I feel miserable all the damn time in Frostpunk. Everything feels so hopeless right from the beginning of the map. There is so much loss and so much more that will be lost. It's as though all of my little villagers are being marched to their deaths, and I'm fully responsible.

I love city-builder video games, and moreso when there is construction taking place over time and materials needed to create your little towns. It's usually so pleasant to watch workers head to their jobs or go to their homes in a Tropico, Cities: Skylines, or Timberborn.

Except in Frostpunk, where the survivors dredge through snow to a workplace they will surely get ill working inside. Then after their shifts, they will go home because the infirmary is full of other sick survivors.

I'm deciding if I want to potentially sacrifice a survivor on an expedition in order to find some kind of material to finish a building. The small amount of survivors in Frostpunk are an important asset, but I will give up their lives for just some additional coal to get through a cold snap I'm never certain will end.

This was one of my first experiences of a simulator of its kind where I was always full of dread. The only negative aspect of this is that the fail states are decided potentially hours before the player will see them, which elevates this dread. I never know when something I've done made the rest of my session completely futile until I've invested more time; then that dread turns more into frustration in that I've wasted my time.

I've played through the campaign and some DLC. I'll eventually revisit some other campaigns, because it's a really great game. It's just difficult to put those hours in and only hit failures.

It's a Megaman rogue-like!

Except it handles very well, unlike the 2D inspiration it draws from. There's moving mechanics that feels smoother and more forgiving than its inspiration.

The randomized levels and their orders add a nice touch to this rogue-like. I feel as though if this weren't a part of a 2D action-platformer like 20XX, it would be negatively impacted.

While it feels great to jump and slide through these levels, the weapons and their designs are lacking. Without a diverse array of weapons or enemies to use them on, the weight of the gameplay is really leaning on good platforming, which it has.

I almost made it to the end, but felt as though I had enough runs. The run-and-gun kind of action-platformer couldn't really hold my attention since the 90s, but this one came close to really catching me in its loop. That actually says a lot about how well done 20XX is.

I put 55 hours into Star Conflict, a similar PVE/PVP F2P game from Gaijin. I only put 3 hours into this before seeing the same structure, which is unbearable PVE in early levels, and then impossible PVP when other players are paying for vehicles and parts.

Except in this case, Crossout is pretty boring. You can drive around a desert with uninteresting landmarks, brown colour schemes and nothing but enemies or mission markers around. Even with the vehicle-building aspect, there's no hook or anything to pull the player in, except a sunk-cost fallacy if you ended up purchasing something for this game. Even if you paid to win, I don't see how showing up to the same arena to dunk on bots and noobs would be exciting.

I'd recommend something like Mechwarrior Online instead. Even though you can't build a vehicle from the frame upwards, there is interesting customization attached to lore, strategy, tactics, great gunplay, and actually populated servers for matches.