Hitman is a good stealth game and can be good at making you feel like a bad ass assassin but the real strength lies in the level design and absurdist dark humor. It's a game where you can choose exactly what equipment you know you are going to need, hide a high powered sniper rifle somewhere in the map in the planning menu, poison a target while learning your next target to an open spot to be taken out with your nearby hidden rifle. It's a game where you can steal the tape of a targets past murder, lure him to his room where you sit quietly in a chair confronting him with what he's done before being promoted to shoot him in the head. It's also a game where you can make a man believe that the cost of his dead mother has come back to haunt him, one where you can start a dance party in makeshift a military base, disguise yourself as a therapist and go through with a quick session, disguise yourself as drummer and go through with an audition.

The best missions of the first season have extremely well designed levels that feel like real places, targets that you can learn about as you replay missions by listening to conversations and attempting to kill them in different ways, or mission that fully embrace the comedic potential of the game such as side mission that has you dressed as Santa going up against the burglars from Home Alone. Each mission gives you a variety of challenges, some easy, some hard, and some based on just finding things or events on the map, completing each challenge unlocks points that will raise your mastery level up to 20 for each mission. Raising your master level unlocks new equipment you can use on any level and new starting locations and supply drop locations for that map. There might only be six missions and two tutorial levels but the challenges give you a lot to do, three missions have also been added onto two of the maps that change things up on the map and give you new goals, player made contracts with different targets can be searched for and played, and one time only timed elusive contracts by the developer give you new amusing characters to try to kill on levels you have mastered.

The only negatives is that the Colorado map doesn't have very interesting targets and the Marrakesh map has some interesting features but mostly wastes it's location.

Hitman was one of the best games of 2016, which is saying a lot for it in such a great year, excellent level design and an embrace of absurdist dark humor make this the best Hitman yet

Shadow Tactics Blades of the Shogun will play in a very similar way to people who have played the Commandos series or Desperados Wanted Dead or Alive. It's a top down stealth based game that allows you to control five different characters, each with different passive and active abilities. Each of the 13 missions will have you controlling anywhere from 2-5 of the game's characters allowing them the ability to design missions around certain characters strengths or allowing each to contribute in different sections. Every mission has nine activities you can complete to earn a badge and three different difficulty settings, these don't unlock any new gameplay features but can give you a reason to try out certain missions with different playstyles or cause you to limit yourself to make the game more challenging. The game has good production values with some nice looking maps, good voice acting, a good soundtrack, and I only ran into a bug twice (one that caused a patrol to get stuck and one that prevented a badge from unlocking). There is more of a story to the game than Commandos offers, more like Desperados with the characters having more personality. The character personalities are shown more in the actual gameplay as well with them having different lines of dialogue based on the situation, time of day, or weather. One of the only negatives is that three of the characters have the same passive skills, one just has less passive skills, each has their primary weapon as an ability, and all of them share two of their five abilities (a gun with limited ammo and a healing item). Though each character only has three unique abilities they might have more options available, four of the characters can change their melee attack to be nonlethal, two abilities allow you to have new actions once used, and a grenade weapon one character uses can be switched between explosive or a non lethal gas.

One of my favorite games of 2016 and one fans of the games it is based on or fans of stealth games should play.

Unique gameplay combines a tactical game with a bullet hell. You control a wisp that has to dodge enemy attacks while you touch and equip your soldiers to charge attacks of different elements, inventory and units are managed in between scenes. Great artwork on the battle map and with portraits, improved for the PSP version which also adds some new content. Good story covering kingdom, past, and your characters. Multiple paths and new game+. Good music.

Can be overly complicated, was a game I had for years and gave up on starting three times because over confusion about how it played (which I don't think has happened before).

Part of the Dept. Heaven series.

Great characters who often break traditional mold, with a strong relationship portrayed between the main characters Vyse, Aika, and Fina. An interesting world (bit stereotypical towns for what's often a more interesting setting) that is full of landmarks with historic details and backgrounds that help flesh out the world. Good writing/translation (though with some mistakes/odd moments). Art style works well and it still looks good for a slightly updated Dreamcast game that I played years later. Has an enjoyable battle system and ship battles are a good inclusion and it is nice that you can gather a crew and get a home base to upgrade. All coming together to make of the best games in the genre.

A serviceable beat em up that is about three times longer than it needs to be. Three characters, each with their own attack strength and speed value. Each character has a fast and strong attack, grab that allows them to hit or throw (strongest character can carry enemies), block, jump attack, dash attack, and special that damages you if it hits enemies. Controls well, decent graphics. Some nice background elements like characters cheering, sleeping, or watching you before they join the fight. Parts where a large figure looms in the foreground then jumps into the stage to reveal it is just a normal sized enemy.

The problem is it's about 1.5-2 hours of fighting the same enemies. Sudden poor SMUP boss fight (though so short it barely matters). Poor music. Health items can be fairly plentiful and many heal you all the way but they tend to be inside of boulders that will just randomly get launched at you, some you have to hit to break and some will just break and drop it if they hit you.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1371777464825880577

Horizontal plane and steampunk style shoot em up. Two pilots with different shot types and plane speed, three gunners to choose from with their own shot types. Tapping fire shoots your pilot's attack, holding fires a stream of the gunner's attack while slowing your ship and locking onto enemies. Bombs and destroying enemies can cancel enemy shots. Scoring system relies on shifting between firing types. Great stage, enemy, boss, and background design. Music starts of decent then becomes completely forgettable.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1346801742382415877

Vertical shoot em up. Upgrades for your main forward shot, secondary attack is a laser that locks onto targets that are below you in the environment that can be upgraded to alow for additional lock-ons. Ground forces, parts of large ships and bosses, flying enemies that are moving to attack you on your level, etc. The laser attack is fun to use, the game looks great, and having a focus on enemies at different angles makes things visually interesting and it's one of the best looking shoot em ups I've played. Enemies have some unique attack patterns due to a wide assortment of weapons but it can sometimes be difficult to tell when they attacked or where an attack will even come from. That combined with enemies that really like to fly quickly towards the bottom of the screen to escape or actively try to ram you can make things a bit overly difficult unless you know exactly what to expect as you are a bit slow and a fairly large target.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1348636611668369411

Side scrolling action game that borrows a lot from Castlevania. You can attack, crouch and move crouched, jump, and use special weapons. Four main and secondary weapons (knife, rapier, cane, axe and pistol, boomerang, bomb, and stake). One of the first breakable face things (?) that drop pickups dropped a cane and I kept that weapon throughout the game, less damage than the axe but more range and immediate response. The game controls well. A more responsive Castlevania, you can control your jumps, knockback is more reasonable instead of launching you away from the enemy. Stairs work like the early Castlevania games climbing wise, but you can jump off and attack while on them when you are stopped which is nice. Levels might have some alternate paths.

Some hard to predict enemy attack patterns and the old issue of terrible weapon drops possibly taking your good weapon to give you something useless (picking up a knife again) are mostly mitigated by the game's low difficulty. You have eight sections of health and most enemies only take of 1 or half, the bats seem to take off even less as usually it wouldn't even show damage when I was hit by one. Each stage also tends to have at least two health pickups that recover about half your life. Usually your only real reason to die is from falling off cliffs but even that is much more manageable than in Castlevania, even jumping back down areas you came from will just drop you down to previous sections instead of killing you for not taking the stairs. Very limited number of enemy types.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1361267935793176582

The game is a series of boss battles split up by brief walks through the world and the new areas you get to after the end of each fight. Fights involve melee attacks and parries, ranged weapons, bullet hell style attacks from enemies, and different environments that can be used to your advantage or that can be a hazard. Boss fights are good and varied, areas you walk through and fight on are visually interesting, hard mode provides a real challenge. Camera can cause some problems while in ranged combat.

One moment marvel at the beauty of the world and creatures, the next kill all the larvae that burst from a defeated enemy's chest.

One of the best metroidvania games I've played. It offers a large game with a lot of extra content and lore to discover with extra boss battles and side characters you can run into in your journey that reveal more about themselves or their journey as you meet with your meetings possibly effecting their and your endings. You can equip a wide variety of powerups/modifiers that help you adjust your character to fit how you like to play or you. Beautiful world and backgrounds with well designed, and often grossly beautiful, enemies with a nice lore book to fill that gives you more details about the setting. Combat is quick and responsive with some varied and tense boss fights.

A standout feature of the game is the freedom it gives you in the possible routes that you can take through it. Most medtoridvania style games are almost completely linear other than side or extra content you might discover or have to backtrack for. Hollow Knight can allow you to conquer multiple possible areas in different orders both through casual exploration that can give you a few routes but those choices are increased by just understanding how the game and its systems work by default, allowing some players to get to areas early that might not seem accessible in the early game. Both allowing for potentially interesting ways through the game for those that don't follow a more obvious path as well as interesting paths for challenge or speedruns.

Hollow Knight's soundtrack can match the beauty of its world with City of Tears being a highlight and one of the better tracks I've heard in a game and the bench resting theme Reflection standing out as a memorable sanctuary area theme that is up there with Resident Evil 4's Serenity.

The only minor complaint I have is the odd way it seemed to want to get on the Dark Souls bandwagon where they make poor use of the FromSoftware style mechanic where you lose resources when you die unless you get to your body in one life to recover them. This hasn't even been an interesting or meaningful mechanic in FromSoftware's own titles since Demon Souls. In Hollow Knight you aren't even losing experience, just what is essentially money that you can spend on equip-able modifiers. At one point you will need to buy a lantern but nothing else is ever important and certainly not needed for completion, so it ends up being little more than a potential waste of time if you just lost your resources and were delayed in trying some alternate strategy or upgrade out. I never ended up dying outside of boss fights so I never lost anything but I suppose if you were really doing poorly at the game you might need to farm a little to buy that lantern which could make it more frustrating.

Well written as a Numenera game with a good and unique setting, though not as well paced and focused as Planescape, and unlike the original Torment, the best moments come from stories unrelated to you. Interesting characters and situations fitting for the setting. Can avoid combat if you want to. Interesting results can come from skill failure, events, stat changes, ability to use tide powers. Merecasters were a good addition, giving you short stories you can play through either showing off other parts of the Numenera world or giving you more information on story relevant characters and events.

Dominant tide rarely effects anything and the amounts you get can feel unbalanced or oddly chosen but the idea is relevant to the story. Small areas keep everything very close which can lead to some ridiculous things like someone telling you to find someone or something that is standing right next to them.

I played it when it first released before some fixes and additions likely made some improvements and it is well worth playing more for the stories you discover and the people you meet than for the main plot and certainly more than the combat would be if you decide to fight when you can. One of few games that makes it easy to avoid almost all combat through conversation or planning and one of the few that makes failure (or results that would normally seem bad) both amusing and potentially helpful.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/837074637838221312
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Starts from the neutral route of IV and makes use of the smirk and app systems of it. Skills are learned from recruited demons after they have learned all of their skills. Gives you different partners that you can use that aid you in battle as a fifth member. Battles don't show your characters but good enemy art and death animations. Characters are voiced in story scenes and in battle. Good additions that help streamline the game. You don't lose if the main character loses all his health.

Borrows a bit more from recent Persona than the old main SMT titles, a lot more party members, talking, assist attacks, friendship but I like most of the ways that 4 and Apocalypse changed things, though it is pretty odd for the series to have all of your party members agree with the same path which takes away from the darker tone and setting.

Resident Evil 7 attempts to bring the series back to the survival focused gameplay of the older series entries and away from the action focus of the last few games, for me it completely fails at this. The atmosphere of the starting few areas are what the game does well with good details and gives you areas that you want to explore, unfortunately even this drops in quality in the final two places you go to that have a very bland and uninteresting look to them. The VHS tapes that you find are a nice addition, playing them allows you to see past events and play as different characters, there are only four of these though, and two of them don't even make sense in regards to how they were recorded.

Previews of the game seemed to imply that you would be chased around by the Baker family members who were strong and unkillable, forcing you to hide from them. This is actually not true at all as it really only happens once very early in the game and avoiding the character is easily done by just going into the save room and shutting the door on him, a strategy that also works on regular enemies with any door. The combat is poor and awkward with guns and melee weapons almost always feeling weak (with the exception of the shotgun) and not being fun to use, the knife is somehow unable to hit downed enemies unless you duck, your character moves very slowly and can only manage a slightly faster forward walk when you want to get away from something.

The enemies themselves are dull, three types of oil like monsters (one that you only see maybe three times) and two types of bugs in one area. They are slow, weak, and can be defeated by doors or just slowly walking past them. Sometimes shots will stagger enemies, sometimes they won't, sometimes they will take five headshots, sometimes they will take 12 it never really makes any sense. Boss fights are horribly designed glitchy messes where they can clearly miss you but still hit, do attacks that clip through objects to hit you, and get stuck on random things in the environment. The survival elements are practically non-existent as we have lost the powerful or one shot kill enemies that have been around for some time, I ended up finishing the game on normal (the most difficult mode available at the start) by only using two items that fully healed me and raised my max health, I could have made about 40+ medkits and had other healing supplies, at no point could the game be considered remotely difficult or tense because of this.

Plot necessary items taking inventory space is a time wasting needless thing to bring back, as is the smaller inventory, you will run into sections where you will be carrying very few things, you will go into a room with so many items that you will then need to travel back to the storage box with no enemies or things of interest in your way, sometimes even needing to make multiple trips if you want to collect everything, this seems like it was added to the game to pad out the short length.

The story is pretty uninteresting with obvious reveals. The main character barely seem to be effected by anything but moves worse than almost any horror main character I've ever seen, he seemed to have more of a negative reaction to being surrounded by caterpillars in a crawl space than almost anything that happened to him. At times it felt like they wanted to make him a funny B movie style character, which would actually fit well with the main antagonists. In one boss fight the guy you are fighting tears open a fence, grabs a giant pair of scissors, and says "Groovy." Your character then says, "That's not groovy," you can then pick up a chainsaw and I was expecting him to say something like, "This is groovy," instead he says nothing making it all just awkward lines and like they almost forgot that he is just some average guy who shouldn't be delivering one liners to mutated people while surrounded by body bags. It also feels like they couldn't fully abandon the more action oriented titles of the past by having you fight some giant mutated creatures, one battle being a ridiculous affair where you can just keep jumping from the second story of the area to the first and then slowly climbing back up a ladder to easily avoid the attacks of your enemy.

The game is full of jump scares meant for VR where people suddenly appear on screen (sometimes letting you even look in the direction they were supposed to come from, allowing you to see them just appear out of nowhere), grab you, and then scream in your face. The game is actually far more gross than scary, like watching a bad "horror" movie like Drag Me To Hell where somehow vomit and bugs are supposed to scare you. They start making cheap attempts to scare you such as having random noises around the area and sounds from monsters that will never show up but anyone who has played enough video games will know this, and even if I was worried about being suddenly attacked you are so well equipped to handle everything that it wouldn't matter. I was willing to give them some credit by never having the little girl start singing but they even managed to throw that cliche in near the very end.

The game also includes two endings, with almost nothing changing from a gameplay perspective, seeing them requires you to play the worst parts of the game again after making a choice in the previous section. They didn't even have the decency to give you a save point after the game's worst boss fight, forcing you to fight it over again to get back to the choice. Something that feels like them trying to add to the length of the game or to pretend there is more replay value.

I didn't think it would be possible, but I actually liked Resident Evil 6 more than this, if only because of the few decent moments it had and the so bad it's funny moments in it.

Terrible Boss Fight Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L_wmoANn-s

Covers themes of mental health, friendships, relationships, family, growing up, the generation gap, capitalism and economic effects on small towns and service workers, and the rising fear, hatred, and absurdity in people looking back on the past with nostalgia, all in a way that's more tactful and real than other games and most other media in general. All with a unique and charming art style, well done back and foregrounds that give more life to the town and characters, and some of the best written dialogue I've seen in a game that is able to handle casual conversations, humor, and emotional moments.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/942085714560278528

Indiegogo funded action platformer. Metroidvania elements with upgrades and better equipment to find and equipment and abilities needed to access certain areas. You can get a dash, double jump, ability to fall slowly, better swords, and better armor that can allow you to use some magic abilities. Axes, spears, and torches act as secondary weapons. Some great art, good gameplay, references to other action platforms during gameplay like Mega Man X and Donkey Kong and some strange ones in the dialogue and story scenes like Highlander and Blade Runner and a boss fight that was similar to something from R-Type.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/818677005918998528