Immortals of Aveum is a somewhat fresh take on First Person Shooters. Instead of guns you use spells that function similarly to different types of guns.

IoA has an aesthetic that I like to call “MagiPunk”. Medieval or High Fantasy with Steampunk/Cyberpunk elements and influences, instead of science or technology, everything is the result of extremely advanced (often vibrant) magic. From character design to writing styles and themes to even the soundtrack, the influences are obvious and blend together pretty well.

Combat gameplay is fun and fast paced, with some puzzle elements. Although some fights can be overwhelming, with a few too many enemies (with some having annoying shields that are always up), and the fights end up being just red, green, and blue lights flashing all over the screen, which can be disorienting.

The story is basic, with almost MCU levels of writing, including a “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?” Almost every character refuse to be upfront about their feelings and goals, constantly flip-flopping their relationships and ideals, and keeping even the smallest of information a secret from the protag, in an attempt to make 5-D chess plays for… reasons. If even just one character took the time to explain things to the protag, there wouldn’t be as many problems. Instead it’s just a mess, filled with gaslighting and “I don’t have time to explain, just do it!”.

Definitely check it out for the gameplay when it’s on sale.

Biomutant is a game that tries to be a lot of different things, but also doesn’t try hard enough to commit to be any of them.

It’s an open world 3rd person shooter action adventure puzzle platforming rpg.

The open world is fine enough, with beautiful and mostly interesting environments, although some area can look very samey (all sewers look almost exactly the same, for example).

Biomutant claims to focus on ‘kung-fu’ combat, but is so inefficient that you’re better off using anything else. Finding or making a halfway decent gun will get you get through the game just fine.

The ‘puzzles’ aren’t even worth being called puzzles. For the most part you just rotate knobs until the yellow and white parts face in the direction of the matching color. You also have to be lucky to get a puzzle that can be solved within 10 moves. The game also tells you that increasing your intellect stat will increase the number of moves for these puzzles, but I saw no such thing happen in my playthrough.

The platforming elements are slippery, for lack of a better word. Constantly getting stuck in a rock or something, accidentally activating glide which just makes you fall down almost instantly, etc.

The story, what little of it there is, is basic. Which would be fine, but every single line of dialogue is a rough translation of they are saying. Which leads to you hearing the narrator say the same 5 or so lines over and over.

Biomutant is not as bad as people say it is. The game is kind of a fun ‘turn your brain off and shoot things’ type of game.

Vampyr is a vampire action game from the same people that are responsible for the popular/infamous Zoomer simulator Life is Strange.

Despite Vampyr having many interesting themes and ideas, it is somehow one of the most boring action games I’ve ever played.

Nearly everyone speaks in monotone. The environments are all dull, dark, drab and gloomy, with many of the areas looking very samey. Most of the characters aren’t interesting, and the few that are don’t really get to do much.

The biggest issue is that despite being a game about being a vampire, the game punishes you for doing the vampire related mechanics. You can feed on civilians for experience, but doing so can make the district they live in worse, potentially losing the ability to feed on other civilians. Story choices that are in favor of vampires are usually presented as a bad choice.

There are better vampire games to play…