A great premise, but one that is held back by its often way too simple implementation. Most of the puzzles just involve figuring out the one thing you need to do to prevent that person from dying. There are a few standouts however, and in those cases it really was exciting to figure out the solutions after being stumped. Sadly the ending was lackluster, preoccupied with an overlong explanation of What Is Really Going On rather than tying things together in a satisfying way mechanically. Still, The Sexy Brutale has enough good ideas that it held my interest well enough through its 5 hours, I just think it could have been so much more.

I like Pikmin Bloom. It's fun to go on walks and see your small army of purple Pikmin (the best ones) marching behind you as flowers pop up in your path. And it makes for a nice end of day routine to see everywhere that you went that day and journal it.

However, the thought creeps in from time to time: "What is the point of this really?" I already walk and hike plenty, less so now that the sun is down when I get off work, and I even have apps that track that stuff better than this one. Is it just the aesthetic pleasure? Well, mostly yes, unfortunately.

Maybe I don't live in a big enough city, or at least one big enough to have been noticed by Niantic, but my local area has very few flower buds in the app so I don't really get to engage with that side of the app much. Maybe my afternoon and evening walks just aren't long enough, but I feel like I am constantly topping out on nectar and flower petals to spread around as my Pikmin earnestly bring me more and more. (I can spend $1.99 to upgrade my storage capacity though!) I've nearly stopped sending them on expeditions altogether. The vast majority of points of interest in my area seem to be roadsides, at least according to Niantic, as that's the type of Pikmin I seem to find regularly.

I've had a good time with Pikmin Bloom, and I plan to continue playing it daily for the time being. I just wonder how soon the magic will wear off.

I was apprehensive going in to Echoes of the Eye. Would it disrupt the delicate balance of Outer Wilds? What if it can't capture the magic a second time? What if it makes my favorite game less good?

I'm happy to report that my fears were unfounded and that Echoes of the Eye succeeds on almost all counts. In fact, I'd even say it ultimately enhances the base game.

It's amazing to me how good this DLC is considering that it largely does not play to Outer Wilds' strengths. It's much more linear, and includes some pretty frustrating sections that the game just does not feel well-suited for. The puzzle solving is mostly great as expected, although a few solutions can feel pretty obtuse in the moment before you get the full picture. One important puzzle solution in particular stood out to me as being very poorly telegraphed, and it was unsatisfying once I finally came upon the solution. Still, it's a blast to play and builds on Outer Wilds in some unique ways.

There's a lot of good stuff in the narrative here, and I mean really good stuff. Unfortunately I think the most interesting hooks come way too late, several times during the first two thirds I wondered what I was even trying to do. The payoff totally makes up for it in the end however, underscored by some of Andrew Prahlow's best music to date.

Echoes of the Eye stretches Outer Wilds in unexpected and mostly satisfying new ways, and has a tale worthy of the base game's to tell. I'm glad it exists, and just like before, I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time.

Sigh. I wanted so much more for Deathloop.

Let's get the first major gripe out of the way: it's too simple. Rather than force you to have to use an ounce of brainpower solving the "murder puzzle," Deathloop guides you with a heavy hand through its solutions. All it takes is finding the singular way to kill a visionary at the right time, there are no false leads, no experimenting with different combinations of solutions. There's one correct path, and the game tells you when you've found it. Much more checklist than puzzle. Finding clues is sometimes satisfying, but many times I would receive a notification that I had found another clue despite having no idea what it even was for or how I discovered it. More often than not it ended up being an NPC conversation happening just out of my hearing range but evidently within Cole's.

Much was made about Deathloop encouraging players, unlike Dishonored, to be more cavalier with their abilities and feel free to tear up the town on a murder spree if they do desire. However, I found that most of my attempts at coming out guns blazing fell flat as Cole, even with health buffs equipped, just isn't sturdy enough to take on a group of Eternalists in a straight fight. So even though I could run around the map starting fights without being scolded for it in the story, the only feasible approach in most scenarios was to skulk around Corvo style.

Thankfully the 4 maps are designed well, as you'd expect from Arkane, with lots of alternate routes and tucked away secrets for the curious to find. I really enjoyed the setup of visiting each location during the different times of day and seeing how they changed. There's a ton to find outside of the main quest line, I don't feel like I saw anywhere close to all of it during my playthrough. Save for the few times I got tripped up on some weird geometry, the level design here is top notch.

Deathloop's other biggest strength is its incredible sense of style. The art design, voice acting, and music all come together in a fantastic blend of retro, sci-fi, and blaxploitation aesthetic. It's the rare video game that really feels like there's nothing else quite like it. Arkane deserves a ton of credit for nailing the presentation. I really loved (to hate) all of the visionaries, but I do wish we got more time with each of them.

There's a lot to review with Deathloop because it has so many different parts that come together with varying levels of satisfaction. The slapped together feel of Deathloop's systems is no more evident than with the Julianna invasions. I normally love modes like this, there's something so fun about jumping into someone else's game and affecting the world in some way. The first few times my game was invaded made for some tense battles, and it was satisfying when I survived the encounter. These invasions had diminishing returns however, and the further along I got the more annoying they became. There was really no effort to balance these fights for players of a similar level, so most of the time I was either running and hiding from a way overleveled Julianna or easily taking down or escaping an inexperienced one. The benefits of killing Julianna didn't seem much better than just playing the story and taking down visionaries, so it felt more and more unnecessary the further in I got. Late in the game I had finally had enough when my game was invaded as soon as I entered an area for the fourth time in a row, so I set it to friends only.

While Julianna prematurely ending one of my loops was frustrating, I had several long runs end because of the game crashing, forcing me to redo about half an hour of progress because of the pointlessly stingy autosave system. This isn't a roguelike, these are static levels with objectives, let me save in the middle of them!

The main thing keeping me going was the story. There's a lot less to it than I'd hoped, and there is some weird pacing, but unraveling the mysteries of the island is still mostly satisfying and makes exploring its nooks and crannies rewarding. And despite my earlier complaints about the structure of the game, the final mission absolutely rules and is totally worth experiencing. I also enjoyed the somewhat brief conclusion to the story, so at least it all ends on a high note.

Much like the AEON program, it feels like Arkane had grander plans for Deathloop that never quite came to fruition. The things that Arkane has always done well are great here, but the more ambitious mechanics feel mostly unfinished and oftentimes led to baffling decisions that hurt the better parts of the game.

I think the best thing I can say about Psychonauts 2 is that it is a worthy followup to the original game, no easy feat after a decade and a half. Combat is the only real negative here, most fights just feel like (thankfully easy) pit stops before you can get back to the good stuff. And the good stuff is really good, platforming through the crazy creative levels feels great, and each one meshes design with theme perfectly. Equal parts amusing and heartfelt, the story and characters are as sharp as you'd expect from Double Fine. The plot is gripping and smartly builds on the first game, making the pair really feel like one complete whole rather than separate entries.

You get the sense that Double Fine knew it had to swing for the fences here. There was a lot of pressure both from fans and from their new bosses at Microsoft, and I'm so glad that they stepped up and knocked this out of the park.