Full Void takes inspiration from the old cinematic platformers like Flashback and Another World. It features a fast paced series of chase sequences broken up by puzzles and platforming, but ends up short, directionless, and unoriginal.

The singular stand out feature of the game is the beautiful fluid character animation, fully animated FMV's between sections / deaths, and the beautiful dark atmosphere the game presents. The world has a lot of implied depth and even though it's a short game you get a full understanding of how things are and how it came to be - the storytelling is quick, precise, and compelling. The music doesn't stand out but at least it's not offensive either.

Gameplay is simple with movement, an action button, and a jump button. However the game never breaks immersion by giving you any indication of when to do these things beyond a few themes, like interactive objects being lit in yellow. Some transitional animations that look like FMV's are also interactive and feature quick time events but have no on-screen indicators, so it may take a few puzzling deaths before you realise it's expecting you to press an input.

Similarly several scenes feature background objects you are expected to interact with despite no indication that they can even be used. There's also some scenes where you have entirely new actions which aren't very obvious and take some faffing around to figure out. The only positive of this 'hands off' approach I felt was discovering a few of the achievements naturally but I wouldn't say it was worth the confusing moments around them.

While a pretty spectacle and a breeze to get through, Full Void does nothing new, its story is not novel, it's short, the puzzles are simplistic, and the ending is a very weird note to end on - not to mention that it leaves the game feeling like political propaganda. Putting that aside, while it's nice to see a return from a dead genre it's a shame that it only borrows from better material without giving anything back. With the level of artistic talent on display it just ends up feeling like a missed opportunity.

Lumines is a game that in concept works really well, you have a simple 2 colour matching puzzle game that plays to music and shifts through stark visual themes and audio genres - however the stylistic choices make for a singularly ugly audio-visual experience.

The gameplay itself is always great to come back to, I actually have a lot of fun with the colour matching, finding patterns, trying to create combinations by placing the asymmetric pieces, and the challenge of timing your placement so you don't overlap with the sweeping bar. This is all well designed gameplay that is engaging and fun, but the accompanying music and art, and the way it's implemented results in an experience I can only tolerate in small bursts.

The music choices are a mixed bag, by which I mean it feels like someone dumped a bunch of discount demo tracks in a bag and pulled the play order out at random. The PSP games had a few early 2000's rock and pop hits that themselves didn't work together, mixed in with a variety of generic in-house songs from across the genre spectrum. These tracks are then broken down into samples which play based on your gameplay actions. Sometimes it works but often this approach turns the song into a random cacophony of noises with half the 'song' missing.

Remastered features the in-house tracks exclusively and hasn't managed to do any better with them. You jump wildly between genres, the playlist has no stylistic consistency, and for whatever reason the sound director on these games loves this specific blend of loud distorted noises that appear constantly. Any one of these issues by itself would be tolerable, but the resulting mix of miss-matched music, the way it's broken down and spat back at you as you play, and the clear lack of theme to the soundtrack makes every entry in the series the worst sounding music games I've played.

Lumines feels like the result of a really great premise for a game put in the hands of someone who has no artistic taste. The music is wrong, the sampling is wrong, and even the colour schemes that rotate with each track can range from great looking to 'I can barely see what I'm doing'. There's an artistic deafness to the series that runs deep into every entry. It's a testament to the strength of the gameplay that I end up coming back to each one, hoping desperately they got it right this time, only to be disappointed again. As such, remastered will remain a tolerable game to play on mute.

An atmospheric puzzler that uses simple mechanics to deliver a short and surreal experience. While clearly a passion project there's a lack of polish to the game that can't be ignored and will make or break your experience.

The majority of puzzles in Kairo were fine but there are a handful of secrets that are too esoteric to even consider solving. One puzzle could only be solved by the community for example, and that event came and went years ago so a guide is the only way to 100% the game. Meanwhile most of the early details I thought would be clues to later puzzles ended up being entirely irrelevant. The game design is unrefined in that sense but thankfully most of the game is intuitive enough to solo.

Kairo's world, its minimalism, and dashes of environmental storytelling will likely decide if you enjoy the experience or not as beyond the puzzles there's not really anything else to the game. The world is more atmospheric with implied poetic themes and liminal open spaces while being very linear to traverse, so if you need a story and clear instructions this isn't the one for you.

Personally I had no qualms following a guide once I hit certain dead ends and despite that I ended up enjoying the experience for the most part. I was still trying the puzzles first before looking for solutions and filling in gaps. Kairo has a lot of rough edges but the developer's heart is on full display and I can't fault a first attempt too harshly, just expect your mileage to vary.

The Signal State takes a similar approach to the Zachtronic programming games by trying to make a game out of modular synthesis. While it almost hits the mark, it sadly goes to show what a delicate balance there is between maths themed games, and game themed maths.

The strongest element here is simply the visual design as all the modules, cables, and UI look crisp and how everything interacts make sense. From a technical perspective the implementation of the modules and how everything works is very impressive. The Jakub Różalski inspired art is nice and gives the little story there is some substance. The music is fine background noise too, but the story itself and dialogue didn't work for me. Characters have little to no flavour and the scenario feels overly contrived for an excuse to play with modular synthesis.

As for the gameplay it's a strong effort and I can see how people enjoy it, but I feel it suffers a lot of fundamental game design miss-steps. Starting out by explaining the basic flow of signal with the example of 'B, A, C' rather than left to right as 'A, B, C' isn't a big deal, you get what's intended, but that lack of clarity is everywhere. It stood out to me more when the objective text uses language that doesn't match the descriptions of modules and how they work which confuses things in a game already dealing with some heady subject matter. The objectives are also stated in incredibly technical language which gets very confusing without breaking it down on paper into more natural language (even then some are worded quite poorly).

After 15 levels I was still encountering tutorials because the game also has a very atomised approach to concepts. Normally puzzle games introduce a mechanic, iterate on it, and combine past mechanics to build on your knowledge. Here however you get the module tutorial, then a final exam, and then on to the next one. There's little to no pacing or knowledge building so you always feel on the back pedal and what you did learn doesn't feel like it naturally comes up again because you had to make such a big leap to even 'learn' the new concept. It doesn't let you repeat the work to cement the understanding.

In conclusion, this is a game where if you take away the theme you're just left with a series of maths problems. I've used Reason enough to know this game could be more entertaining if it was centred around euro-racks and producing music - that is to say producing sounds rather than just calculating numeric results. For people who are into maths games this is absolutely going to still be enjoyable, if you're into modular synthesis it will teach you real valuable knowledge, but if you're looking for a game you should be aware that this leans more into lessons than levels.

If you're a fan of classic flash-style puzzle rooms this is the giga version of that concept. It offers a collection of 13 interwoven levels each of which challenge you to find all the items, identify where they are used, solve any puzzles, and reach the other end of the maze. Along the way it drip feeds you the story of how this abstract and surreal world ended up the way it is through the writings of its inhabitants.

The majority of gameplay involves scouring each scene for the items you can interact with, collecting things, and finding where to put them. While it can be fun at first there is a mindlessness to the process. Find what can be clicked, click it, try things on the interactive object until you find what works - this is usually obvious but not always.

The scenes themselves are beautifully drawn, and where there is animation it is simple and suits the art style. The sheer amount of scenes and their detail is staggering, along with all the architectural drawings strewn about the world. The score on the other hand feels a bit more simplistic, but adds to the atmosphere and rarely distracts from the prop hunt.

The majority of levels can be completed without really needing to turn your brain on but a few made me get out my pad and pen which is always a good sign, plus the final few levels and the shattered quadrant were uniquely challenging - not only because everything is so spread out and has a few red herrings thrown in. Finding the stabilizers can be tedious but youtube is always there to help pin point the more obscure ones.

Overall, if you're in the mood for that classic flash-style point and click puzzling with minimal narrative this is very much the pick for you. There are challenges to be found within, though few and far between, and the story is opt-in but has some interesting writing if you choose to partake. High marks for the visuals and breadth, but gameplay does get repetitive.

Where the base game introduced a vast and deep world of lore and stories tied deeply into the heart of the Warcraft series, Burning Crusade began a trend of stitching on 'content islands' that referenced the world without truly committing to being part of it, an approach that is emblematic of BC as a whole.

The Dranei are awkwardly fit into the game both as a high tech race dressed up for classical fantasy and with a starting zone that feels entirely contrived. No part of it feels like the Dranei dropped into an existing realised landmass, it just feels like a patchwork of recycled assets without any real identity. The zone itself is just barely tethered to the rest of Azeroth by a single boat which makes the Exodar city even less accessible than Darnassus while somehow being just as remote and laid out even worse.

I don't know the blood elves quite as intimately as I never really committed to playing on the horde side, but the few arguments I've heard against them is that they aesthetically betray the tribal and edgy feel of the horde, while being very popular with anime fans, women, and teenagers - arguments I don't think are problematic in the grand scheme of things.

Outland meanwhile follows the trend of disconnection, the devs didn't want people without the expansion going there so everything is gated off away from the main world. While a few locations in outland are interesting the entire region suffers a similar identity crisis. On the one hand it's very much about demons and the themes of abusing magic, but also it's heavily space themed with the Dranei's crystal aesthetic and the Ethereal race being introduced. Neither of these mesh particularly well in-game and together they clash with the vanilla world which is quintessentially Tolkien at its heart.

Perhaps the worst sin in my opinion is how BC treated gear. If you raided at the end of vanilla and were proud of your hard earned epics, it felt like an insult to immediately be given free greens more powerful than anything in vanilla. BC set a precedent where each expansion jumped the item level to a new tier making all old gear redundant. The whole point of the game was to raid and earn the best gear, but why bother when you immediately discard everything when the next expansion comes around? Talk about self defeating.

This was the expansion which led to me quitting WoW back in 2007 when it became clear that the game was built around an end game that was pointless and expansions would tack on islands of rushed content rather than enriching Azeroth itself - bearing in mind that Azeroth still felt unfinished at the time. The Illidan story had sat cold for years and didn't tie into any of the events in vanilla, the blasted portal was compelling but Hellfire Peninsula was underwhelming to arrive in.

Sadly the through line of BC is just how disconnected it was from the base game at every level, and it set a precedent for every future expansion to feel the same way by taking on random new races, instanced regions, and setting up raids that were ever more complex and difficult with rewards that had no purpose. A trend that continues to this very day.

It's difficult to really express what a vast impact WoW had on the MMO scene, but within a year or two of it's launch almost every MMO would completely restructure how they worked to be more like Warcraft. It didn't just set a precedent it erased entire approaches to the medium.

So what made WoW stand out? Mainly how independent you could be. Many MMO's were reliant on you being in parties and class design was structured so each class provided something another lacked, it was only in big groups that you could all level efficiently. WoW meanwhile made sure every class had only a couple of gaps and ensured the gaps only mattered in dungeons against 'elite' enemies. The main world, it's quests, and the enemies in it were largely soloable so it didn't matter if you had friends, you could always log in and play right off the bat.

Of course by the time you hit dungeons and elite mobs you're encouraged to form groups, even temporarily, and there's always people recruiting for guilds in the major cities so it's easy to find yourself swept into teamwork and reaping the benefits of other players. It was this approach which would result in a wave of homogenisation across the MMO landscape as companies restructured their games to work more like WoW, removing class dependency and lessening the need for teamwork.

It doesn't hurt that wow also has a timeless cartoonish visual aesthetic, a beautiful orchestral score, memorable quests, characters, and locations, and a very satisfying core gameplay loop. No matter which class you play the quantised heartbeat of wow's 1.5 second global cooldown keeps you in a steady rhythm of triggering abilities and slowly growing your rotation. And of course wow sustains 60 levels of content using only 3 world interactions - casting a spell on a target, interacting with an object, or triggering an area effect, very simple but effective and occasionally very cleverly implemented.

WoW isn't without it's problems however, it's a huge game and the quality is spread thin. Combat is your main way to interact with the world so almost every problem is solved by kill x quests, collect x quests (usually by killing things), and the occasional go to x place, or talk to y person. Locations can be huge but feel empty, the world and locations can be contrived in design, and the patchwork of mobs gets structurally repetitive. Some early features like learning spells from purchased books and a general lack of quality of life features may have you running to the add on's store also as basic UI and Map features can make gameplay more tedious than it needs to be.

It's a game that was perfect for one or two playthroughs as despite the quantity you'll get to through the quality content fairly quickly. At end game you can either jump into the PvP scene or guild up and get into Raiding, epic dungeons with higher difficulty bosses that require a large group of players to carefully coordinate, pushing player skill to a new level. The rewards are some of the best gear in the game but each boss only drops a couple of items with no formal way to fairly distribute them so expect a lot of guild politics and player run currency systems.

Overall WoW's impact is undeniable, we can still feel its influence 20 years later. It's slow methodical gameplay still holds up however. Its low commitment has a universal appeal and it doesn't pressure you to party while providing solo opportunities. If you can get into the repetitive questing, rotation based gameplay, and bureaucratic end game there's nuggets of gold to be found on the way to 60. Just be sure to try a few race/class combos before lv.10 as your mileage may vary!

It's vanilla with a twist of something new but in the grand scheme of things these changes don't go nearly far enough.

Firstly, depending on class your mileage may vary considering Warlocks and Mages can take on new roles and Warriors can... generate more rage? SoD is largely just content recycling and remixing making it more of a 'spot the difference' than anything. Some of the runes are neat and encourage you to rotate skills you otherwise overlooked, but a handful are locked behind very tedious gates like earning gold or reputation which feels especially uninspired. That's not getting into the one that requires giving an NPC items that are gated behind player crafted items.

As for 'discovering' stuff, you had about 3 days to really find anything yourself (when people weren't spamming spoilers), and that was only if you could fight your way through the hordes of people fighting for mobs and drops. Even then, based on what we've learned, so many of the runes were placed in obtuse random places it's not like a majority of people would 'discover' them. About 20% are just in your path, and the rest are locked behind subtle changes to NPC's, quests, and locations obvious only to those innately familiar with vanilla.

The new Blackfathom Depths raid is... just more raid content. I had stopped playing after Burning Crusade because I could see that wow was focused on end game raiding and that trend continued for 20 years so I didn't come back. I definitely prefer this approach to new content but once you hit cap you end up in the same place as retail, raiding for items that will be garbage as soon as the cap is raised. It always felt self defeating to work so hard for the fruits of my labour just to be expected to throw them away in the next expansion. Why even bother?

Is it refreshing to see wow do something besides making expansion islands, raids, and short lived gimmicks? Of course. That's why SoD brought back so many players like me. Is it enough? Not really, but it's a start. The 'new stories' are a few tacked on bits of dialogue, the 'new npc's' just dispense runes, the new raid is another raid. SoD feels like an old ex trying to convince you they changed, but unless the devs are prepared to learn from the lessons of retail rather than just repeat history I don't think we can get together again.

It's been 13 years since the cliff-hanger ending of Alan Wake and AW2 was well worth the wait. It's the result of 13 years of lessons learned, refining the formula, and Remedy perfecting their craft to produce a thrilling, innovative, and mind bending story that had me glued from start to finish.

The game cycles between 2 main stories, FBI agents Saga Anderson and Alex Casey investigating a cult at Bright Falls and Alan Wake trying to escape the dark place. Both stories have 10 chapters and you can play them alternating or one then the other. Both stories are intertwined and give one another context but it's difficult to get into more detail without spoilers, needless to say the story threads are beautifully woven into a lattice of narrative that ties everything together, fills in past blanks, and leaves a few interesting loose threads to explore in the future.

AW2 has, hands down, one of the most intricate and well crafted plots I've seen, juggling the meta-narrative with post-modern deconstruction of stories within stories in ways that I could gush about embarrassingly for hours. Granted it can get complicated in places but if you're the kind of person who enjoys a deep, tangled, paranormal thriller then you're in for a treat. If you found the first game too narrative heavy then your mileage may vary as this one follows a deeply cinematic streak with a hefty portion of in-world media to soak in. Similar to AW1 you have a novel's worth of writing to read, radio shows, music, and TV-skits recorded with the real actors who play the cast of characters in the game akin to Control. If you enjoyed that rich world building you're in for a treat!

As for gameplay, it's a fusion of classic Silent Hill and modern Resident Evil bringing the best of both worlds along with Remedy's original recipe, plus they've learned well from their past mistakes. We see a return of the light mechanics, burning off the darkness and then shooting enemies, and while yes the combat is still simple, repetitive, and enemies only have a small variety, combat is kept interesting with a variety of toys/weapons to use, and then broken up by the huge variety of other things to do. Puzzles, exploration, collectibles, conversations, and the stand-out Writers Room / Mind Place mechanics. So when you do have combat it's not around long and doesn't overstay it's welcome like in past games.

The writers room and mind place are new features which each gamify the narrative in different ways giving Saga and Wake's gameplay entirely different feels. Saga has 'the mind place' which is a room in her mind represented as a physical space you walk around, where you can review collectibles, manage upgrades, and track the many twisting narrative threads on an evidence board, pinning up plot points, characters, and evidence as you investigate the mystery, tied together with string and punctuated with Saga's thoughts and conclusions as you go. It makes for a fun way to keep track of everything and identify where to go or what to do next in the 3 major locations around Bright Falls.

Meanwhile Wake has 'the writers room', where he's trapped in the darkness and trying to write his way out. The physical space of the darkness transforms based on his writing, so in each chapter he superimposes a thriller story over his imagined reality and you use the plot points to physically transform the space. A hotel ballroom can host a cult meeting or a ritual murder scene - each with different clues to discover and different paths blocked off. This fractal narrative-within-narrative-within-narrative structure is inspiring to see implemented so naturally and turns the world itself into a unique and interesting puzzle to solve.

AW2 is a refreshing creative vision that is badly needed these days. It captures the atmosphere of horror beautifully and marries media in such creative ways while telling a story in ways no other medium can - this is what video games were made for. On top of that it combines an outstanding story, amazing writing and cinematography, innovative gameplay, a vast supply of world enriching collectibles, stirring performances from the actors, incredible music, a return of everything iconic that Remedy fans loved from the past games, the best graphics I've ever seen, exciting new twists, turns, characters, and developments... what does the game get wrong? Honestly just a handful of glitches, a couple of lip syncing issues, and having to select the only item that works with an interactable from a list.

At the very least it's fair to say that Remedy gets so much right here that its few flaws are easily overlooked. Given the sheer quality of Remedy's content and the hard work on display Alan Wake 2 is definitely my pick for game of the year, and with even more content on the way I can't wait to see what's next. It's amazing to see a company do AAA games justice now more than ever, producing genuine works of art rather than revenue engines. The spirit of true game design is alive in Remedy and I'm proud to support them.
Onnea ja hyvin tehty!

One of the most iconic isometric RPG's ever made, marking the birth of a whole franchise. Going back to its roots certainly fills in the blanks for a lot of the questionable design decisions of the 3D games, but none of them quite compare to the uniquely bleak and wonderful writing that went into this classic - even if the bugs were just as bad then as they are now.

In a world ravaged by nuclear war you take on the role of a survivor, safe and sound in a high tech Vault. But when your vault's water system fails it's up to you to head into the irradiated wastelands in search of a new water chip. It's a simple set up that propels you into a vast and detailed world, filled with charismatic characters and idealistic villains clashing in their search for a brighter tomorrow.

The writing in Fallout is its greatest strength. It shines through in the dialogue, characters, and idealism explored throughout. Each of the forces at play make sense and the individuals behind them are brought to life by the animated talking heads and excellent voice acting. The game doesn't shy away from harsh realities either and and doesn't talk down to the player about them - the only downside is that the longer you play the more you see this quality isn't consistent throughout.

Similarly Fallout offers vast customisation at first glance but the potential is undercut by how few skills are ever useful. Speech and Science? Unlocks a whole new ending. Gambling and Outdoorsman? Your mileage may vary. Granted there's at least one or two times each skill shines in the game but most of these can be bypassed or missed without any indication it was a possibility. That and half the game is focused on combat, so no matter what you need to invest in one of the fighting skills.

I also made the mistake of taking points out of strength so I was terrible at using guns until I got the power armour, relying on drugs and my companions to shoulder me through most firefights. Companions are admittedly a huge boon for sure but at the cost of being uncontrollable and difficult to manage, at times either getting you or themselves killed. They can block doorways, act when you don't want them to, or end up getting themselves lost in the desert disappearing from the game if you don't leave them specifically in a town (unless it's dogmeat who has to die to leave the party).

Which bring us to the deep scar that runs though Fallout - the game is undercooked. The further you play the less stable the game gets, the less elegant the dialogue trees become, and the more things seem to be missing - not just content but also resolutions to plot threads, entire gangs, and locations. All of this ended up on the cutting room floor, though much of it still gets mentioned or alluded to.

Overall Fallout is impressive despite its flaws, especially for its time. It explains why the 3D sequels make so many weird design decisions in a poor attempt to replicate the potential here, it's just a shame that the issues are so prevalent as I found myself hurrying towards an ending because of them. That said I still want to return, explore the rest of the map, see the endings, and try more builds in spite of everything. It definitely earns itself high marks but sadly the core issues and lack of polish prevent it from reaching the top.

Note: I've since read that the Et Tu mod (FO1 in the FO2 engine) solves many of the QOL issues I encountered, so I'd advocate anyone who wants to try FO1 should definitely give that a go for a better first impression.

Kings Quest is one of the OG point and click adventures, and while it is certainly rough around the edges today it is very much playable and offers a story book experience for those who don't mind some obtuse puzzle solving.

The King of Daventry has had a hard life and it's up to Sir Graham to recover the kings magical artefacts - a magic mirror, a shield, and a magical chest of gold. Along the way you'll explore the region around the castle, encounter various quaint sights, some silly and mischievous characters, and a handful of murderous monsters. The graphics are certainly dated but they give the game a characteristic charm unique to it's time period akin to the CDi Zelda games - though I was fortunate enough to be playing the SCI remake with enhanced visuals. Music is sparse, there's no constantly looping track thankfully, and what little there is adds to the character of the game similarly to the graphics despite it's low quality.

Gameplay is a mix of point and click with text input to perform actions. The clicking part of the control is still somewhat rudimentary however, as you need to click on the edge most pixels to transition between screens - I ended up using the keyboard for most of the game besides a few twisty sections. The text input wasn't obvious at first but once I got in the routine of using it it became quite natural - though there are of course many non-obvious interactions you'll need to make progress at various points. It's hard to tell if the lack of intuitiveness is another product of it being out of time, my lack of experience with the genre, or a sheer fault of design.

Gameplay itself is built around puzzles. You search the environment, collect items, and eventually the interactions get you towards a goal. I started pretty strong and had a lot of fun mapping out the game even though there are a handful of cheap deaths that you're forced to learn and avoid. I managed to get the chest without resorting to guides but after that I was badly stuck and when I finally resorted to a walkthrough I knew I was never finishing this game without instructions. From interacting with specific scenery unprompted to interactions I had no idea were even possible and many red herrings in between, the game design is very unintuitive so I doubt I would have made any progress any time soon.

Overall, while it has retro charm and stands as one of the classics I feel it's too roughly hewn to be enjoyable by modern audiences. Perhaps I'm just too impatient? After all the first relic was fun to discover but the dagger and several other steps required to get the other relics would certainly have eluded me for some time. When players had less game options and more time I can see how this may have kept a person occupied, but that's simply not the case now days. It's nice to experience gaming history but not always necessary to live it, maybe just watch a youtuber do it in 20 minutes.

Shining Force is a charming tactical RPG from SEGA back when they were a force to be reckoned with. It's got a lot of character but misses out on a lot of simple conveniences that make playing it more arduous than it needs to be.

The story is simplistic and follows the Tolkien tropes of evil prophesised to return and good rising to oppose it. So when evil invades our homeland we form the Shining Force - a team of heroes who will try to save the world. The large cast of characters are kept very one-note with basic motivations for joining the team, while most of the storylines for each chapter boil down to 'arrive at a problem', 'solve it by killing all the bad guys'. The lack of depth can be chalked up to limitations and the young target audience but it does get too blunt at points with contrivances, deus ex machinas, and needless twists resolved as soon as they happen.

Mechanically the game is centred around tactical combat, this was my first foray into TRPG games so despite being overwhelmed at the size of the cast I welcomed the introduction to the genre's mechanics (luckily it plays very much like D&D). Each tactical role is represented by iconic character designs with centaurs, dwarves, elves, and more joining the force, and the first characters introduce you to the way melee, magic, projectile, and healer classes work. Future characters are intended to expand on, replace, and supplement these roles to provide more tactical options. You'll end up with 12 in the party and more in reserve so the hardest part is managing everyone's status, equipment, and items since menus are hidden behind certain NPCs and information isn't always clear - I had to make my own table just to keep track.

The combat itself is a matter of move and attack, but the strategy is in learning to overlap your attack ranges while being careful of the enemy doing the same. There's a couple of especially tough battles but most were easy to get through once you learn to protect your leader, use a checkerboard formation, and try not to let any one unit get too far ahead of the team. This made combat very slow albeit well defended and the slow combat wasn't helped by enemies only participating in small groups despite every enemy on the board taking its turn and doing nothing. There's also maps with narrow mountain passes that take 3-4 turns to squeeze everyone through due to the rough terrain, which made those battles very tedious, not helped by very annoying high agility enemies that can take forever to kill while they chip at your HP.

The game's biggest issue is taking a complex genre and trying to simplify it. Reading the manual is like taking in a D&D book which I expect would have overwhelmed a younger audience. It's only because I'm familiar with D&D that I felt I understood how to play regardless but there's many fundamental mechanics which aren't explained. Why do characters some times attack twice? When is MP recovered? How is terrain affecting my movement? What's the turn order? Some of it becomes clear as you play, but it makes a game based on deliberate choices feel unpredictable.

On top of that there's a lot of basic information that isn't easily accessible - seeing character HP in battle requires you to slowly switch modes and check them individually. What is or is not equipped isn't clear, not every menu shows who is in the party, shops don't tell you if a weapon is an upgrade or not, shuffling inventory is painful, I had no idea some weapons/rings have 'use' functions... Some of this I know is just a product of the time, UI was not well designed in the 90's, but combined it made getting through the game more arduous than it had to be as I spent a lot of time making my own notes.

On the up side I liked the incorporation of sci-fi elements, the artwork throughout the game was very impressive, and I loved the detailed attack animations with the dramatic angle and beautiful pixel art backgrounds. The character designs are also very iconic and the secret characters were some of the best of the roster, with many being mainstays of my final team. As mentioned it has a lot of charm despite being surface deep so it's a shame that elements like the UI, communication, slowness of combat, basic story, and fine-but-repetitive music undermine it's good qualities.

A great concept but a rough execution. I hope the next games in the series improve on the formula.

A classic platformer that licences the Ghostbusters IP for a pretty difficult and drawn out experience with a handful of bells and whistles that don't really make up for the dull and unimaginative level design.

You can play as any one of the three core ghostbuster characters, and while they vary by speed and health the speed difference isn't very noticeable and the health difference is so Ray is the obvious choice. You can then pick one of the four levels to start in but this freedom is also undercut because the difficulty curve and firepower needed to tackle the harder levels means there is a 'best' order to go in if you don't want to get slimed.

Each level is pretty unimaginatively themed with two kinds of house, a fire level, an ice level, and a spooky castle. While the graphics are decent for the time and some of the effects are iconic, the level designs themselves don't have much rhyme or reason - though the free roaming aspect and being able to leave the level to visit the shop does have a proto-metroidvania feel to it.

Unfortunately the controls are stiff and when combined with strict 5-way shooting (no down or down diagonals) leaves you relatively vulnerable against tanky small foes with high mobility. The same few enemies are also reused so it feels like you're getting hit by cheap shots from start to finish. The bosses meanwhile have an interesting variety of designs but very simple repetitive attack patterns and the strategy to defeat them is not intuitive so don't expect to beat this in a single run unless you're using save states.

Defeated and captured bosses / mini-bosses will net you extra cash for upgrades and while the alternative weapons offer some variety, the limited energy means you only really want to pull them out against the bosses they're effective against. The shields also deplete energy so I would just always avoid using them, which is a shame because they are fun and ease the burden of the annoying pest enemies in the halls that slow down gameplay.

Overall much of the game is phoned in, clearly a decent bit of the budget went to the IP, music, and artwork which left the levels, enemy, and boss designs limited. There's maybe one level too many as the game drags on towards the end, and the bosses tend to be a bit slow and tedious. Enjoyable with save states but the original recipe is only fun for the dedicated fan.

A cute and simple sokoban style puzzler on the classic Gameboy with plenty of charm and a variety of well made and interesting puzzles.

Sokoban or block moving puzzles are nothing new but Catrap pulls off a quaint take on the genre and feels surprisingly contemporary. Every 10 levels or so new mechanics are introduced to keep things fresh as the following 9 mix and match mechanics to offer a great variety of challenges.

If you enjoy games in this puzzle genre you're sure to have fun with the 100 levels on offer and although the visuals have that classic gameboy appeal the music is surprisingly lacking and repetitive (I had to turn it off before I got past the first 5 stages). That aside, the difficulty curves reasonably and the ability to step back and forth through previous moves feels ahead of its time for a game so old.

Despite the limitations of coming out in the 90's on an ancient handheld it does a lot with a little, and I would hope this design has since been iterated on with all the potential it has left to explore.

Splinter Cell is the first outing for Sam Fisher, a laughably gruff spy and his manly mission to scare the Russians and Chinese. Unfortunately this first entry has not aged too well - it's playable albeit underbaked, overwritten, and frustrating to get through.

The story is a dry NSA fan fic about Sam being a bad ass and saving the world with an 'ends justify the means' approach. This time it's the Georgians working with the Russians... but also the Chinese and the CIA? I don't know but then Sam doesn't follow the plot either, he just always knows what the next thing to do is. Sam also doesn't get much characterisation beyond 'cold badass' and has some rough scenes like being unable to comfort a dying man and interrupting his daughter's call to toss the phone and dive out of a plane. The VA (Michael Ironside) talking about Sam's emotional depth is genuinely laughable (the healing moans are also not appreciated Michael).

Gameplay meanwhile is VERY linear and I don't think the series found its feet here. Levels are built around stealth and platforming sections each with their own issues. The designer just wants you to play levels in one very specific way but sadly the mechanics are not well tuned. The 'grab an enemy' prompts don't always show (leading to instant deaths), light levels are hilariously unclear on the PS2 version, and aim is terrible! Even when a lightbulb is inches from you it can take 3+ shots to hit.

Platforming meanwhile is mechanically fine but it really highlights the terrible level design. Nothing is way pointed, highlighted, or even hinted as being interactive and many times stuff that is normally scenery suddenly becomes interactive. They introduce and remove situational mechanics at random without explaining them like the rappelling sections and lots of reoccurring mechanics are only explained in missable data files like how the auto-turrets work - a boon if you know, but frustrating if you're not aware. It will also switch from stealth to action scenes without telling you, so it's unclear when you alerted guards or if it's suddenly a set piece.

Overall this game is a rough start to the franchise, I've not touched the other games yet but apparently they do get better. There is of course the idea of a decent game in here it's just buried beneath a boring story, unlikable characters, inconsistent mechanics, and slow gameplay. I'd say this one is only worth it for the fans and new players can probably skip it without missing anything substantial.