A bizarre and obtuse thing that I cannae imagine playing without a guide. There's a cool premise here, and later stuff that crops up is interesting, but everything about it feels like you're oil wrestling while an invisible clock ticks down. I had alarms blaring and lights flashing while I struggled to navigate conversation branches to just ask a dude what was happening, then the station fell into the sun and the game gave me a score of 27. Apparently that was one of 12 or 13 possible endings.

Reading a guide is just you being directed to different floors and rooms to talk with folk, and I don't see how you could know to do any of those unless you were hunting down every single NPC and asking every single iteration of dialogue options, which could take hours. Hours you don't have unless you want to do seventeen playthroughs.

I really liked the vibe of it all at the start, but it quickly became so frustrating to just interact with. A real shame, because I feel like some tweaking could have resulted in a wee hidden gem.

I will give it props though for the difficulty select screen. Three sliders.

Ship Simulator
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Disease Spread
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Respect for Player
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Feels weird calling this complete as there are DLC seasons I will absolutely be playing, but fuck me I had to come on here and talk good shit about this game.

One of those I got recommended years ago when a steam sale was on, and grabbed but never touched. Came up in the randomiser when I was picking the next thing to play, and I'm so happy it did. You see, I'm a sucker for games where you need to use ciphers and figure out codes. An absolute cow for that stuff.

In comes The Black Watchmen. Working a desk job for a secret agency trying to keep the world safe from paranormal activity and dangerous occult organisations. Sitting at my PC smiling like a fool as I browse a mixture of real and created websites to figure out info on situations. Scouring invented facebook profiles to get the right data to trick a secretary into giving me access to a medical org's intranet via email, A REAL EMAIL I SENT AND RECEIVED!

God, it just feels great. Some puzzles are mental and I'll admit to googling for help with a fair few, but the ones you get all on your own make you feel like the smartest dude who ever lived. Going from basic stuff like using an ASCII to Hex site to decode a note, to taking virtual tours of a real museum in order to find security cam placements so you can advise a team where to break in and steal an artefact with Old Persian cuneiform that needs translating.

This whole thing hits a VERY specific niche I like, and I cannot recommend it enough to people who are similarly insufferable.

GREAT WORK, AGENT.

I was enjoying the challenge, and about the halfway point I just couldn't be bothered playing any more. Not a clue why. Like a switch flipped in my mind and went "You're done with this".

I've noticed this happening to me more and more, and I'm fine with it. I used to push on with games I was clearly going cold on, because in my mind I NEEDED to finish what I'd started. But since I hit my 30s, it's like I've managed to stop lying to myself, and allow me permission to just drop stuff if I'm not feeling it. It's very liberating. Try it sometime!