Little Nightmares is a sidescrooling horror game in the vein of Limbo or Inside (and by in the vein I do mean it is basically the exact same style of game). You play as "Six" though she is never named in the game, a dwarf/gnome girl who lives on a ship filled with monsters trying to eat her! You follow her adventures through the Leviathan solving puzzles, avoiding enemies, and trying to escape. You are helped along the way by a few friendly gnomes and other odd creatures that make their residence on the ship.. while also trying to not be eaten.

The game is only a few hours long, I was able to beat it on my second playthrough here in a neat 3 hours. The ship is divided into a few sections with a strong theme + one monster type to evade as you solve simple puzzles and platforming. To start with you are in the bowels of the ship and avoiding a long-armed blind caretaker, you make your way to some kitchens where you avoid chefs, a main dining area with rotund guests, and finally to the lady of the ship's quarters and do battle with her. It feels a touch formulaic with each section despite the short running time but each section doesn't outstay its welcome either. The enemies are all disgusting and horrifying in their own ways that is a treat to ogle them as a new one is introduced.. the more you study them the more you realize they're not just disfigured - they seem to be wearing the skin of some other creatures... perhaps humans once existed in this world and they are now extinct? Also what relation do these gnomes have to the rotund monsters - are they human beings transformed? Or are these fomorian-style things invaders in our world? There's an awful lot to chew on story wise which is a lot of fun to try and speculate as you make your way through the areas.

If we're going to talk about anything though, it is the SPECTACULAR ending. As you make your way through this world Six is often struck by severe hunger pangs where you have to make your way to some food. No gameplay mechanic here, purely story driven. You start off just eating chunks of meat however you later feed on a rat... you feel a bit bad but it was caught in a trap anyway and was likely dead. You had to survive right?? Well, near the end as you are approaching the end of the game and the lady's room a final pang strikes - and this time you find a small gnomish alliy offering you a hunk of meat. Sweet, right? WRONG! Six is so overcome by her hunger that she devours the creature attempting to help you instead. Delightfully creepy and messed up. You continue forward to do battle with the final boss - a geisha type who seems the closest to human we've seen outside a strange TV show. She has shattered all of the mirrors in her quarters but you find one tucked away and use that to battle her. After some back and forth she is defeated - then you consume her as well!! Man, we're getting some steaks here right? NO IT GETS EVEN BETTER - Six slowly walks her way to the exit and demonstrates some extreme new psychic powers and easily slaughters her way through a dozen guest fomorians to the exit. and ascends into sunlight, off the ship. After a whole game of crawling through ducts and running from these beasts for your life, the sudden swerve in fortunes here is tremendously satisfying and watching Six's descent into a Little Monster is suitably epic.

While Little Nightmares isn't quite the Tour-De-Force of Inside it certainly has excellent pacing and plenty of scares. I would call it more creepy than horrifying but there's enough here to unsettle even a die-hard horror fan. Some puzzles are a bit obtuse and the "boss" encounters are too trial-and-error for my tastes they never get SO frustrating that it puts a damper on the experience. The mood and ambience of the Leviathan ship carry the game from its mysterious beginning to its cathartic and satisfying end and it was a pleasure to get to experience it again.

L4D but rats! And chaos warriors! And elves!!

So yeah, that's the laconic review of Vermintide 2. I bought this game several years ago (around when it released maybe?) and played through about half of it but eventually dropped it because reasons I can't recall. However after playing and loving Total Warhammer TO DEATH I was like yeahhh gimme some more of that Warhammer goodness! Redownloaded Vermintide because I do enjoy the basics of L4D style games and figured it would be fun to run through with a bit more knowledge of the Warhammer universe.

The basics of the game are essentially L4D - 4 main characters make their way through winding levels while fighting off hordes of easily killable foes interspersed with 'special' enemies that must be handled as a team. Sorcerers that pull up enemies in a whirlwind, rats who 'hook' your necks and make you helpless, or might Chaos beasts who are just too strong for one PC alone to take them down. This focus on cooperation naturally is meant to push you to multiplayer modes but UGGGHHHH I just can't be assed with that shit so I did all of the campaigns solo. Vermintide is MUCH more melee focused however than L4D and the combat in this game feels very good - hits are thwacky, the gore is chunky, enemies react to even light blows, and your weapons often are stopped short in their animations if they bounce off of a particularly tough enemy. Many hours in and cutting through hordes of bad guys or doing a weaving dance with stronger foes still felt damn damn good.

There are three "campaigns" that once they are all completed will lead up to the final battle to end the story. The story itself is pretty barebones, the ratmen Skaven have opened a portal to the far north letting armies of chaos warriors in underneath the new settlement the story takes place in (I honestly don't remember despite having just finished it) and you guys need to figure out a way to slow down the armies + shut down the gate for good to cut off reinforcements. It's a bit of a nothing plot and we get basically no characterization at all for our bad guys or even for the places we're trying to defend. Everything is basically 'fantasy name - the place'. There's a strong Germanic/Bavarian/Austrian theme which mixes it up nicely instead of Merry Old England but because the game is very much focused on its gameplay of - get in the levels, run through them for set pieces battles, get out again to the next one - there's not much here to build up the character of the place with the writing.

However the game does excel at something beyond its combat: the STELLAR art direction. The sweeping veeestas you will come across in each level provide at minimum two "Hot damn this looks awesome" as you come across them, often far more than 2. Gothic architecture and skaven contraptions abound that give off an unearthly light that give off an incredible mood of 'shit's fucked yo' or 'this place was beautiful before these bad guys showed up' which at least does help reinforce why we should give a shit about these places at all. Almost every enemy also has a strong direction that gives you a clear vision for how they fit in this world - nearly hairless and small skavenslaves, the bulky chaos warriors and their enormous greataxes, Skaven knights or the nurglehordes of chaos.

So while Vermintide 2 might seem like it has some serious weaknesses with its poorly told story and threadbare plot, the pieces that DO work, work incredibly well. The melee combat is chunky and often exhilerating, the music does a fantastic job of setting the mood and pace, while the superb art direction frequently gives you something awe inspiring or loathsome to look at and admire. The characters are all strongly vocal about their opinions and I liked all of them (even if my main character elf lady was a GIANT dick) unfortunately even without finishing the entire campaign I heard MANY MANY repeats in dialogue already. Vermintide may have its issues but the strength of its combat and level design leave very little to be desired in its moment-to-moment action beats which is very much what they were seemingly aiming for. Warhammer is a brutal world and it was fun to get to tear it up for a little while - on the ground this time with a grunt's poleaxe rather than from a commander's eye!

Soooooo. Fallout 3. Here we go! I actually downloaded the game because I was actually interested in replaying New Vegas for its 10 year anniversary... but then I noticed that the mod Tale of Two Wastelands was out and I could play FO3 and FNV in the same game so obviously I jumped on that shit! So this isn't so much a review of Fallout-3-as-it-was but rather FO3 through the engine of NV along with some handy mods to make things a little (LOT) better. This is also the first time I have played a game with an optional "survivor" mode and uhh... I really really liked it actually? It takes a while for the penalties to kick in and it just keeps you on your toes and a bit more 'grounded' in the world and I appreciate that in an RPG.

Anyway, Fallout 3 - the story of a kid born in a vault (but not really) then later finds out that there's a whole WORLD out there to explore! And its full of monsters and other horrible shit but your dad leaves you in the lurch so you gotta go after him. This starts a series of "Have you seen my dad"'s that will have you bopping around certain points on the map until you figure out what your pops was up to - creating clean water for the wasteland. So I have a lot of issues with the main story of FO3 in that it doesn't play too well with the open world aspect of it. Namely - every story quest minus one exception takes place entirely in the SE quadrant of the map. Now that's where the DC area is which is perhaps one of the most interesting 'open air' dungeons I've seen in a game BUT it leaves huge chunks of the game essentially just open to random side shit. However now that I've spent a lot of time wandering around in those other areas a lot of that side stuff is actually REALLY good. So why the heck does the game not really nudge me AT ALL to go see it..?

Unfortunately I did that thing where I let a little too much time pass between finishing the game and writing the review so I will just have to cut it short unfortunately. Fallout 3 very much shows off Bethesda's strengths - an open world with lots of wonderful and interesting little side stories tucked away and available for the player to interact with at a moment's notice. The main section is hugely overwrought, uneven, and a clear attempt at shoehorning in a "Hollywood-style" plot into a series that frankly has no such use for one. The worldbuilding can be lackluster in a lot of ways and there's not real theme running through the story or locations at all which makes it feel hodge-podge going from one little sidestory to the next. All that said - it is still an interesting time for each of these little sidestories and wandering over that next hill to see what kind of monster, loot, NPC, or apocalypse log awaits you still felt pretty darn good.

We're heading to the VILE PIT known as... Pittsburg! Hahahah Cleveland joke.

Seriously though, in my memories the Pitt was a very interesting DLC in my memory as I recalled the 'moral' dilemma quite sharply and was rather excited to go through it again only to have my expectations deflated somewhat. The mind and memory play tricks on us all and The Pitt certainly felt significantly smaller and less intense on this replay which is always disappointing but I do think it has some solid merits to it.

The Pitt is a degenerate wasteland ruled over by a man named Ashur, clad in Brotherhood power armor. You're roped into this either with the promise of reward or to help free slaves and when you arrive you are promptly attacked by a few thugs and all your gear is stolen. This is kind of a silly moment in the game as I was in full power armor at the time and facing NPCs with bats and handguns.. okay silly, easily avoidable plot contrivance aside you get to swear revenge on the one who got the jump on you - fast forward an hour later and all your gear is just handed back to you by some random NPC??? God damn this was lazy, Bethesda you didn't even give us the chance at getting revenge? Jeez.... Anyway, the pitt is full of mutated and maimed folks who are being enslaved by this raider gang to make shitloads of steel, but unfortunately the radiation and miasma here is even worse than it is in the Capital - here, men become mutated monsters called "trogs" that wildly attack anything that's not them and loads of people die from radiation as well... however, there is a rumored cure being developed! You're brought in as an outsider to grab this cure and bring it back to The Resistance - you do some odd jobs, fight some spooky trogs, kill people in an arena not designed for stealth characters or energy weapons (yet again....) and then you get to near the end: meeting Ashur. Talking with him reveals what the cure actually is - his daughter, immune to radiation. His wife is a scientist and they are very slowly working on the cure however it will take years or even decades while ensuring the child's safety - the brutal regime he is running is to ensure the plan's success, and the wastelands respect only strength and cruelty.

So there's our moral dilemma - do we steal a child to help break a brutal regime, or let said regime continue to ensure one babies safety? I recall my first playthrough of this was actually a sharp turn of

Zeta is actually the last of the Fallout 3 DLC (there are three others for us to get to?! But that's so many DLC to count in our 52 game challenge! Almost like I planned this...) however we have done it second...? Because that's the order we found them in! There I was, minding my business on my way to Vault 93 to find an old lady a violin, when we picked up a strange frequency on the pipboy. I took myself to high ground and looked about until I found a crashed space ship. Heading over I was sucked up to the sky... poor Dogmeat watched me fly off lol.

Similar to Anchorage I do have memory of playing this DLC on whenever my last FO3 playthrough was - I remember not being too fond of it then and I have pretty much confirmed that opinion now. After being abducted by aliens you quickly get to work escaping from their clutches (and find your gear very quickly, thankfully) and then make your way through hallway after hallway and hangar after hangar of little green aliens until you blow up another ship and head back to good ol' Earth. Who would even want to go back honestly... But we're playing a lady looking for her errant father so that's what we're going to do. Now it might seem like my criticisms of this should be the same as Anchorage, 99% combat 99% of the time, but I quite liked Anchorage. What's the difference here? To put it simply - variety. The Alien ship is VERY samey and I even had to turn back on the dreaded Quest Markers to find my way around because I so regularly got turned around in the metallic hallways and droid bays. The enemies are pretty boring to fight (regular aliens with blasters and turrets make up 85% or so of the enemies, and only a handful are a real threat) and the new weapons are neat but don't feel like something I would keep in my long-term arsenal. Compared to the rewards of Anchorage (fuckin' sweet stealth suit, winter armor, Gauss rifle) the alien 'gear' feels a bit too goofy?

There are some new characters here to talk with who are all people taken from Earth's history at various points leading us to confirm that the Aliens have been watching us for quite some time. There's a Japanese Samuarai who of course only speaks Japanese, a cowboy, an army medic from just before the bombs dropped, and a little girl from just AFTER the bombs dropped. Our main contact though is a woman who is also from the wastes - who we eventually learn worked with slavers... there could very easily be an interesting bit of ethical quagmire here with just how far you're willing to tolerate someone's past if it means to get out of an emergency but.... but nah, they didn't bother. The girl even has a subplot about her missing sister - as far as I can tell it is never even resolved.

While Mothership Zeta has an interesting premise to it, the payoff is just too little and doesn't fit too well into FO3 as it is. There are a few cool setpieces like walking out in space (but with regular physics..), a monster shooting range and unfreezing all of the other people on board but it is far too little to buoy the slog of walking through a spaceships samey hallways for two whole hours and then to walk out with... a kinda cool side blaster?

Persona 5 Royal, Persona game number 2 for 2020! This Royal 'update' is their version of the Golden/FES of 3 and 4, a rerelease with bonus content and editing of the main game. I originally played Persona 5 on its initial release in early 2017 and I was... disappointed with the game? I loved it, I did, but there was an inescapable air of "this doesn't quite match what came before". That feeling still hasn't really been shaken by Royal because the base game is like 99% the same (unlike FES/Golden, where the 10~15% that is changed in those versions makes pretty big difference in the feel) and that 99% is still bombastic and proud and full of energy and STYLE - and in those areas the game is an unqualified success. So the game is a tremendous achievement at being what it is striving for - a story of rebellion and not accepting the world as it is, to change yourself and the world around you. The characters, story and gameplay all support this and there are so many QOL improvements and mechanical changes to the Persona Formula that are great here, but ultimately leave me a little wanting due to the same care being lacking in its predecessors greatest strength: SOME STAKES.

So the gist of this game is the two halves of Persona 5 - 1. A 'slice of life' simulator where you get to choose each day who you're going to hang out with or what activities you'll engage in (interspersed with story beats or events from your personal/school life) and 2. A dungeon crawler where you enter the "mental palaces" of adults you've identified who are causing problems in the real world and need to have their hearts stolen so they can see the error of their ways. These two systems sound completely separate but Persona 5 does a fantastic job of having the two systems 'overlap' in ways that far exceed P3 and P4. As you level up your friendships in the real world you not only get stronger Personas to fight with in the battles, each Confidant of yours teaches you some new skills that are of use to you in the mental world. From special gun attacks, swapping out party members mid fight, bonuses to negotiations - and of course leveling up your teammates lets them protect you in battle or shake off blows that would kill them. Conversely, you'll be able to change the hearts of people who are giving your confidants shit in real life making your battles in the mental world affect your progression in the slice of life section. The Persona games (modern ones but honestly who really gives a shit about P1/P2) do a variable job at balancing the pacing of these two sections of the game that would be kinda boring on their own and P5 does the best job at making them feel like a cohesive whole, so kudos to you P5!

Persona 5 Royal is a GIANT fucking game. I spent 100 hours (99h 54m to be exact!) doing mostly everything, but I also had played P5 before so generally knew what I was doing. Because it is so big there is a LOT to talk about but I'm not sure it can all be tackled in one of my reviews because that's boring. So I'll just hit the strengths and weaknesses in general then talk about the royal stuff + my overall feelings towards this massive, excellent, and disappointing game.

Strengths

The music. Jesus H. Jones the music at basically all times is amazing. The chill jazz ambiance (Beneath the Mask) of running around, especially during the rain, is 11/10. When you enter the palace to steal the heart of the target, the music amps up to 110% and you feel like a phantom thief who can take on the whole damn world. Battle music continues to be 10/10, with different tracks for whether you're fighting bosses, minibosses, regular battles or surprise battles.
UI presentation. Everything in the ui drips with style and flash. A cutout version of Joker flips through the screen and punches through glass as you move through options, even other characters get in on the action in certain stores or interactions and it just LOOKS cool.
SOME of the story arcs are excellent. This makes some of the other arcs feel a lot weaker by contrast but we'll get there... Kamoshida arc, Futaba's and of course Shido's are top because they deal more directly with characters we've gotten a good chance to know and are just well constructed.
Royal Changes - more stuff to do, much more free time in the evenings for character growth, two new characters are damn solid. In fact the last act of the game is a lot stronger than what precedes it as he is a MUCH more interesting antagonist than a god out of nowhere at all apparently... The new semester also starts off with a BANG - the new 'world' is so weird and unsettling you know it's going to turn out awful. Plus having crazy Akechi on your side is fucking amazing, he's so great. Also Maruki and his palace have some STRONG Lovecraft vibes (his persona is Azathoth and he is straight up the Yellow King, it is awesome) but it uses it in like... a positive way? Warping the world into something happy rather than madness inducing. It's a neat take on the idea actually.
Weaknesses

Confidants. I say 'weakness' not because any of them are actually BAD, there's just no real standouts in my opinion. Sun is pretty good (politician trying to redeem himself), Justice has an interesting twist (what if you were friends with a crazy person, but done much better than Hunger from Persona 4) and of course your bond with Sojiro is solid but I am struggling to think of any others that were particularly noteworthy. Nothing even close to Death from P4.
The other story arcs. Following up Kamoshida's arc, one with real emotion and drama and stakes, with a ...fraudulent artist who... threatens us with legal action.... and a character who is a twerp for 90% of it is.... a choice. The criminal yakuza dude is fine I guess since we see the consequences of some of his actions but otherwise is whatever.
Royal Changes - the last arc feels kind of out of nowhere? I think this is a bit 'unfair' of me as I played the original version so obviously I KNOW it was tacked on but there's barely even a line spared for how any of it is even possible - at the end of the original final boss the stakes are clear: if we beat this god, mementos disappears and the Thieves are finished. Except.... everything is totally fine in mementos and Maruki can do his thing? Somehow? And then you beat him and "oh hey Mementos is disappearing I guess". The new semester also has barely any content to it other than the main story beats with the new world + an apology tour from your whole team for... being happy for a couple days? I get the need for these scenes, I do, but they play out 95% the same way with everyone and it is actually kinda embarrassingly repetitive, like when you get chocolates from everyone on Valentine's but like it actually matters where chocolates don't.
So yeah, Royal stuff - a whole new semester! 2 new main characters! The new semester I'm a little mixed on - the dungeon and story/characters are great, the rest is meh. I love Maruki and Kasumi's interaction and how it deals with the 'canon' of the P5 metaverse and playing with how this story could logically go - but it seems to completely ignore the ending of the original game? Why not change it to fight better with the Royal additions? Like, the end of the game is SO CLEARLY THIS IS THE END OF THE GAME - Arsene comes back, new Giant persona who KILLS A GOD and prevents worlds from being merged... and then we just get another plot month of metaverse stuff? Narratively it is just a clusterfuck. It feels like the game desperately needed a proper editing pass (cut some sections or just rework them to give them a bit more punch. Why the fuck do we still not meet Haru until October for god's sake?!) but the team was too scared to change the base game significantly to make room for the Royal stuff so just tacked it on and it feels WEIRD. Seriously, is there ANY explanation for how the metaverse keeps going in January? Or who or what Jose is and is up to? Hey maybe I missed a throwaway line somewhere.. It sounds like I'm mostly negative on this stuff and I swear I'm not - it is mostly very good. It just doesn't FIT into the rest of this game and it is really weird it doesn't since they should've done a whole pass on the game but just didn't.

Overall, this game is a fuckin' doozy. There's so much character and style to everything you do, yet like everything that is 100% style they forget the substance in a few too many places. There's no quiet and moving stories here, only bombast and drama. It's a game about freedom and forging your own path against a world that will often get in your way and it succeeds with flying colors in that regard - I just wish it remembered the heart that 3 and 4 were built on.

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Cthulhu returns from Zeboyd games and he's going to save Christmas! Mostly because like the last game (which is actually a sequel to this one, chronologically) Cthulhu has his powers stolen by the bad guys and works with his new crew of misfits to fight through quick JRPG-style battles to get them back. In this new game obviously everything is winter themed and you fight with Copyright Appropriate companions save Santa - new in this version is R'hylationship system which means you get to hang out your party members and get neat items at the end of each hangout. The characters and writing are all pretty top-notch in what they're trying to be - witty one liners and 4th wall breaks. The game is only 6~10 hours so even by the time you might be tired of the humor the game knows itself well enough to wrap things up nicely. I do wish the Rhylationships were a little more indepth/codified, at no point do you actually know how far along in that character's story you are, nor are you aware ahead of time what you're actually getting out it (other than the name, which will at least tell you who the item is for). Outside the days you're hanging out with pals in Christmas town you go to track down the various members of the league of evil in their lairs. These lairs are all pretty cut-and-dry, while they all look quite good and with some snazzy music, they are pretty standard JRPG treks through maps while fighting "Random" encounters with basically nothing other than spare treasure chests to grab until you get to the boss. I don't think Cthulhu Saves Christmas does anything exceptional, however it does everything it WANTS to do pretty damn adeptly - the jokes are funny, the writing is cute when it's not being funny, the combat system is a solid evolution of quick turnbased battles, and the length is just right for the price and the premise. A damn solid use of my time and reminds me I really need to give Zeboyd's other games a proper shot.

Newest game by Supergiant, the makers of Bastion & Transistor! Two games I loved quite dearly comes another 10/10 from them frankly... they can't just keep getting away with it!! A roguelike game, which I usually hate, that fits its design and story together perfectly and I LOVE IT. You're Zagreus, the son of Hades and you're trying to escape hell - everyone else is real mad about this because it's screwing up the House and Underworld. Why are you going so far... Oh don't worry the game will tell you in due time. Each 'run' of this roguelike slowly peels back layers of excellent writing, both plot and characters. You're slowly working your way up the chain to get out of hell and with each failure you make just a bit of progress, or get a new conversation, that really keeps you going. Other reviews will mention that they were EXCITED to lose each run and I definitely didn't feel that but I only quit a couple times because I was just getting tired of minimal progress, and it usually wasn't too long until a new run came along to buoy me back up. So yeah story though - greattttt! Zagreus is immensely likeable and sympathetic and the more NPCs you interact with the more you see their perspective's on why they're not thrilled with Zag for his crusade. The ending is a biiiiit too saccharine I think but the main conflict between Zag and Hades is pretty great! It's a damn well-told story and maybe I don't hate roguelikes anymore...? Nah, they still suck.

The follow-up to the excellent reboot Mortal Kombat 9 - we pick up 20~odd years later with the world moved on. We got some new characters and a biiiiit of a disappointing follow-up to said excellent story. In 9 we had a retelling of 1-2-3, and now that they're heading into uncharted territory it stumbles here and there. The new cast of youngins stumbles in likeability and there are a fewwwww too many "he's just the young version of this character" but the new blood is appreciated at least. The story seems to spin its wheels a bit - we get our big bad from 1 (....was he though?) taken out but we have a lot of open questions still on what's going on with the revenants... and why is Raiden threatening to kill everyone!! The mechanics remain a solid fighter (I'm not expert but whatever) though some characters seem a lot easier to handle with more to do - but maybe I just played them crappy? It's a pity I didn't get to play with fatalities but there is plenty of brutal blows to scratch that gross Mortal Kombat itch. The game also has a variety of unlockables, single and multiplayer challenges, bur who carrrreeees. I bought MK11 shortly after finishing this so I skipped most of it and just moved onto that. So yeah, solid enough story that might be leading to something better in the future! I plan on sinking my teeth into 11 a bit more so see you in 2021!

Final Grade - B+

Point Lookout was the one of two DLC for 3 I never bothered with - where Broken Steel (we'll get to you a LONG time from now buddy, relax) is a post-game DLC and honestly who wants to finish a Bethesda game, Point Lookout's THEME just didn't do it for me. You head to the LA bayou (Louisiana duh) to poke around and look for someone's missing daughter - kind of rubbish intro honestly, but what you find there is a MUCH more freeform adventure than all of the other DLC we're going over here and damn I loved it. The Bayou map isn't too big but you start off in a small coastal carnival spot that feels delightfully colorful but sadly there isn't much to do here. When you do arrive though the NPC who brings you here cheerfully points out that a mansion is on fire up on the hill...maybe go check it out? Or don't, who cares? And then you're just set loose in this little microcosm of a fallout game and the fun begins.

To be clear here, that fire IS the main story of the DLC though it very easily could not be. There's nothing really thematically going on here that ties it to the Bayou and what it is going through or even any of the side stuff - it's the just parts with the most voice acting + 'cinematic' moments. Don't get me wrong what's here is quite good: a drug fueled trip through a swamp that gets into some personal shit for your character (I'm not a wholly blank canvas! Woah!) and a horde mode section defending said burning-down mansion... it's neat honestly and worth the time. The real meat here though is this little slice of America you're wandering through.

The Bayou is TOUGH. There are inbred yokels who attack you rather than raiders who appear...mostly... human but their guttural southern twang gives them a more disturbing edge than any gory artwork display the Capital raiders can cook up back home. There's a few tough new ghoul variants here that lurk around graveyards which help them lean even more into the 'zombie' archetype and they are all suitably creepy. I do enjoy there's also a running subplot about the nearby military base and its hunt for a hidden chinese agent just before to war. This quest does help flesh out the American/Chinese relationship just before things went to shit and while it strains credibility that all of these necessary pieces of the puzzle have survived more-or-less intact after 200 years for us to piece together it still does FEEL engaging at solving these mysteries. And while Anchorage showed the very clear American propoganda to make the Chinese look like horrible monsters (but really just making the US look like racist assholes) we get to see a bit of the Chinese side here that they really weren't great themselves... but that's kind of Fallout 3's schtick right? Everyone is sorta awful?

Lookout strays very far from its On-Rails compatriot DLC in presenting just a tasty morsel of a mini-Fallout experience and I do think that helps it play much more directly into the game's strengths. The fighting just isn't good enough to hold up Anchorage or Zeta all on their own and the writing alone can't bear the brunt of The Pitt's moral 'dilemma' but the worldbuilding Bethesda engages in really can get us over the finish line here. This DLC is definitely my favorite and in a way I'm sad I missed it back in the day but... it sure was a surprising treat for today.

New year new challenge!! Beginning my third year in a row of my 52 game challenge not quite with The Bang of the Mass Effect Trilogy but rather the whimper of Fallout 3... Okay kidding aside, Fallout 3 is not a bad game but it pales in comparison to its 'family' in the series in a lot of ways. BUT we're not here to talk about Fallout 3 (yet), we're here to talk about its first DLC - Operation Anchorage.

Anchorage starts off strong with a mysterious signal from a "remnant" outcast sect of the Brotherhood of Steel (a group of badass tech hoarders in the Fallout universe) trying to crack an old equipment locker but needing a pipboy to interface with the system that controls all of the vault doors. That's where you come in - the first stray person who has a pipboy! It's cool that you overhear conversations of some of the Brotherhood just saying they should cap you and take the item off of your corpse rather than deign to ask you for help, as that better fits their usual MO for dealing with wastelanders. Ultimately though the DLC would be kinda boring that way so instead they plug you into a VR simulation of the Battle of Anchorage - very shortly before the bombs fell Chinese forces had taken Anchorage, AK and fortified it, and the US marines went in to take it back from those commie bastards. This battle is referenced MANY times throughout the game and there are a couple of memorials dedicated to it as well in the D.C. ruins so this is actually a pretty cool fleshing out of the lore you're getting to see first hand - though clearly with some propagandizing intent behind it as well.

The Fallout Universe pins itself as being trapped in a 1950's aesthetic and mindset (or rather a slightly twisted and ahistorical view of how the 50's were) where the Capitalist Good Guys saved the day against the sneering foreign communist hordes and that is very much on display here. You literally only talk to ONE Chinese soldier who is a clear racist caricature who does nothing but threaten you with death (who you can return the favor to) so it's a pretty clear condemnation of this universe's US government and their wartime views. The meat of the experience is actually pretty great and feels like it fits perfectly into making you think you're in this simulation, it is basically all battles all the time and it looks great. Fallout 3 is based on fast and slow periods of creeping around old buildings or landmarks and then getting into some quick but deadly fights then looting the joint - Anchorage is fast paced and constantly handing you health pickups and loads of guns to shoot up bad guys with and it is a very refreshing change of pace. There's a main sections to this and the later two actually let you tackle things in the order you want which is a small nod to the "open" nature of fallout however these missions are very much on rails - other DLC will you give small sandboxes to play around in, microcosms of FO3 itself, but Anchorage is appropriately on rails until you are out of the mission. Once you are, you open up the vault and half of the brotherhood decides to just ice you rather than cough up your share of the loot... big mistake!! I don't think this mission changes too much in terms of your relationship with the brotherhood later (hence why they are exiles, perhaps? They have neat red armor though...) which is unfortunate for RP purposes but makes it easier to review at least!

Anchorage is a bit of an odd-duck in that it is a very straightfoward take on one aspect of the Fallout series (its gunplay and encounter design) that is typically not considered the focus or its best feature. Despite this I do think it succeeds at being a pretty cool action romp that ends on a high note of some great loot you get to bring with you into the rest of the game. Whereas the base game always has you worried about how your resource expenditures in health packs or ammo will affect you later, having a small chunk of the game let you go wild with Gauss Rifles and Missile launchers just feels nice, ya know?

My first RTS game on my 52 game challenge... This one I did not play the campaign with, though one is available, as my girlfriend only wanted to play a bunch of multiplayer games with me. Age of Mythology is pretty clearly in the Starcraft/Warcraft vein of the mid-90s of RTS and it sticks to it by the numbers. You choose your civilization and as you advance through to the different ages your units and buildings upgrade, then you build some armies and beat up the other guys base. Pretty damn standard, right? Yes, with one very cool twist - TITANS!! Many games use the word 'titan', some use them well (I don't think I'll ever forget my first titan sighting in EVE Online) and some do not (Destiny I'm looking at you) and AoM is very much in the former - as your civ ascends to the very top of its height it may summon a single Titan unit - each has a different one, and the two I summoned were from Hades and Gaia. Hades brought forth Cerberus, a three-headed dog-man who stood 10 times the height of every other unit who emerges from a portal to the hells. These titans then stomp across the entire map (you can even see your enemies titan, because they're so huge!!) and are next to impossible to kill. From a balance standpoint I'm sure it's a nightmare but from a game feature pov? I fuckin' loved it. While I do see why my girlfriend is so fond of the series it does feel a little too by-the-numbers as I mentioned so I don't think I'd ever choose the classic RTS like C&C or Warcraft over this one. I had plenty of fun with it though watching my girlfriends titan flatten my town :D

Ohhhh hey! A silly hidden identity game that has nearly taken over the world! I've been a pretty big fan of the genre in board games for a few years now and this is the first video game I've seen take advantage hidden identity mechanics and it seems it has been a huge hit for much of 2020 (though it came out to no fanfare in 2018) that I had ignored until only recently. You play as a crew of some alien species that has been invaded by another alien species, the imposters, who slowly kill off the crew from trying to repair their ship and heading home. Over time you 'vote' after finding dead bodies left by the killers and our normal players attempt to deduce who is doing the murders while the imposters are trying to throw the regular players off the scent. This leads to some fun moments of scrambling as a caught-red-handed-murderer attempts to push all the blame on their recent accuser despite munching on a body mere seconds ago. I played several dozen matches over discord with some internet friends and that definitely seems the best way to play it - playing anything with internet randos sounds like a nightmare, especially a game like this with forced social elements like trying to work together to piece evidence for a good accusation. The artstyle of the game is minimal but it works quite well as a small indie project and the music is ambient and understated - pretty much exactly what you want out of an 'alien' simulator. Among Us is a solid time with friends during a pandemic where you can't really go out and I certainly enjoyed my time with it though I don't think I'll have much desire to return in the far future, I am certain it will be outdone by something else soon enough.

Hello again Castle Crashers! The Beat-Em-Up that started it all! It's a Newgrounds game jumped up to full-size and it is pretty frickin' swell actually. You have a pretty flimsy excuse-plot: our heroes are partying it up in the Kingdom and a pile of monster orcs drop by and kidnap our wonderful princesses and get them back! You....crusade... across the continent fighting a bunch of new enemies, beating them up, and leveling up while taking on more and more bosses in this league of evil! This still might be my favorite of the genre - the speed with which you move around the map, leveling up your new characters (who all have a different spells! Or a bunch do anyway), the amount of unlocks to replay the game for... it's just awesome honestly. It's been nearly a decade since I played through and I felt enchanted all over again! It's a stellar game about beating up dudes over and over and then throwing lightning bolts around with some absolutely sick art and music. There's mutliplayer too but I didn't get around to it this time. A great adventure!