Had to end my journey with the Portal mods with the real MVP, unmodded Portal 2. You know it's been too long since you've last played this when the surprises hit with full force all over again. I mean this story is fucking juicy, from the intimidating revival of GLaDOS, to the shocking take-over of Wheatley, and all the fantastic lemon-based rants in between. I absolutely adore this game, and I nearly forgot that it's one of my favorite games of all time! (Remind me to change my Backloggd Profile) Despite how excited I'd be if Portal 3 were to ever be announced, I genuinely think this game would work best if it never got a true sequel. The story is perfect the way it is.

You either like this kind of game, or ya don't.

Me? Oh yeah, I really liked this game. I love the branching pathways and genuine choose-your-own adventure style here. Even though the QTE-centric gameplay can be frustrating on occasion, especially when I'm not expecting it and ruin the scene, the story is just so damn good that it sucks you in and doesn't let go once! I'm pretty happy with how everything wrapped up, although I did royally fuck up Kara's ending... aside from that, I had a great ending the first time around, and I'm grateful for it.

Lacking in story, but it still somehow has plenty of personality! The puzzles are alright, and strike a pretty solid difficulty, but I was kind of expecting more new mechanics that took advantage of the time travel. Maybe it's because I played Mel and Revolution before this, but when those games add new gameplay elements in cohesion with the ongoing story, returning to the same old puzzles feels regressive, especially considering they didn't even bring back elements from Portal 2 like the gels. I like the time travel mechanic a lot though, and it sure did stump me a few times! Solid experience, but definitely the least inspired of the Portal mods.

Guardians of the Galaxy has to be one of the most dynamic and awesome IP's in the Marvel catalog, but something's been nagging me about the franchise:
Both the movies and this game have jam-tastic 80's music that ties the atmosphere together, but how does that translate to comic form? Are we supposed to imagine 80's music when reading the comics, or are the comics entirely different than the animated mediums? This question was brought to you by a guy who's never read a comic before.

Anyway, this game is pretty great! It took a while to get accustomed and effective to the combat system, but it eventually reaches a point of perfectly balanced difficulty. The music was perfect, obviously, and the story really surprised me as well! I always enjoy these characters, and they are very well acted this time around, and have some truly hilarious banter. We probably could've used some more character development for Gamora and Groot, but considering that anyone who's played this game has also probably seen the movie trilogy (tetralogy?), you can have so much fun with these characters without the need of extensive background info. Also, I think it would be really nice to leave this game without any sort of sequel or tie-in. It's a really good experience that shouldn't be tainted by a larger story.

Props to the puzzle designers for creating 20+ puzzles that were maddeningly hard. Does that make it the best of the Portal mods? Not really, or at least, not anymore. As challenging as the puzzles are, the game doesn't strike a great balance between the story, gameplay, walking sections, and crazy set-pieces. To be fair though, I don't fault this extremely talented team of modders for having certain limitations, so despite being one-upped by more recent mods, Portal Stories: Mel is still an exceptional experience that brings a real challenge to us, the Portal fans.

I haven't been this enthralled by a game's atmosphere and stylization since maybe Hollow Knight, and that's saying a lot since Hollow Knight has probably my favorite atmosphere in any game ever. But this, oh hoh hoh... this is one delicious game. Batman: Arkham Asylum is Die Hard meets Half-Life, where you're Batman. That's kind of all you have to say to describe how incomparably COOL this game is. This game FUCKS. Since Arkham Asylum is so old now, the rest of the praise I have has already been said many times before, so the last thing I'll say is that despite it's age, it holds up incredibly well to modern standards. I adored this experience, and playing this while currently going through a DC phase makes it all the more enjoyable.

I had decently high hopes for this game from the concept alone, but unfortunately it fell flat with nearly every aspect. The shop-keeping and combat are both extremely bare-bones and uninventive. They're palatable and definitely doable, but actual "fun" seems to always be slightly out of reach. On top of that, I encountered plenty of aggravating glitches - worst of which was my health meter forgetting how much health I was supposed to have and screwing me over in challenging locations. There were also typos in the dialogue, which is more of a pet-peeve of mine, but it really makes me question the quality control that went into this game. I didn't hate my time with Moonlighter, and I absolutely take no pleasure in trash-talking indie games, but I was disappointed overall. To end with a compliment though, the boss fights are pretty damn good!