A thunderous return to form for the franchise after a misstep from Dragon Age 2. The deep lore of Thedas, always the highlight of a Dragon Age outing, takes center stage throughout. Your companions help lead you to discovery, but it's the implication of each new revelation for the greater fate of the world that really lands with the player.

The sprawling level designs and avalanche of quest material certainly ensures you can play in this playground for ages, but not all items on your To-Do list are of equal quality. For best results, stick mainly to main storyline quests, where the real impactful beats live.

Despite an engrossing visual style and an immediately intriguing hook, Signalis doesn't measure up to its opening moments. Playing too close to the survival horror greats that inspired it, the warts of bizarre key collecting and micro managing inventory are preserved here despite the genre largely moving on.

The final act is a slog, and in the end you're rewarded with an ending based upon gameplay factors you weren't even aware of without checking a wiki. I'm sure others will enjoy this endearing throwback to older horror titles, but the execution felt a bit too copy/paste for my liking.

Playing through SOMA is not the standard jumpscare adventure that so much of the horror game genre has become. SOMA takes genuine human concerns and unresolvable philosophical questions, smears them with viscous black fluid, implants them with glowing blue nodules, and embodies them within the shambling remnants of the doomed crew until the whole thing lands somewhere between an ethics exercise and technophilic black mass. An achievement in chilling story and atmosphere even if the gameplay side seems borrowed wholesale from their earlier work, Frictional Games delivers a uniquely scary view into a looking glass where you’ll explore your own relationships with humanity, the will to fight against futility, and the sanctity of life.

Full essay here: https://www.guilded.gg/backlog/blog/Chris-Vs-Blog/Well-Meet-Beyond-the-Shore-The-Hope-and-Helplessness-of-SOMA

A solid fusion of the chore simulation genre and jump scare horror. While the actual mortuary work itself is unchanging, the constant threat of other concerns keeps that part of the game loop feeling fresh. Eventually though, as with most chore sims, the work becomes stale. I guess there is nothing quite like your first cadaver.

While I was, quite honestly, shocked at how much story was tucked away into the corners of this game, the main thrust of a shift at River Fields is identical from night to night. I would have loved to see some alteration to the formula on subsequent shifts, but other than digging into story bits or experiencing new hauntings, Rebecca's new nightlife is static.

In updates, the developer has talked openly about their wish to update, expand, and grow the game. I enjoyed my brief time in The Mortuary Assistant, and will return when there is more to uncover.

A shocking example of what a dedicated vision can yield. I am not a horror aficionado, but even I am able to see the fingerprints of classic survival horror rebirthed as a modern homage.

Murder House, at every turn, takes the era of early PSX survival horror - warts and all - and writes it an interactive love letter.

Is it campy? Unbearably so.
Is it frustrating at times to wrangle the tank-control movement? Obviously, yes.
Is it like developer Puppet Combo built a time machine to mid 90s gaming? Absolutely.
Impeccably Dated and Perfectly Flawed.