Casinocaster
I am a complete foreigner to this genre so I don't probably follow the standards of most people writing reviews here, but I have to say I had an amazing night playing this with my friends. I don't remember laughing like this with a multiplayer game since Mario Party. Full of jumpscares, of course.
2016
I wanted to "get ready" for Inscryption and finally tackled Pony Island, which had been sitting on my backlog for years. This is 100% my shit. It has the perfect balance between light and disturbing, and the most meta twists (you probably know what I mean) made a lot of impact on me.
2018
The process of learning the game loop is amazing. It is confusing, but that is exactly what the narrative justifies. Atmosphere is crafted with excellent care, I would say that is the best part; playing an entire game of Cultist Simulator makes me forget about the world and focus on the Mansus and the weighty implications of my esoteric efforts. However, I think that is precisely its weakest point: the hook is too powerful. When you get to "the zone" and lose track of time, you realise most of what you did in the hours you spent is trying to beat the timed restrictions, while progressing very little. I would recommend trying to beat at least one game, but spending more time than that on the game is really demanding.
This review contains spoilers
If you haven't played Outer Wilds you should stop reading immediately and start playing. I couldn't start my review any other way.
Echoes of the Eye expands the original experience with a more somber tone. While the theme of the base game could be the love for life and discovery and treasuring the friends we make along the way, this DLC focuses more on tragic decisions and how to move on after them. New brilliant mechanics are introduced, which helped me get engrossed in exploration really fast. Once again I finished the game with a vast array of unforgettable moments. I recommend it to basically all audiences, but there is a big but: even if I enjoyed them, it is absolutely understandable that many people will find some parts really blocking or unappealing. After all not everybody likes playing Amnesia, and it felt quite weird that Mobius forced everyone to go through that, even with the watered down scare settings.
Also the Tubular achievement is incredibly badly designed, holy shit that frustrated me. Go for Hotshot, it is way more fun.
Echoes of the Eye expands the original experience with a more somber tone. While the theme of the base game could be the love for life and discovery and treasuring the friends we make along the way, this DLC focuses more on tragic decisions and how to move on after them. New brilliant mechanics are introduced, which helped me get engrossed in exploration really fast. Once again I finished the game with a vast array of unforgettable moments. I recommend it to basically all audiences, but there is a big but: even if I enjoyed them, it is absolutely understandable that many people will find some parts really blocking or unappealing. After all not everybody likes playing Amnesia, and it felt quite weird that Mobius forced everyone to go through that, even with the watered down scare settings.
Also the Tubular achievement is incredibly badly designed, holy shit that frustrated me. Go for Hotshot, it is way more fun.
2016
Some of the best audio design out there. A game that efficiently capitalizes on being aware of itself: its ultraviolence and rhythm translate perfectly into the game mechanics. Clearly I don't need to keep writing but let me just add that SnapMap is an incredibly smooth and user-friendly tool, the icing on the cake for an instant classic.
Gorgeous hidden gem. The animations and pixel art are the best I have seen in a long while: neat, expressive and evocative. As the stories twist and get darker, the immersion increases. A game a couple of hours long moved me more than all the AAAs I was waiting for this year.
Playing RPGs is going to be different after this. The best piece of videogame writing out there; it is bold, dense and inspirational, and it shook me in an emotional and socioeconomical level. I would even say HARDCORE TO THE MAX
A cute, self-contained, little game with no big ambitions. Its simple story gives room to focus on the movement mechanics, which allow interesting yet not-too-crazy platform puzzles. Some of its stuff could have aged better since 2014, but a few of the environments are really pretty, enough to make you stop to enjoy the views.
2020
Killed by its own marketing, it will remain as a study case for gaming history, I guess. Nevertheless, for a game made of only problems, it turned out to be really good. Leave the release bugs and memes aside and you have state-of-the-art graphics, carefully crafted environments, a commercialized yet entertaining version of the cyberpunk genre and, most importantly, one of the most powerful feats of immersive narrative in recent mainstream videogames.
2021
I know I was fuelled by nostalgia but I really wanted New Pokémon Snap to be something more than this. It starts as a wholesome passtime but soon the magic of photo safari vanishes. It doesn't feel like navigating through the wild and being lucky enough to capture a unique moment; instead, it quickly turns into a game of memorizing patterns or trying to deduce behaviors that more often than not follow no logic at all. I think the challenges killed the game for me, it could have been more interesting (or felt more "freeish") if they let me found out one Pokémon behavior or other on my own, with the only reward of getting a better picture. I guess I will finish it one day but right now I really don't feel like going through the same route twice again.
Having said that, I am thankful for a non violent Pokémon game, it has cute moments so I'll increase my rating a bit.
Having said that, I am thankful for a non violent Pokémon game, it has cute moments so I'll increase my rating a bit.
2017
Currently, this is the best digital adaptation of Settlers of Catan that I know of. The interface is user-friendly, straightforward and very smooth, it almost makes me prefer this than the real tabletop game. Other than microtransactions, its main downside is on the technical side; matchmaking and scoring systems often feel clunky, and there are a couple of annoying achievement-related bugs.
What can I say? As a party game, Smash Ultimate never fails. As a Nintendo celebration, it feels very unique and probably (let me elevate my terms) historical. In Smash, I'm way more interested in the concept of crossover and even in the single player modes than in its fighting game aspects (I couldn't care less about that genre), but I'm thrilled about the fact that "everyone is here" and I just love its community. Most of the latest fighter additions blew my mind, and now I cannot see how the franchise can move on further and higher from this. Crossing my fingers for the next step moving away from a fighting game and closer to what the Subspace Emissary was.
2014
Last time I played, one of the neighbours answered my Sim back and got into a stupid argument. I punished her by imprisoning her in one room with no windows and kept feeding her expired food for days. My other artist Sim decorated the house with pictures of her being miserable, levelling up her photography skill easily. Only after noticing I hadn't received any bills for so long I realised that my prisioner was the neighbourhood mailwoman. Brilliant.
That is just some silly, twisted example of the enormous potential of emergent narrative in The Sims. Whoever says this game is insufficient without DLCs should relax.
That is just some silly, twisted example of the enormous potential of emergent narrative in The Sims. Whoever says this game is insufficient without DLCs should relax.
2020
In many ways it doesn't go further than Life is Strange games, but it still has a lot to say. Performances are very nice and themes like anxiety and trauma are treated masterfully. I feel like it reaches its peak with all the kid stories sections, I wish they had delved more into that.
Perfect for lazy afternoons when you are feeling down. It goes straight for your heart and shouts the words love and family in a very subtle, indirect way. Beautiful! Whenever I remember this game I want to go to the beach.