Replayed for the first time since launch to see what the famous Updates were about. They must be good, people never stopped bringing them up every time Hello Games added a new type of fern.

All these years and the game is still an exercise in prefab asset tourism - once the novelty wears thin and the artifice sets in, you come to realise that all of the tension comes in the form of anticipating what colour the trees are going to be on the planet you're leisurely approaching. No Man's Sky does about as poor a job of conveying information to the player as Destiny 2. This thing is now a hulking behemoth of retrofitted mechanics that gracelessly clash together, and poorly explain themselves with a haphazard collage of tutorials and tooltips leaving the first thirty minutes of this game with the UI looking like fucking a ransom note. Way to make space travel feel like homework.

The game is rightly dubbed a spiritual successor to the Fallout series, but does so much of it better. At least when compared to recent Fallout games, that didn't reach the heights of New Vegas. It's a welcome change that a game of this type is rather short and with tightly contained areas which enabled the developers to put more effort into the details. Locations, their characters and their stories are all well written and worthwhile exploration. On the technical side the game sometimes feels rough around the edges, but more often than not I was really immersed in a wonderfully colorful sci-fi world.

Playing Hollow Knight and coming out of it saying: "Uh, yeah, it's like, Metroidvania Dark Souls dude." is a take so shallow that a mere glance at the store page's screenshots would prove that to be the case. Yet, after finishing the game it's also the most glowing compliment I can give it, as it marries the components of both styles in a remarkably elegant way.

The moment-to-moment gameplay is Castlevania, the environments Metroid, the level progression and music both at the same time! Add to that the atmosphere typical of a dying world, as well as elements like recovering lost resources after death, and you should already know where this sentence is heading.

The atmosphere of Hallownest is one of the densest, thickest and most engrossing you can find in gaming, where all characters, the warm and hospitable, the engimatic and elusive and the outright hostile, give the world a feeling of being lived in and a life and identity of its own. With the compliments out of the way, I would also like to vent about the size of the map. It is way too dang big, to the point where traversing it is a chore and I found myself constantly praying for quicker traversal tools.

Where the game should have taken less from Dark Souls is the main story (which is the only part of the plot I can discuss, having not bothered with the add-ons). That one is too much like FromSoft's seminal work. But we're getting into spoiler territory.

Another point of contention I have with Hollow Knight is its spells and nail techniques. The former feel a bit useless if you're willing to grow a spine and face the enemy head-on, locking eyes and unleashing a storm of attacks. Normal attacks that is. I rarely ever used the special nail techniques, since they are situational at best. Why would I want to charge up special moves when the additional effects they have aren't worth the effort compared to a simple string of normal attacks?

All things said, the game really is a cute little gem and i see why people like it so much, but it just didn't blow me away. I've seen a lot of (overblown) praise from my friend circle about this, so my expectations, as with any game which receives too much hype and acclaim, were somewhat let down. But it speaks volumes that a game I only played because it was in a bundle and gave me something to talk about with some nerdy girls at a party kept me going way after the day of that celebration.

Firewatch falls in the same traps as the usual “narrative” indie games /v/ has come to despise: Too much focus on the idea of the game than the actual execution of the gameplay itself. For once, Firewatch had potential and could’ve gone somewhere: in a large and wild area, colorful and lush, it could’ve found a way to be compelling, original and even touching. Unfortunately it turned out to be another mundane walking simulator with little to no gameplay just like Gone Home and/or Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. All you do is walk around with a walkie talkie, investigate random objects, and hear Delilah bitch at you. The story is typical indie game garbage and there is little to no character interaction outside of the walkie talkie. If I wanted to see the world of Firewatch and be amazed by the graphical details, then I would get out of the house and take a drive to the closest national park.