I really enjoyed this one. Significantly longer than Noblesse Oblige, and while Creme de la Creme remains my favorite from this author's works, this is up there beside it in terms of quality and characters. Engaging story, interesting personalities to romance or befriend, and a mystery that still struggles with pacing but is a lot better blended in terms of genre shift than Creme's. It felt pretty lengthy too, and included an extensive epilogue that lets you catch up on your character and their relationships down the line.

Fascinating concept, gorgeous visuals and atmosphere, mind-blowing twists. The combat is a little clunky sometimes, but no more than a lot of other FPS games I've played, especially older ones. I do maintain that the game would have been much stronger had it ended with the Atlas twist and Ryan confrontation - it built up and up to this well sketched-out, shocking climax, and then it just... kept going afterwards when the moment was ripe for rolling credits and leaving you with those emotions. It just kind of makes things peter out and lose that high.

The game also loses a lot of its shine once you realise it was less intentionally intelligent and political and more an accidental stumble into profoundity by a guy who had no clue what he was implying.

That said, I thought the good ending was appropriately emotional and sweet. I feel no particular incentive to continue with the other Bioshock games, though I'm sure I'll get to them someday, but I enjoyed this and the lore surrounding it.

Definitely not a shining example of what Choice of Games fiction can be. I finished this in what must have been less than half an hour, which is incredibly underwhelming and ridiculous, and I see a lot of feedback on the forums from people also calling this one rushed, incomplete, short, etc. I'm inclined to agree with all of it. Characters are shallow, the 'dramatic climax' is a page long, the ending is abrupt, the relationships are unsatisfying, and all of its anti-racism allegory attempts are clumsy and amateurish.

GRAPHICS: Great, consistent style. Environments are gorgeous, especially the purples and cherry blossoms of Inazuma, and the lakes and architecture of Liyue -- the first sighting of Liyue after leaving Mondstadt for the first time was genuinely breath-taking. Some character designs are great, personal favourites being Kaeya, Candace, Dehya, and Alhaitham. However, character designs are beginning to seem stale, repetitive, and uncreative by this point, and it makes it hard to get excited for new ones.
CHARACTERS: A pretty good variety of personalities and outlooks. The protagonist is basically a void who doesn't speak. Paimon, your ever-present 'helper'/companion, is genuinely infuriating. I don't care for the copy-pasted "sleepy girl" (Sayu, Layla) and "overworked woobie" (Jean, Ganyu) archetypes.
VOICE ACTING/DIALOGUE: Varies, but it's generally pretty great. Paimon's voice is like nails on a chalkboard and I would actively love an option to mute her and her alone.
PLOT: I love the lore and storyline, and I'm genuinely invested in seeing where it goes.
GAMEPLAY: I like it fine. Now that I've had a taste of Honkai: Star Rail's combat I'm not super into going back to Genshin's, but that's just me.
MULTIPLAYER: The four-player co-op is useful and fun for domains and bosses, but there's a ton you can't do in multiplayer that just seems silly. Why can't you do any quests while in multiplayer? Why can't you talk to NPCs?

Overall, I like it. It's gacha, so obviously don't play it if you're prone to gambling, FOMO, or have an addictive personality - if you're able to resist temptation, you should be able to grind for all the currency you need without spending anything. It definitely gets review-bombed and unfairly maligned because of sections of the community and immediate opposition to just the gacha aspect (understandably). If you don't participate in the gacha side of the game, then the amount of free content you get is INSANE and completely worth it.

That said, unless you're really interested in the story, open world, and characters, I'd still recommend Star Rail over Genshin, and that's coming from someone who usually greatly prefers fantasy and real-time combat to sci-fi and turn-based. It's far, far more generous with its currencies, daily tasks are much quicker to get through, and it's much easier to get through without excessive grinding.

Favourite Male Character: Childe, Kaeya, Alhaitham
Favourite Female Character: Sara
First Character I Liked: Kaeya
Favourite Character Design: Kaeya, Candace
Favourite OST: TBA
Favourite Scene: Everyone in Liyue fighting back against Osial
Least Favourite Character: Fanon Lumine irritates me, but none in particular in canon

Usual disclaimer that my experience with Jackbox is entirely dipping in and out of games at random with my friend groups, so my reviews are based only on the games I've experienced until I potentially update with the ones I haven't gotten to try yet.

I really enjoyed Trivia Murder Party - I didn't expect to, as I find the more personal games more enjoyable than the plain objective trivia ones and I didn't think I had a lot of general knowledge, but through pure blind instinct I've never lost a game of this, so I must be doing alright. The little minigames between each round are surprisingly fun and nicely varied.

Push the Button is one of my favourite Jackbox games of all time; Among Us-esque, but with much more to do and a pretty broad range of minigames. It can get heated, which is saying a lot because I'm very chill and not competitive at all, so if you're someone who gets fired up over games this may set a burning rage aflame within you, and the timer can make things stressful - I find that with a certain number of players the timer just doesn't feel like it's long enough to have any fair chance at deducing the imposters' identities through all the games because there are just too many people to thoroughly test, particularly when hacking and thus the uncertainty of any task failure comes into play. I enjoyed most of the minigames enough to actively look forward to being selected for testing. Overall, pretty creative and gameplay-heavy (as long as you're not being neglected in being chosen for games).

Not a fan of Joke Boat, personally. This game got complete crickets from all of us, and, not to suck the dick of everyone in my friend group including myself, I don't think it's because we're not funny people - every other game we've tried consistently gets us crying with laughter. The prompts on this one are just so, so bad, and I did not see a single good opportunity for a clever joke throughout this entire thing.

Someone else's review said "Words are sometimes not enough to describe something" and frankly I concur.

This game was rough. I like to push my limits a little with visual novels sometimes, so I saw everyone talking about how fucked up this one gets and figured I'd give it a shot. I got all the endings, and one of them was so genuinely depressing and bleak that I immediately rushed through every other outcome so I could palate cleanse my brain and forget about that one. It's been a few years since I played it, and so normally I'd replay it again to refresh my memory before reviewing, but I can't bring myself to get through this one again - it's definitely a 'play it once and then put it down forever' kind of experience.

There were some scenes I had to physically look away from and just mash skip until it was over (I'm thinking specifically of one moment where one of them has to hammer a nail through the other one's hand), and I was so incredibly not a fan of the enema scene, but at least there's a handy 'no visuals please' button for that one.

I found the psychological elements of this one really interesting, the question of whether physical trauma vs. psychological trauma is worse and which one you'd choose to go through if given the option (though I do think it would have been more engaging to get to make those decisions yourself). You can get some pretty varied endings, and I found it interesting to see how earlier scenes and the dynamic between the two main characters changes subtly depending on the 'route' you're on.

I don't think I can put a star rating on this one. I kind of like it, I kind of hate it, I still think about it often, I never want to play it again.

This is actually really fun to play with my friend groups. It could do with some ironing out the parts that occasionally act up or are unfair - e.g. there's a "don't move" challenge that you'll fail instantly if you happened to already be moving before the instruction appeared, which you most likely will be because you're probably not just standing still between challenges, and I'd say at least once a game there's some instance of one of us getting told we've failed or passed one despite blatantly not doing so. That aside, especially for a free game it has good variety to keep your interest and make sure it doesn't stagnate, and rounds are fast-paced so you're almost always moving and doing something. Games are also a good length - it's pretty addictive, so we'll almost always say "one more round", get to the end, and then end up playing more and more because, well, the next one is starting anyway and that one was short, so we might as well, and now the next one is starting, rinse and repeat.

Some gameplay elements can take some getting used to - I and a few friends found the strafe-jumping to be a pain in the ass to control at first - but it's pretty simple once you get accustomed.

Not sure what it would be like playing with strangers, but half the fun for me comes from the voice chat and jokes with friends while playing so I'd guess there's less enjoyment playing that way.

Love this game lots.

All the usual selling points of Choice of Games/Hosted Games titles are here - massive amounts of player choice, diversity, character customisation, fun stats.

This one does have a more set player archetype than most CoG games; you're playing a hero-turned-villain who's struggling with a very rough mental state, though how you develop your character within that (e.g. if you want to go full-out supervillain who relishes in violence and murder or you want to play a more regretful and open to redemption figure) gives you some variety.

The romance options that are here are fine, though the second book adds three more that I find vastly more interesting (with the exception of perhaps Ortega; their history with your character lends a lot to that dynamic). The puppet element is interesting, as is the fact that both you and your puppet can have certain relationships with characters, which is super complicated and probably a nightmare to code variations for but definitely a neat idea.

It's alright. Can be fun with friends, but it's not scary at all to me - not in the "I'm too badass for horror huehue" sense, plenty of things can scare the shit out of me and keep me on edge especially with jumpscares and suspense, but this is 100% a 'fun' kind of game rather than a 'spooky' kind of game IMO. It's not uncommon at all for me to find myself just walking around a house looking for signs for 20 minutes straight with nothing much happening aside from maybe discovering a handprint on a door somewhere, and once you get into the groove of the game it gets pretty repetitive and same-y.

The equipment purchasing/loadout menus are pretty buggy and confusing - I thought that might be a me issue, but I see that other people have mentioned that in their reviews as well.

Movement is janky and it's a little disappointing that all of the 'jumpscares'/death animations are the same regardless of ghost type, but I do find the general concept of Phasmophobia pretty cool and I enjoy the basic beats of selecting equipment, figuring out what they all do, calling out evidence discoveries to each other, communicating via radio, etc.

I can't imagine playing this frequently, but it is some casual fun with a group of friends (particularly if they find it scary) every once in a while.

I remember seeing a video showing this game off years ago over on Tumblr, and I was blown away by how creative and mind-trippy it all seemed. I completely forgot the name of it, but I always remembered the video, so a few years later I went hunting for what the game title was to play it for myself and found Superliminal.

This was a genuinely super neat concept. I dig games like this, and it didn't overstay its welcome to the point that the puzzles and core mechanics lost their novelty for me.

Might replay it on stream or something when it's been long enough that I've forgotten the solutions. This is the kind of game where seeing people's reactions to it all would be fun.