A psychedelic surrealist metroidvania that tries to do a lot of new things in combination with a stark and vivid art style. While I was initially excited to delve into the game I quickly found myself bouncing off it.

The art style is probably what stands out most about the game and granted it is beautiful, with vivid colours and creative animations all blending biology with technology. Unfortunately the game lacks an understanding of contrast. There is so much detail and colour that it's difficult to tell what is foreground vs. background. Interactive vs. inert. The visual language games have - colours that communicate qualities and mechanics, sparkles and particles that denote interactivity - all become lost in this haze of overwhelming colour and movement.

The combat itself is trying to stand apart in a few ways. Your first sword has very short reach and you are encouraged to pull off a combo with minimal repeated moves - though it doesn't specify what actions count as repetitive, and this early on I only have two attacks so it seems obtuse to demand variety. Equally the combat is very rigid with a dodge-and-counter approach that requires you to learn to 'dance' with each foe - learning the patterns in a very structured way that feels at odds with the ultra natural and flowing world. The limitations end up feeling like enemies have a 'correct' way to be killed in spite of your options.

The skill tree also feels very messy. Killing enemies rewards food items (portions of their body) and the quality depends if you killed it 'elegantly' or not. Food items fill some amount of the four bars that represent your nutrition, and these bars can be emptied to learn new skills. It's a nice idea albeit convoluted, with quantities being very imprecise so you can't plan ahead (maybe I'm being too rigid now). In the first hour I unlocked maybe 5-10 of these upgrades but they were for small granular things I hardly noticed or for features I hadn't even learned to use a 'normal' way yet so my choices didn't feel very impactful or meaningful. Not that the upgrade tree seems to have any coherent structure either.

In the same way my first hour of play didn't feel like I was really accomplishing anything. Part of this is contrast again - the signal to noise ratio on all of the dialogue is mixed. Everything is intentionally obtuse and seems to be style at the expense of substance, you just vaguely understand that someone needs to be killed because they're preventing you from leaving. Even item descriptions are surrealist contradictory nonsense - things 'taste of time' and 'smell of Elysium'. Part of my attraction to the game was that it seemed to have a detailed and cohesive alien world to learn about, but it feels more like everything is being made up as the artist goes. The detail is there because it looks cool not because it's functional, the writing is flowery nonsense because it sounds cool, not because it means anything.

In conclusion, I get the feeling Ultros is a result of inexperience. Not that it isn't an impressive looking game - but the level of presentation betrays a lack of fundamentals. There are essential game design elements that are missing or roughly hewn, it's not unplayable but certainly sets up some expectations that miss the mark. I'm sure some folks will get everything out of this they want, but for me it just hit all the wrong buttons unfortunately.

Definitely one the first 'open world survival crafting sandbox' games I've enjoyed in a long while, sucking me in from start to finish while managing to capture the atmosphere the original games were so famous for.

The stories here are top notch with great writing, characters are interesting, nuanced, thought-through, and the central tension resonates through the game world at every level. Don't get me wrong there are some swings that miss like 'Hard Luck Blues' and 'I Don't Hurt Anymore', but these are few and far between. My only real gripe is the occasional lack of closure - some mission chains end abruptly, and others seem to end without any of the NPC's acknowledging what happened which took me out of the experience a bit.

Combat meanwhile is more stagnant. Gunplay especially feels clunky and oddly numeric. Movement doesn't feel like it makes a difference so I tend to stand in place aiming and trying to avoid anything thrown my way. It doesn't feel like a firefight, it feels like trading numbers. This extends to the gun progression as well since the upgraded laser weapons just feel like you need less hits, and from the start to finish I didn't 'develop' any combat skill short of learning to trigger VATS for bonuses.

I'm chalking a lot of that clunkiness up to the oblivion engine as you can feel the devs putting heart and soul into it regardless. The mission design and the way in which skills directly impact speech and action options is where all the fun of the game lies, making it as easy to talk your way out of a problem or negotiate a peaceful solution as to draw your gun and start blasting. The depth with which the skills enable and limit your interactions makes multiple playthroughs far more interesting to explore.

Having completed the main story I was surprised how enjoyable FONV was given that it's in a genre I try to avoid - but Obsidian did their best to address the homogeneity and shallowness that tends to make these games unplayable to me. Don't get me wrong it's still graphically dated and missing a lot of quality of life features, but if you can get your head around the mods that can be mitigated. I'm curious to try 4 at some point, but for now I have the DLC to go through so I'll come back to this at some point to grind those out. Overall, a fun and deep revitalisation of the classic fallout formula, imperfect but full of charm and care.

A fusion of pinball and metroidvania aimed at younger players. It's a unique idea and has potential but Yoku only implements the obvious, keeping things relatively short and sweet.

The core game is enjoyable enough. Each area hosts a variety of enclosed pinball play areas which are interconnected with pistons and rails themed as platforming sections. The pinball rooms are fun but not too challenging and many of these areas are accompanied with some unique mechanic that acts as a progress gate - be it a boss fight or simply unlocking the exit.

Sadly the longer you play the faster the novelty wears off. The quests and achievement's are largely filler, the increasing need for precision becomes frustrating, and there's very few mechanics so the boards get very samey despite layout changes. Navigation around the world can also be tedious as the island isn't really that big and you do a lot of backtracking.

The stand out part of the game is the gameplay which presents an innovative idea, it's just not explored very deeply which is a shame because it is fun to start with. The rest of the game's substance - the story, characters, and music are serviceable but aren't doing anything special, it's just game filler and padding to get you from one board to the next. Overall good for a single play through but the 100% didn't feel worth the effort.