, you've managed to lose Daffodil! Arbitrarily we've decided to not process your actual outfit regardless of how many times you change in and out of it, so this character is not going to 'recognize you,' running out precious time, rendering her last day on the ship cold and alone and miserable outside.

I am not unfamiliar with aggravating, unpolished games that could've spent a couple of months in the oven. However, I have never been so thoroughly charmed by spaghetti code. While, yes, sometimes these bugs or hiccups are... momentarily enraging and actively damaging the narrative experience, the game quickly reels me back in. Every mistake is temporary and once fixed, the story marches onwards.

Perhaps this is just the honeymoon. However, despite spending the majority of... my life for the past few days engrossed in this game, I don't think I'm anywhere near Spiritfarer's surface. My opinions may change upon completion - 100% completion I'm guessing - but insofar I have been having a lovely time with this software gore of a video game.