Tells the story of three girls stuck at a Christian summer camp and their fight against the static in the radio or "the devil". Focusing on themes of community, acceptance, and religious and societal persecution through character interactions, location, and sound design.

Gameplay choices focus on choosing two of the characters to do things together with the worse ends coming from spending too much time away from one of the characters leading to the others to not fully accept them in their endings. Short length with great atmosphere, characters, and use of theme.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1054169631923924992?s=20

Story and gameplay elements constantly conflict with each other. Gunplay and powers are rarely fun to use, this time the combat actively gets in the way of the setting and story from a character and world building perspective with guns and plasmids being everywhere not even fitting for the environment. Reused areas for the second half of the game, and the locations never make use of the interesting setting or verticality in a way that would make combat interesting in the first place. The two guns limit is annoying, more so with so much of the game just feeling like a shooting gallery and and even more so when Elizabeth just throws you ammo from nowhere so it isn't meant in an original Halo style way where you might feel a need to keep swapping them out or to make harder choices. Offensive narrative that shows marginalized people as instantly becoming worse than their oppressors. Uninteresting, lazy, and easily seen coming ending, with additional tacked on elements (and later DLC content) showing that they were completely unable to leave a former success in Rapture behind in order to make anything interesting here. There is even a more poorly handled stand in for the Big Daddies that lose any narrative meaning and that are even more poorly designed and easily defeated when it comes to combat.

Contra style action game with six levels that combine the usual sidescrolling shooting sections, a few hoverbike sections, and a flying rail shooter segment. You have a basic weapon and melee attack and can find a powerful grenade launcher, a beam weapon that can shoot slowly or be charged up for a long constant burst, or a constantly firing shorter beam that follows your weapon movements. You can also find and have one active robot powerup that can make you faster, block two hits, or one that gives you more firepower by shooting in the direction you are aiming. You can unlock two extra characters when you beat them game that have a more melee focused playstyle, different modes and difficulties are also unlocked after beating it. Can be more forgiving by not only letting you continue after losing all of your lives on the same stage but at the section of the stage that you died on. The ability to select the stage you want to play will help you practice what you need to if you are trying for speed, no death, etc runs or if you just want to play your favorite stages again.

A first person photography game that uses Māori symbolism and Jet Set Radio as influences to show how the generation with no future deals with the end. Take pictures of your friends, the environment, and people at the end of the world caused by environmental issues and a kaiju attack from the sea. Each of the levels range from you and your friends in towns full of memorials and film and recruitment posters, street dance parties before the world's end, bloody combat zones, train rides of survivors, etc. Unlock new lenses, camera options, editing options by finishing levels and completing objectives. Gives you a lot of options to take pictures how you want once you unlock everything and are no longer trying to finish under time constraints.

Jumping can be awkward with double jumps not always working or falling through things you would think you could stand on. Unlocking the hover boots pretty much removes the issue in addition to opening up some nice photo opportunities.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1284713563769024515

Unique and memorable Joker origin that is a much more interesting use of him than he usually gets, with some funny and well written moments with him that changes his relationship with Bruce and relationship with Harley in interesting ways for a series that has so far been themed around the good and harm Bruce can do with each of his personas. Good use of other characters connected to Batman and Amanda Waller. Engine improved over the previous game. Certain plot elements are a bit rushed and it can feel unfocused. Poor use of Bruce and Gordon relationship that doesn't take into account anything from the first game. Occasional poor indication of what you will say.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1037976282342940672

Writing wise this is one of the better Telltale games I've played, choice wise this is easily the best, you still can't really alter any main plot line in the story or completely change the fate of a character but your choices do lead to either different scenes or entire locations or who shows up in certain areas in the future. Nice introduction for many of Batman's villains and allies.

Explores the Bruce side of the character more than most, as well as his connection to his family from a different angle, now having to deal with your family's corrupt past as a man with their vast resources capable of changing systemic problems in society rather than just punching people and sending them to Arkham.

There is some strange dialogue a few times that seems to think you did the opposite of what happened. There are also some odd moments like being able to send someone to Arkham Asylum over Blackgate because they might get help their even though you already know the place is terrible and very recently got a firsthand look at just how corrupt and dangerous it is. The engine also really shows that it isn't quite meant for larger more busy environments or fight scenes, either just suffering from lag or just being kind of ugly or odd looking.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1036101107808796672
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An improved version of Game Dev Story/Tycoon, a lot more options (buying people out, making a console, publishing, etc) but with uglier graphics. Making of games still includes choosing a genre and a sub genre if you want and combining them with one or two topics that work well with them and each other (over 160 topics) then using sliders to choose where you want your focus to be (there will always be a best setting for the main genre), that and lack of events can get a bit boring. You can get a lot of "legendary" developers showing up in your hiring lists but they end up just having higher starting stats that you might have already trained your people to be better than and they don't have any lines or actions unique to them and come with a random appearance, so it just had the unfortunate effect of reminding me that Notch and American McGee exist. It's fun for a little while but does get repetitive (would be nice if it would just save the best game settings for each genre when you find them).

Mafia 3 is easily one of the strongest games I've played when it comes to voice acting and scene direction, with character expression and emotions perfectly acted and visually displayed in the game's cutscenes. A good story with well fleshed out characters with some great moments and lines, you even get some side supporting characters that aren't seen much but that has such strong dialogue and acting that you get to know them well in their brief appearances. Even a few of the main supporting characters and villains you go after can have sympathetic moments despite being terrible people. Lincoln's back and forth with his associates almost always manages to perfectly convey what kind of relationship they have and nails humorous or emotional moments very well.

The game makes use of it's setting, location and time period, and is full of small world, conversation, and gameplay details that are used to tell a story focused on race relations, returning from war, the changing times of the era which also frequently echoes modern era, and, like the other Mafia games, that the American dream is often more like a nightmare. People complain about the fair housing act and affirmative action on the radio and during conversations the same way they did back then and the same way they do now, you can get shot at or have the police called on you for going into the wrong store or for loitering, characters talk about police abuse of protesters and the Black Panthers, a contact that hates communists and wants you to stop supplies to Cuba just happens to be former secret police for their previous US backed dictator, the police response is slower in poor or primarily black areas, and one of the side quests talks about how the only time guns were being restricted in America was when black people wanted them. Mafia 3 is a game where you hear on the radio about a black kid getting shot and killed for knocking on a white man's door to ask for directions in the 60s and then you see the same thing in the news when you minimize the game and look at social media. You get multiple subtle hints at the main character's PTSD from Vietnam as well as one of the main characters talking about trying to cope with his. They make great use of the soundtrack both during main mission gameplay segments and on the radio and there is some very strong lines and acting in the parts of the story that are filmed as a documentary telling the story of what happened during the game years after the fact.

The only problem I have with Mafia 3's story is the awful cliche of Father James constantly telling Lincoln he will become just like the men he goes after. Well, that's interesting Father as it ignores all facts, logic, the actions of both men, can you elaborate? And no, of course he can't, because characters in his position never can, because it's a hack writing trope frequently used by children's stories and bad anime that somehow gets forced into more interesting material at times. Lincoln literally frees captured black people and immigrants who were going to be sold as slaves to KKK members and this asshole James is crying about Lincoln becoming a monster because he got into the booze and prostitution (which isn't even a bad thing) when he takes over. James has great lines about society, America, coming home from war and trying to make sense of what you saw and did and this weird obsession that he never elaborates on and so much of this part of the story was a bad idea.

You can interpret those moments as him having a warped view of morality and judgement of others from him being a priest (whining about prostitution might make a good case for that), but almost nothing about him really focuses on his faith, and when he does talk about why he became a priest it seem more like his embracing of it was to get away from his violent actions during WWII. A time where he says his rage at the way society has treated his people came out and he felt nothing for the violence he inflicted on others, he could easily be projecting that kind of uncaring use of murder onto Lincoln (which Lincoln clearly isn't really like). Either of those would likely be a fitting and interesting thing to focus on and for a discussion, and it would have been great to see Lincoln finally be a character to call someone else out on their bullshit when it comes to this terrible story trope. Unfortunately, it's left at the usual character whining about you becoming just like the bad guy, and like always, the accused character can never just ask, "How?" Another issue is that some of his lines in the documentary, while great, can either be perfectly fitting or not make much sense at all depending on what you choose for an ending.

Shooting is improved from Mafia 2 and feels more impactful, you can die fairly quickly and be stunned and knocked back when hit, enemies typically react heavily to being shot and don't always die but lie bleeding out on the ground still moving and talking giving it a more real and deadly feel. The ability to activate slow motion while shooting or driving allows for some good gunfights and tight turns and near misses while driving. You can take a more stealth approach with stealth kills and melee attacks, which have a good variety of different animations depending on your angle, speed, use of cover, or weapon.

The gameplay loop of needing to take down each area by talking to two people, going after the two people that control the areas rackets, and then taking down their boss to control the district can get repetitive, but the areas do offer their own type of setting with some different objectives. Going after the main boss of each areas is often a strong point, offering a good set piece where you try to hunt them. These include an old flooded amusement park, a high rise hotel, and a sinking ship in the bayou. It is also helped that every time you take out one of the two lower guys you get a good scene from the documentary style footage filled with interviews talking about Lincoln, the people who helped him, and his war with the Mafia.

Most of the problems with the game seem to be from making a larger open world and trying to do things to copy other games in the genre rather than doing something interesting gameplay or story wise. Mechanically the most interesting thing about this game could have come from your three under-bosses, they all have great lines and scenes but you never really mechanically do anything interesting with any of them and needing to please all of them to keep them alive and keep their upgrades takes choice away from you. The city and areas surrounding it are good but so many of the side missions have you doing generic car stealing, races, driving around to pick things up and for a game that already lacks fast travel they really didn't need multiple versions of these kinds of activities. You can call in someone to bring you a fast car for free that makes getting around easy and someone else to pick up the collection money from your three under-bosses but a lot of things feel more like busywork rather than someone that was added because it was a good, story necessary, or thematic idea.

The worst part of the needless busy work comes from recruiting people to join you instead of killing. In order to do this, you need to wiretap areas of their territory, so you need to find junction boxes and do a lock picking game and then plant a bug on them, each bug requires you to find three pieces of scrap scatter all round the game's map. Bugging also allows you to see item pick ups and enemies in the area if you use a vision mode, which was previously said to be his training and senses from his time in Vietnam and training but the need to wiretapping messes with that narratively and wastes a lot of time if you want to do it, causing you to frequently run out of your way or stop that car to pick up some item to get more wiretaps. They also like to have you drive away from an area to go talk to someone who will tell you where to go in the area you just left, it doesn't take that long but it's just normal time wasting pointlessness you find in almost every open world game.

I recommend anyone who wants to play a game for its storytelling, those interested in seeing good use of world design to aid in the telling of its story and themes, those interested in the themes and time period this game covers, or someone just looking for a good open world third person shooter to try this game. The worst parts of the game can be pretty easily ignored with you only missing a few scenes with supporting characters (and probably some upgrades you don't need or will never use), I'd recommend looking these scenes up online if you do decide to skip the gameplay though because they are well done and give more insight into the characters.

I did have a large amount of stuttering when I started the game that would have made it unplayable, Steam forums said to fix it by changing process priority, shutting off my wireless, and doing a few other things. After none of that worked I fixed the problem by unplugging my Xbox One controller, the game ran perfectly after that with no bugs or glitches of any real consequence.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/986992835504189440
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Side scrolling action game where you use a sword, ranged fire magic, and a dog companion summon to fight enemies. Controls well, mostly good looking stages, good music. Useful and entertaining shops in each level where the shopkeeper gives you a new update of the area presented like a short broadcast. If the game just consisted of stages like the first three of the five I'd say it's a pretty great action game for the NES.

Main source of challenge tends to come from potentially falling off of cliffs and the cheap enemies who suddenly appear when you are on platforms that will knock you off of them, both from the knockback effect of getting hit and how things just spawn in or stage hazards that suddenly attack when you get near them or when they load in (at times when you are or are nearly making your jumps). Stage 4 and 5 are just terrible, with four being a short level of avoiding cliffs and high damaging lava with enemies that just can't decide on their pattern and a terrible boss fight, and five being a constantly repeating maze of the same rooms and minor boss fights until you take the correct door which then leads to a cheap instant kill trap that you seem to have to exploit the game to avoid then two terrible final bosses.

Strange decision to change from sword to magic attack by ducking and scrolling through inventory instead of just making use of the select button.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1361031121975222272

Simple puzzle game with some similarities to Katamari Damacy as a racoon controlling holes destroys a town. Start as a small hole that grows as you consume things until you can absorb everything in the area. Puzzles start to come from interacting with certain parts of the environment in order, using fire or water on things, using a catapult to launch absorbed objects.

Residents talk over a bonfire underground about what happened to them, conversations are amusing. Not really sure what to take away as a focus or message as the raccoon seems to be working for an exploitative and destructive capitalist styled company, but the raccoon is also an asshole, and the town gaining a large raccoon population is kind of portrayed as being invaded and by dirty destructive people unnatural the original environment (but I guess you could also look at like colonizers taking over an area).

Well worth a playthrough, and it can be relaxing to play but not in the way that I would come back to it after finishing it as the short and linear nature of the levels prevents you from getting lost in the flow.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1362934520102543363

An alternate 1980s mecha visual novel with three female characters that enjoy flirting as much as or more than fighting, with a plot focused on identity, queerness, and with both the combat and metaphysical concepts taking elements from Gundam to Gurren Lagan. Three characters to choose from with each getting different faction information and supporting characters, each focused on a different kind of mech they pilot and story/setting information focus with ideas presented often tied around different forms of activism. Nice stylistic art and music choices.

Pretty much all the worst aspects of open world AAA game design. Pointless level system with quite a few skills that will either never help you or that you will never use (or at least it so rare you will use them that they shouldn't have been a skill requiring 2-3 level up points). Frequent bugs with enemies and characters getting caught on or in things, with horrible hit detection that constantly has your and enemy's attacks not registering damage when they hit or registering it when you or they miss (you will frequently get hit, knocked back, have Aloy yell in pain, but have the game just forget to damage you). Depending on the area enemies might attack you through large solid objects as parts of them just clip through it. Unbalanced cheap dull combat that gives you some extremely powerful weapons that make enemies really easy to fight and a skill that gives you a knock down ability with your heavy spear attack (there is no reason to ever use the light attack). Human enemies have terrible AI and fighting them is like playing a lower quality Tomb Raider (the two newer ones obviously).

Terrible buggy traversal system where you can only climb up pre determined spots in the environment when you should be able to easily grab onto smooth flat services that you can almost jump onto, actually climbing things cause Aloy to behave awkwardly as she intentionally misses easy jumps to grab lower handholds in the chain. Climbing tends to be worse and look worse than even the old Assassins Creed games, even going into slow motion for no reason to show off Aloy making safe generic leaps to the next platform that require no interaction from you. Even though you have weapons that fire ropes, shoot wires across areas, and you have a grappling hook (that you carry by magic and is of infinite size apparently) you can't use any of it to move around the environment or in inventive ways against enemies. Because of a device you wear you have a generic Batman Arkham series detective vision mode which does at times hilarious things like telling two experienced hunters that couldn't find any tracks without the aid of technology that maybe the giant robot went in the direction of all the recently smashed and knocked over brush and trees. The game has an awkward camera that stays way to close to you at times making it difficult to see enemies in combat (the camera might move behind you when you draw your bow in such a way that it suddenly moves brush or trees in your way all of a sudden so you can't see). Pretty much every game needs you to move your brightness setting a few notches above the recommended level to actually see anything in darker areas, but even doing that is can be near impossible to make out handholds when night comes.

Weird busywork inventory system that lets you hold up to 100 things but each thing has it's own individual stack that can hold a certain amount so when you pick things up you might see that your space is 99/100 but then you will pick up eight different things. You need to pick things up to craft ammo or for medicine which ends up just being busy work since you should typically never run out of material to craft ammo (even without me taking the skills that have you scavenge more until the very end of the game). I finally realized you can just quickload your last save to heal yourself which stopped some of the wasted time of trying to find and pick the healing plants. To make the inventory system even more out of place you can hold dozens of reward boxes from quests, trades, and merchants that hold items for you outside of your normal inventory, you just need to scroll through each box and select items you want to move to your inventory from each one. The only reason I can even thing of for why this is a thing is because some people give you unique weapons in them and they wouldn't know what to do with them if your weapon inventory was full at the time of your quest reward. The game has one time use travel packs for quick travel between campfires and for some reasons tries to hide the fact that merchants actually sell an infinite use travel pack at the very bottom of a section of their buy list that you will probably never have a reason to look at. There are three different levels of weapons for some reason (and six special ones as part of a hunting lodge quest and the DLC) with the better ones giving you additional ammo types it can fire, meaning there really is no reason for an inventory system for your weapons and it should just give you or sell the best when it feels is best (if it gave them to you for the story instead of needing you to buy them then they could have been used for more environment interactions).

It gives a large good looking world with very little to do but find useless collectibles that you bear with for some good side quest moments. There really aren't that many side quests (really not that many main quests either, the length is just padded by travel and busywork) and a lot of it is such fetch quests and marking and following tracks with your Batman vision. You can find six figures and 30 metal flowers that can be traded to merchants for useless equipment you will never use.

I can't really say that I like Aloy as she is such a combination of smart, stoic, and whiny that whether or not I like, dislike, or don't care about her at all changes by scene, but I did like some of the side characters, it's a shame you spend almost no time with any of them. Some good audio log collectibles, that typically have a better story and more emotion than the main game. I was going to say the backstory for how the robots were made to be peacekeeping robots, that can self replicate, and can consume living material to power and make more of themselves is the dumbest series of potentially apocalyptic decisions someone could possibly make but then I remembered people like Elon Musk are a thing so I guess it's perfectly plausible.

Has the strong art, music, world building, character design the studio is known for as well as well written characters and scenes. Vocal tracks tell the story of the game's main characters and credits song is a combination of the story of your group's journey and destinations. Re-playable due to different location options and characters that you can send off after winning matches, as well as having the ability to lose matches which can narratively feel as much like a victory and loss as winning often does.

Actual gameplay is more sports like and while there are some good ideas it isn't great and is easily exploitable. Both sides only being able to move one character at a time makes it a bit dull and the computer just can't react to certain things well, an ability of one of your characters can end up causing the enemy team to stand confused around your "goal" with them not understanding how to score anymore. With an excellent narrative and world design that is more of the focus though, I'm fine with what feels like a quick simple mini game that doesn't drag down the experience.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1028431723619471360

Adventure game dealing with conversation based confrontations with choices being based on your developed skills and your findings from exploring or talking with people. Puzzles solutions and story elements can be found out through exploration and with the help of your abilities. Entertaining story dealing with supernatural forces and your character joining an event hosted for world leaders and important figures while searching for his missing mother. Different events and endings in each episode that end up leading to some very different situations. The finale chapter felt rushed and while it can end in an interesting way or with at least some conversation events, mine didn't really require me to do anything, and no matter what it is followed by some narrated character epilogues that make it sound like they weren't sure what to do if certain choices were made.

Supported Swery65 due to my love of Deadly Premonition and didn't know what to expect from this. Found a beautiful and bloody puzzle game with a plot supported by its mechanics that tell a story of a gay transgender woman's efforts to navigate the early stages of a relationship, her identity, and her family/friend relationships. In a short time exploring more themes in a more frank way than usual without obvious and expected missteps. With its short length it explores more themes through narrative, metaphors, and mechanics focused around societal violence deterring you from becoming who you are in a more frank way than usual, telling a violent story on queer existence without the expected exploitative content and conclusion often found in similar media. Great soundtrack.

Doesn't always control well.