Submerged is a cozy, but yet emotional game about a sister, who is forced to loot for items in a city submerged in water to save her brother. as you scavenge and scale buildings, you learn more about the city and its inhabitants and what happened to your family. I found the atmosphere of this game to be perfect and I enjoyed my time with the game, but the janky and repetitive gameplay (to complete the game, you have to retrieve items from 10 different buildings) occasionally combined with kind of ugly graphics hindered the experience. the gameplay really reminded me of Jusant, although it's nowhere near as polished, but I still enjoyed exploring the sunken city and just driving my boat all over. the music is beautiful and it combined with the slight eeriness of the empty city made the game quite enjoyable. if you liked Jusant, you probably like this game as well ~

this game was such a disappointment :( I was really excited to play Crimes and Punishments because I remember really liking the first case way back when I started the game for the first time a few years back. Instead, all I got were boring cases, annoying mini games (that were mostly too easy, but there were some really annoying ones) and an overarching story, which starts only in the middle of the game and is resolved at the end of it (with no stakes or character development or anything). hopefully I'll enjoy the other games way more because this just ain't it.

Botany Manor was such a delight and I enjoyed the time I spent with it so much that I played it through in one sitting! The vibes were super cozy and the environments interesting and full of small details, the summery atmosphere being a cherry on top <3
I loved the way you had to wander around the manor collect the clues, it really feeding into my explorer mindset! the puzzles weren't too difficult and it was really difficult to get stuck, but it still gave you that joy of figuring them out, although couple times I knew what to do, but I just could not get the order right. in addition, the inability to look at the clues in your journal got really annoying eventually, as some plants have many things to keep in mind to make them grow, so I highly suggest you have some paper at hand where you can write some clues down.

all in all, I highly recommend this game and I am really excited to see what the studio will come up with next ~

While not as good as the first Coffee Talk, I still enjoyed my time with Episode 2. It did drag a bit at the beginning, it feeling like that the conversations didn't really go anywhere and just went over the same things over and over again, but I did really enjoy the latter half of the game. The new characters were quite nice, but I wished some of the old characters would have appeared a bit more (besides Baileys and Lua) throughout the game. Overall, it was a nice, relaxing experience with a great cast of characters, but the reliance on the walkthrough for some requests (some were quite unclear) and achievements and the repetition of the same topics again and again definitely hindered the experience a bit.

Venba is an important game about an immigrant family living in Canada and the joys and hardships they go through throughout the years. I appreciate what the game was trying to do; I'm an immigrant after all, and it really made me think about my current familial relationships, but I felt both the gameplay and the story felt little underdeveloped. I did really enjoy learning about different recipes, but at the same time, I wished I could have been a bit more involved in making them. I think the story would have benefited from being an animated short film or something like that, because I felt like the pacing was all over the place and I didn't really connect with any of the characters. Still, Venba is a lovely game and worth experiencing at least once.

A Little to the Left was the perfect game for a gaming burnout (I've been suffering from it as of recent and it sucks) as it is a cozy puzzle game, in which you simply organize stuff and nothing else. This organization can be based on different properties, such as size, color or even shape, but can also be as simple as putting cat toys in a basket, or fixing a crooked picture frame. A Little to the Left was such a joy to play, the music is pretty nice and non intrusive, the graphics ooze coziness and the puzzles are clever, but not too hard or complicated, some with even multiple answers, which makes you think outside the box. It is also the downfall of the game, as sometimes it isn't super clear what the game wants the solution to look like. Sometimes I'd think I had figured out the solution and it would look right to me, but it wouldn't be accepted and sometimes everything would be in right places, but wouldn't be correct according to the game (had the die go from descending order instead of ascending order, which was the order the game wanted). Still, I really enjoyed my time with the game and I hope they come out with some more dlc for the game. :)

It has almost been 10 years since I last played DA2 as a 15 year old and now as almost a 25 year old, going back to DA2 felt like rather weird, but at the same time cozy and comforting. I don't remember much about my experience back then, but I think it most likely mirrored the way I felt about it now. DA2 is surprisingly a good game, even though it was made in 16 months, with lovable cast of characters, likeable protagonist and interesting city to explore. The combat feels better and more impactful than in Origins and it felt easy to build an efficient rotation that would work in every encounter. The story isn't amazing and the timeskips (that I think could have been utilized better somehow) felt jarring, but I still found myself wanting to play a bit more every time I shut off my xbox. This time around I also played the DLC, really liking Legacy, but Mark of the Assassin really missed the mark (hehe) and if I'm being honest, it is my least favorite out of all BioWare DLCs so far. I just couldn't stand Tallis and I just found the story of the DLC very uninteresting and unimportant regarding the bigger picture.

The game doesn't come without its issues though; repeating environments, acts that feel disjointed from each other (every act has its main plot that are all separate from each other, which leaves a bit weird feeling. For example something big that happens in act 2 is never really discussed again in act 3, even though it would have impacted Kirkwall greatly), some rather annoying bugs (Hawke wouldn't drink a health potion no matter what), clunky AI and weird difficulty spikes with some of the bosses prevented this game from really shining. I think DA2 does suffer a little bit from being in a middle of a trilogy, not doing much to it in general, but it is still worth of playing and experiencing at least once.

I received this game through xbox gold a long time ago and decided to pick it up between some bigger games, going into it with no expectations whatsoever. Well, while I had no expectations, somehow the game still managed to disappoint me. I just didn't care for the story or the characters and I thought that sometimes the story just dragged on and on. The first chapter felt completely redundant regarding the overall story and the second chapter felt really short? There was some themes of religion and rising hell (literally), but it just felt shoehorned most of the time. All in all, I don't have much to say regarding the whole game as it felt so unmemorable. I love point n click games, but I don't think I'll pick up the upcoming games in the series.

Murder Mystery Machine (or MMM) is a (puzzle?) game I both bought and picked up on a whim and I'm glad I did! In the game you play as rookie detective called Cass, who is assigned to DCA, a neglected division of the police. Throughout the game you investigate murders and later get tangled up in a bigger conspiracy.

MMM wasn't a mind-blowing game, but it surprised me positively. I liked the overarching conspiracy story and some of the other unrelated cases, but I think some excess fat could have been trimmed as some cases didn't contribute to the story in any way (for example case 7 was supposed to give background info on our teammate Nate, but it was only two lines at the end of it and case 4 was just boring in general). In addition, there were some choices, but I don't think they made any difference during the game as some of them were never mentioned again. Story was quite predictable at times and I usually knew who did what pretty early into the cases. The biggest game mechanic, in which you piece together a web of clues (think of that one meme of Charlie day) by pressing at one of them and then dragging a red string to a related clue was interesting at first, but eventually got boring after doing it over and over throughout the cases. In addition, sometimes it was really difficult to say what linked to what, as I thought something could be related but in reality it just wasn't.

all in all, I don't think MMM is a bad game, but it definitely overuses the same mechanics and would have benefitted from just cutting couple episodes. I'm glad I picked it up though as it made me use my brain once in a while and the story and characters were pretty interesting.

I think Zombi has some really good ideas as it is essentially soulslike zombie game with survival and kind of roguelite vibes mixed to it, but mixed with some frustrating mechanics and clunky controls it is sometimes rather frustrating experience. the overall vibe of the game was perfect and I liked/hated the stressful survival adventure (I feel like I have to play something casual afterwards) in different environments in London. I think it's definitely worth of a playthrough, but don't expect any mindblowing experiences from the game.

also it was kind of awkward to listen to God Save the Queen playing at the credits. yikes

I have always preferred Bioshock and Bioshock 2 over Infinite and before getting into the Complete Edition yet again (third time playing), I had pretty iffy feelings about the game. I don't think how I feel about Infinite changed after playing it as I still think it's terrible Bioshock game, but I could appreciate it for some things. I think the graphics are quite lovely and I love the atmosphere and aesthetic! I also really enjoyed Elizabeth this time around <3. Other than that? This game was just so mind numbingly boring and the story attempts to be clever but it just feels like it's trying too hard. Plasmids were ass (I used like three and rest of them felt useless) and every area was just shooting gallery after shooting gallery. I'm glad I did finally finish it, but I don't see myself returning to the game ever again.

I also played through the both episodes of Burial at Sea and let me tell you, I went into them expecting something life changing, just as Den of Minerva was as people have been praising Burial at Sea for years. What I got was just...boring and it didn't really make me feel in any way. I do blame myself for having high expectations, but come on, that was it? Yeah it was nice to return to Rapture but I felt like you just went back and forth areas trying to look for items. They attempted to explain some lore behind the original Bioshock but I mostly felt that it didn't add anything to it and all I could think was the saying "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle". It had some good ideas, but I think it just needed a different structure and more linear levels.

I decided to play Solo before my bf leaves for a deployment, hoping for guidance and insight and I think I got a bit of that, but mostly my experience was just...miserable I guess? the main puzzle mechanic, which is moving boxes with a wand was super unreliable and at the end of the game, it started to get really boring as the puzzles remained basically the same as the only addition was the introduction of different kind of boxes. in addition, I really hated the uber negative and passive aggressive "ghosts" of your partner that are scattered around the island. I guess they were there to make you think about your relationship, but at some point they just got really annoying with their "what if" questions. thank you, but I picked my partner with these questions in mind (which I think most people do), so it felt unnecessary to listen to them constantly. shame this game was the 50th game I finished this year :/

Redfall is such a weird game to review. I think it has gotten unnecessary hate and I've played games worse than this, but at the same time, it is one of the blandest "I'm going to listen to a podcast while I play this game" game that there is. I think it has such a great foundation, some of the story beats are interesting and the world seems cool and I enjoying just taking the sights in, but then again, the combat kind of sucks (almost all the boss fights were horrible and I considered quitting the game lol) the side activities are repetitive and the world just feels really empty. The saddest thing is just the fact that this game could have been really good with (a lot of) tweaks and sometimes the great and cool moments really shine through the bland mass, giving glimpses what could have been.