Earlier today I was telling a friend about my most Boomer gamer take (which I do not have a lot of). Especially after playing some older 3D games like Deus Ex and 5th/6th gen stuff I get annoyed at how many modern AAA games are so overly detailed and therefore unreadable.

I was thinking that for the first and only hour I gave to The Surge 2 before shelving it that so many environments are so cluttered and overly detailed that not only are they slighlty uncomfortable to look at at times trying to parse them, but they necessitate almost fourth wall breaking guidance elements like big arrows and sharp colour contrasting paint splodges to guide players through. These get made fun of a lot and chalked up to "gaming being dumbed down" and all that but honestly I think most of it is just how modern level design is too complicated to be easily readable.

This semi-related tangent aside, I love how primitive the level design of Automaton Lung is. In the literal sense of the word as they approach the base geometric shapes to make up the level. Despite having very little in the way of tutorialisation or guidance (hell, you can miss 60% of the fucking game by not taking a certain door on the first level) the levels are (for the most part) so clearly readable from the wide open cities to the cramped hallways of the tower levels.

The atmosphere is top notch, added to the music which, whilst repetitive at times just had me hooked for the 3 hours or so I have clocked defeating the final boss with 180/210 stars...er, I mean chips! The movement is jank, indeed the game itself is jank but its so charming and there is enough of a learning curve to the controls (though the game itself is really not very challenging, at least not to get to the end). Its a loveable, clunky piece of shit that I will cherish for years to come.

Its not a flawless game by any means. I mentioned some of the music not having enough variety and honestly the combat is so basic as to be kind of a waste of space and I died like 3 times total, only one of those being from enemy fire and that was against a boss. Maybe it would have been better excised from the game but I'm not sure now that I think about it.

As for the plot, well its very much a no exposition affair. "piece it together" sort of thing like Dark Souls except without the item descriptions. I'm really not clever enough to put together any sort of coherent conclusion to it all, you spawn from a room with 3 futurama -esque glass tubes and one is broken and with particle effects, so Im guessing youre a clone or robot or something. I do think that the environments are interesting enough even if I don't quite understand the story they are trying to tell.

This game is also hilarious at times, from the jank to the ending cutscenes to everything else I streamed this game to friends and we had many laughs with it. I wholeheartedly recommend this game if you are interested in a "middlingly received N64 platformer/run and gun that was hailed as a misunderstood masterpiece 2 decades later". (this last description being coined by BL user Mattt)

EDIT: Having 100%'d the game (well, all achievements, all chips and weapons, if there are any secrets beyond that I will never know) I can say with some sadness that it is one of the rare games I have played where I am left wanting for more. What a gem

I appreciate the kind of practical, real-world logic approach to the puzzles in this. If done well, that sort of thing can be engaging and rewarding, rather than dull. For the most part, that's true here, although there are some clunkers.

Genuinely tense right up until you understand how lame and easily killed the enemies are and then the whole illusion is broken - a problem that tons of games like this share but is particularly pronounced with this one.

This subgenre is a real mixed bag, and this early entry has both the good and the bad of it in roughly equal measure. But there is the spark of something kind of cool here. There are worse Lovecraft takes.

For someone who's played through Resident Evil 4 a million times, this almost feels like playing it for the first time again. It's just non-stop fun, but it also has the same few pitfalls as the original release.

VR control and movement speed not only trivialize combat, but some sections and boss fights are straight up minimized to the point of there being no difficulty at all.

If this is your first Resident Evil 4 experience, you are not playing it in the way the developers intended. For veteran players, it is a delightful treat to feel like you're inside one of the best games ever made.

Can you fry eggs ontop of Mount Everest?

I am still not sure, but what I am sure about is that Arctic Eggs is a fantastic experience. The style is immaculate, the music is chill, and the atmosphere is surreal.

The gameplay itself is split into two parts: Walking around talking to people, who say random one liners similarly to games like Sludge Life, you'll either find it hilarious or cringe depending on who you are, the second part is cooking (mostly) eggs. Both sides, as always.

Despite the simple idea, the game is great at throwing fun and unique obstacles your way, such as adding still alive fish to your pan, or having you dodge bullets (don't worry about it). Both of these gameplay segments make for a super fun and enjoyable experience that also doesn't overstay its welcome (3-4 hours average playtime). I would recommend this to everyone looking for something out of the ordinary that's also fun.

Banishers look and plays like God of War Ragnarok. You’re exploring the wilds with your playable family member (in this case, a ghost spouse), you swap between the strengths of both characters, and everything you do works towards mending your grief using magical ghost-banishing means.

Maybe along the way you absorb the souls of some villagers to put the romance back in necromancy to resurrect your ghost spouse? It’s an option.

The combat lacks punch, but the acting makes up for it with likable protagonists. It’s a peak game from Don’t Nod Entertainment. I just didn’t expect the lore to take me out of it.

When I met the big bad enemy of the game, we hear her classification of ghost is just a “nightmare.” Then we’re told they’re the highest and most difficult kind of ghost to deal with. But I was thinking, “I’ve dealt with those before.” Fizzzzzz: there goes my wider curiosity of this world at large. Still, it kinda sucks to feel that way because this game clearly has tons going for it. Game retired for now. Probably ideal for gamer couples, though.

(Banishers Ghosts of New Eden)

Idle games never really click with me because leaving them running can subtly ramp-up my stress levels, and while Rusty’s Retirement does that too, it’s also just so damn delightful that I didn’t mind the little micro dose of anxiety. The absence of handholding is nice, but don’t be like me who wanted more guidance but forgot to check the in-game manual. My favorite part was after I unlocked all the homes and maxed out my tile usage, I handed the reigns to my eight-year-old who lit up like a light show. Great game for all ages!

This game felt like it was 1000 hours long to 9 year old me. Thats a shit ton of podracing. Why did I do so much podracing?? I must have raced through the ceramic mosaic water world of Choot Chumba 100 times, somehow enthralled and also bored to tears as I piloted Kirtl Jonkta and his giant twin swamp cooler ass pods. I raced through the battle marshes of Terkwue, served my sentence in Anikins home desert of Bhutupo-3, and washed through the magma halls of Mount Dooq, all for a chance to unlock Darth Vader, the only Star Wars character anyone really cares about.

But in all honesty I do think I gravitate to Star Wars alot more when its focusing more on the “Star” and less on the “Wars”. Pod Racing isnt exactly the most mystical or sexy thing in a Jedi universe, but it actually presents an interesting cultural exposee with the fact that pod racing itself is an exotic popular sport. You race on planets that dont typically feature in Star Wars media and get a more involved look at how these societies might construct themselves - in some cases you can even see how they engage with the sport itself through contestant racers. Its alien Gran Turismo and thats still got more going for it than regular Star Wars.

Well, mathematically speaking, it's just as good as McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure.

I didn't give Prey a fair shot back when it released. 2017 feels much further away than it actually is, so I can't explain exactly what had me so distracted that I couldn't invest myself in "the best immersive sim of all time," but those opening few hours didn't hold me. I found myself meandering around and bounced off right around the point where you do your first spacewalk.

But here's the thing, if you're friends with Larry Davis, you can't just be like "oh I didn't enjoy Prey." That doesn't fly. You'll start getting texts while you're out that are just pictures taken from inside your apartment, some of which show you sleeping. He lives halfway across the country, how did he get in there? When was he there? The only way to stop the threats is to acquiesce to his demands. Play Prey or else. I always negotiate with terrorists, I'm a huge coward.

And I'm glad I did, because Larry's right, this is (probably) the best immersive sim ever made. I do, however, have to dock points for not having any Art Bell, something Human Head's Prey has over Arkane's. I'm aware that these games are not related at all outside of a very ill-advised, corporate decision to cash in on Prey's red hot brand name, but the least they could've done is throw in a few Midnight in the Deserts as audio logs. Not a problem, I just played a few in the background while making my way through the wreckage of Talos 1, bashing Typhons with a gnarly looking wrench while listening to Art's guest drone on about collecting and selling Big Foot scat.

Art: When I was in high school I ate erasers. No erasers on my pencils. I guess you could call that a strange addiction. When I went to erase something, I'd just scratch through the paper. Mmm... Erasers. That flavor has faded as an adult.

Ah, the true Prey experience.

That omission aside, Prey checks all the right boxes for me. Talos 1 is a great setting populated by interesting characters and engaging side quests that command your attention from the mission at hand not because they supply you with a list of things to do, but because Arkane has crafted a world so interesting and so fun to occupy that you want to delve into every nook and cranny. I see a locked door and I find myself compelled to know what's inside, even though the last three rooms I busted into had like, a corpse with a single discarded lemon peel in their pocket. Why did they have that? Every body tells a story...

Some of those side quests are going to stick with me for a while, which is both a sign of solid character writing and good mission structure. The fake chef booby-trapping fabrication machines and entry ways after you let him go adds a fun twist to revisiting old locations and makes your revenge that much sweeter when you finally catch up to him, and it's hard to imagine what shape the end game would take if you ejected Professor Igwe from his derelict storage container and skipped his multi-part quest. Which, you know, I initially did because I wasn't patient enough to hear him out. It's fine, I had an autosave, Igwe is totally okay!

That's just the way I play these games, with a dozen backup saves so I can test the boundaries of every moral crisis my character finds themselves in. I'm the kind of dude who will release a Typhon halfway into an inmate's cell just to see what kind of reaction I can get while turning over the long-term consequences of pushing the big red button. Not enough mirror neurons in my head, that's my problem.

Early in the game, you're presented with a personality test, an ink blot, and several variations of the Trolley Problem. An excellent way to establish what Prey hopes to accomplish with the player long-term, as so much of the game is affected by the choices you make both on a macro and micro level. The ending you get is clearly delineated between one of two set paths, but how those play out on a more precise level is affected by the small choices you made along the way. Take that chef, for example. You did get your revenge, but what of his other victims? Did you help them? Did you even try to find them? And what of your brother, Alex? So much of what happens aboard Talos 1 is his fault, but does your love for him win out in the end? Can you condemn him to his fate, or will you spend 30 minutes trying to wrangle his limp body in zero-gravity because the game won't trip one of the god damn objectives, which are clearly bugged-- oh wait, shit... I put him in a grav lift and it snapped his neck. Problem solved.

One area where I deviated from my typical immersive sim habits was combat. I often build my characters around stealth and avoid direct confrontation, but the Typhon abilities you're given work so well in concert with your weapons that turning Morgan into a violent powerhouse felt much more satisfying. There are also a few "survival" modifiers you can toggle at the start of the game, and I went with allowing injuries and suit damage, but not weapon degradation, because weapon degradation always sucks and is not as fun as getting concussed and needing to take "brained pills."

These modifiers add an extra layer of tension to resource management, something you'll be doing a lot of as you lug around literal garbage in the hopes that you might be able to squeeze a few extra shotgun shells out of whatever hard drives and bananas you have on your person. Fabricators are far between in the early parts of the game, often requiring you to loop back to your office for resupplies, which is a smart way of teaching the player the ins-and-outs of the game's resource economy while drilling in how Talos 1 is interconnected.

Is Prey the best immersive sim ever? Look, it takes a very boring man to admit when he's wrong, but it may very well be. Everything from the setting and story, to combat and the larger ways in which the game questions the player's morality is fantastic. My only complaint outside of some technical issues like the aforementioned problem with tripping objectives and a few crashes/freezes on the Xbox version is that there's no Art Bell. A whole .5 off the top of the score, I'm afraid. What's that? Art Bell was dead at the time? Nonsense. If Arkane only opened up a time-traveler's line, they could've booked him. Not an excuse.