I coveted this game a lot when I was a kid and all I had was RCT vanilla. How does it live up after two decades of hype?

The bevy of new scenarios are welcome although it takes the second half of the campaign to shake it up with scenario objectives and level gimmicks like Thunderstorm Park's main pyramid landscape or Adrenaline Heights having guests that demand really intense rides.

Corkscrew Follies introduces a lot of new rides and a large number seem early-game friendly like a few of the new coasters. Hate how fragile Ghost Train is. I could never make a ride without the cars flying off.

There was a long stretch of this game that was pure bliss. I didn't know my goal and I didn't care. I went from one island to the next solving every puzzle that came my way. I didn't worry about completionism– like finishing every island in a cluster before moving on– I just... roamed and enjoyed.

A Monster's Expedition is a puzzle game with a simple verbset and only a few ideas to work with, but part of the fun is discovering the details to these scarce gameplay objects, like how you can flip one log over another. It seems very inspired by Stephen's Sausage Roll, which is right up my alley.

I've not completed all the bonus puzzles so we'll see if my opinion on this game changes but it's an incredibly solid puzzle experience.

So, after long last I have finished the official Baba Is You expansion, New Adventures. It's a great addition to the Baba Is You canon especially with all the new verbs and objects.

That said, I don't think the levels went as deep with the new verbs as the vanilla game did with its verbs like EMPTY and WEAK. That might be because the new verbs are a little more specific, like PHANTOM and YOU 2. Or maybe it's because if the developer made big hefty worlds for all of its new tricks, the expansion would be bigger than the original!

Still... getting to the end of this campaign– I wanted more. There's a whole lot of community-made levels and I'm ready to dive into what the fandom has to offer. I can't get enough! This is certainly one of my favourite games and my favourite puzzle game!

A lot of reviews say this is short and I think it's too short. It's a very brief game and while there are a lot of details in the story that help fill out the game's themes, these ideas felt somewhat incomplete.

I also wished that there was more game to this title. There's a number of very cool ideas on display– like how Venba is essentially a puzzle game where you are trying to cook around a cookbook that is incomplete or in a language the player character does not full understand. I could have done with a dozen more of these scenarios.

I'll ruminate on this game though. It's presentation is spotless and enjoyable and it's look into the quiet tragedy of a kid growing up uninterested in your culture is substantial and worth experiencing.

Might be the best point and click adventure I've ever played!

Exploring the motel in present, past and future was a lot of fun. These kinds of intimate spaces and exploring them-- figuring out how they work-- this is why I like point and click adventures. These environments are so beautiful. A real step up from Monkey Island 2. Having the ability to swap around items between characters on the fly was a gift from the heavens in terms of convenience features. There weren't too many items to collect. The scope of the world was pretty moderate, is what I'm saying.

I found the characters and a dialogue charming. The puzzles were not too hard but still not too easy although some solutions were a bit finnicky. I also think that the story could have had a bit more heart and a theme to tie it all together.

This was solid. Despite being overlong and being very chaotic, I had a lot of fun with this snazzy third-person action emphasizing combos, character abilities, and evasion.

But when I say chaotic, I mean chaotic. The game makes uses of a lot of different inputs and when you combine that with how visually busy the game is and how many bits of dialogue are going on in quick succession, the game was pretty overwhelming. I turned down some difficulty options to make it more palatable.

The journey was pretty great though. The story's solid and I liked the dynamic of the team with them starting out on very hostile grounds and growing on each other over time, in ways that are understated but believable. I liked the voice cast a lot. This guy playing Star-Lord is so much better than Chris Pratt. Same with the voice actor for Rocket.

Will they make a sequel? Maybe. I hope they tone down how ballistic combat could be because it was often overwhelming.

A lot of gamers have their villainous fave– a game they love because its hostility works on a profound level. With these games, the unfairness, obtuseness and/or frustration unfold unique artistic qualities.

I believe Gods Will Be Watching is that game for me.

The developers set out to make a stressful game and a stressful game they made. There were several times where I was late in a chapter, not sure how long I was to the finish line, and I would be worried that one small mishap would mean I would have to start over since there are not checkpoints mid-level. The game itself describes its normal difficulty as “Harsh, unforgiving, and evil”. Accurate.

The challenge level in Gods Will Be Watching is vorpal and you have to be vorpal in response. Although my inclination was to make sure everyone survived in every chapter, oftentimes I had to sacrifice people if not outright kill someone in cold blood. Chapter 1 has you commit outright terrorism and it was very chilling to have to play that. The tone of the story matches the ferocity of the gameplay.

The RNG cheapness and trial and error gameplay would normally be a detriment to a game but it feels appropriate for what the game is going for emotionally. I wasn’t just frustrated playing GWBW– I was disgusted with myself, stressed out, confused, feeling in the dark, and ultimately relieved when I won a chapter.

That said, the story could use some work. The emotional experience of doing these harsh scenarios does a lot more lifting than any of the overt narrative. The plot relies on the player caring about slavery they never see and there’s little work done in the dialogue to make me care about this world. It’s a big problem. In the final chapter they’re talking about complex histories that I only now am I getting context for.

This is a game I heard about when it came out and it’s stuck in the back of my mind for a long time, mostly because of the cool name. Maybe it was fate that I would play it a decade later and it would be one of the most affecting video game experiences of 2023. It’s harsh, but this experience is going to stick with me forever. And the good news is I never have to play it again.

This was a hard cheevos playthrough and I kinda burnt out at the end. My opinion on the Heart of the Swarm campaign hasn't changed much.

Through this hard mode playthrough, in which most of time I was just playing and not worrying about cheevos, I got to see a lot of the cool quirks on a lot of Zerg units and their alterations. The campaign does a lot to restrain the player though with a segmented campaign progression and a few levels where the player is given specific units unrelated to their playstyle. The campaign feels rushed too, unfortunately, and lacks the scenario variety that Wings of Liberty had.

In many ways, Monkey Island 2 is an improvement over the original. The presentation is better, both in visuals and audio. On the other hand, the game’s very frustrating with how hard the puzzles were.

On paper, the idea of a big puzzlebox stretching across three islands sounds cool but what that actually means is I’m wandering between places looking for scraps of hints for many of the game’s riddles and oftentimes the solution was at least halfway obscure. Like, I’m playing a classic PnCA and I’m wondering if I have to employ a strategy I used for La-Mulana where I write down everything that seems like a hint.

To make matters worse, there were times playing this game where I was carrying around nearly fifty items and in a game where each item has the potential to be used, opened, given, etc– the amount of variables became overwhelming. It wasn’t long before I was using a hint guide to ease the play for me. I think if the game had more pieces of information to offer the player then I would have had a pretty great time.

Other than that frustration, the only problem I had is that the game is pretty gross. There’s a lotta spit and talk about lice and dandruff and it made me a little uncomfortable. Was Monkey Island 1 this gross? The general atmosphere and storytelling’s pretty good, though. I like these characters and I was excited to see the next chapter of the Guybrush Threepwood story. I liked how the story and atmosphere gets trippy in the last chapter, too.

Like I said the graphics and audio are good, especially the music that weaves into each other as the player moves through various buildings in Woodtick, for example. The pervasive eerie quietness that bugged me about the first game is no longer here with the frequent BGM and sound effects, although made the game pretty eerie anyway by choosing the Adlib soundtrack with its hypnagogic synths.

Despite my issues, I can see that this is a cool game anyway. I regret not being more patient with the game but I also hated looking through an inventory of dozens of items when many should have been discarded or removed from the equation. I’ll play this game again though and will likely soften on it.

For a game that was hyped up as the scariest game of all time, I didn't find it too frightening. I turned off the lights while playing this and everything. I'm not going to hold that against the game because in the end I loved the atmosphere and it was an exhausting game and an intense game.

At first I didn't like the stark environments but the simplicity of the environments work well with the game's pervasive loneliness. And it also helps navigate the area and spot useable items. There aren't a lot of mechanics that deal with danger but I think details like looking at certain things makes you insane works wonders for the game's theming even if it is a simple thing.

On that note, I found the game's difficulty pretty enjoyable. The puzzles were just complex enough to make it feel like an accomplishment to complete but they were still pretty easy aside from me trying to figure out what a Tampter is at the end of the game. For such an oppressive atmosphere, I was progressing through this game at a decent rate!

This game was intense but rarely frustrating. It went down relatively smooth which might be a weird thing to say to such a legendary horror game but I guess my takeaway is that it's totally worth playing even today.

This game comes with frustrations you'd expect from a graphical adventure of its vintage but it holds up altogether as a fun spelunk into a creepy mansion. I loved the non-linear approach to the point-and-click adventure and its usage of various player skill and it got me thinking... why aren't there more games like this? Or at least, more games like this that are more well-known in the gaming community?

PnCAs would evolve to become something more streamlined and focused but there's an idea here that holds up even 30+ years later. It could have used some refinement, but it's still good. I liked exploring this cozy manor (aside from the kitchen, that place can go straight back to hell).

Now I played this through the Deluxe edition but I don't think too much was lost in the fanmade update. The added music was appropriate. The colour palette was nice. Maybe one day I'll play one of the original versions, though.

This point and click adventure features neat puzzles, great audio, and a wonderful world of dinosaurs. The world-building was very compelling and– it needs to be said– there are so many cuties in this game. Whenever I saw a new one I had to point it out and the task became so overwhelming I had to invite my friend Tom over to help get the job done.

I like the sharpness of the sprite visuals on the field although when the game cuts to the comic panels or profile shots; there's some anti-aliasing and more natural looking linework and I didn't like the mixed fidelities. That's a nitpick, though, and I don't let that factor in to my rating.

I think what I dislike the most is how the plot unravels. The narrative stakes zigzag a lot and some of the later plot revelations felt like they came out of nowhere. I also don't think Zniw has a good arc. Her characterization is rather vague. She's kinda just an adventure game protagonist: generally well-meaning but also predisposed to mischief. She doesn't give off a memorable impression.

The music is great. It's atmospheric and chill while also being melodic and emotive. The puzzles were pretty good. Sometimes there was an object that blended too well into the environment but most of the puzzles were strong and I like how the game increases the complexities of puzzles as the game goes on, having small arenas early on but the game ending in a bigger puzzlebox.

Found this very fun. The animation is great. A real treat!

Kinda got a bad ending on this game, I think, and I think I'm ready to put this game down. Not permanently, mind.

It's a very unique experience, this game. I often felt like there were no real stakes, like I could fail any mission and the story would move on. It makes the world feel more immersive and less gamey. The world of Dorisburg is something of a life simulator.

That said, because nothing feels mandatory it's hard to feel like you are having an affect on the game aside from your own mastery of the game's in-world coding language. I felt the most empowered when I mastered programming techniques. The story elements were pretty flat.

I will likely return to this game to see if there's more I can unlock. It's a curious toy and I want to see what else I can make it do.