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.

I've played a few F2P MMORPGs that have come in the early 2010's, including too much Neverwinter. I've played this on-and-off again from 2015 until now and saw significant developments and expansions - from the janky mess with poor quality of life, to something that loads and feels much better 10 years later. Also, I've never played The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Morrowind or Skyrim, just Daggerfall.

This feels like a good MMORPG, while suffering from the typical MMO problems. There's daily quests that can completely absorb players into unfun loops, fetch quests and an unchanging landscape littered with other distracting players.

However, there's some seriously good questlines in here. Knowing a little bit of Elder Scrolls lore helps to understand what's going on, but the precursor to Daggerfall storyline is new, making this a good introductory point for the entire series. While some of the stories are very interesting and requires player choice for how some areas end up - while creating no significant impact on the landscape, just NPC interactions - is a pleasant relief from these kinds of games. There's also some interesting change-ups from the usual MMO quests of "find this," "slay this," or "get this and bring it back", including a time I had to solve a murder based only on hints that ghosts gave me.

The combat feels much better than other third-person MMORPG systems, where hitting, blocking or getting hit actually have a feel of weight to them. Maybe not as much as a Dark Souls, but it does make a game like Neverwinter feel like an arcade cabinet version of an action-RPG.

For people looking to get into this game on a free weekend, I highly recommend avoiding uninteresting side-quests or daily quests, especially at early levels. Running on a second character in a different starting location was definitely improved by focusing on the interesting story arch of their faction's region.

This game has great discourse! It also has very cute and unique mechanics.

However, it's limited. It feels like an introductory game to something that could have been larger. It also has a lot of jankyness that sometimes impacts the mechanics.

Overall, Falcon Age is a very good and impressive game, but I'm mostly impressed by the writing and how deep it goes into explaining colonialist and resistance.

This is a very impressive and wonderful RPG, simulator, and real mix of genres and mini-games.

I've often seen it compared to Stardew Valley or maybe 2D Subnautica. I feel that this is much more reminiscent of obscure NES and Genesis games, like Echo the Dolphin, Vectorman and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, not just in vibes but in the willingness to be strange (in the case of the '80's-'90's games, not knowing how to be normal). Similarly from that era, the game forces the player to explore and quickly figure out where they are as it shifts genres to launch into different styles of mini-games that are intricate to the plot.

It's charming, cute, fun and incredibly engaging. It has an excellent daily loop in-game that makes me want to keep going. I have a few gripes with it though.

I found the main game of diving, catching fish and coming back, start becoming repetitive despite the assertion that every dive is different. I feel like I spent too long with the game, despite always mainlining quests.

The dialogue is mainly funny and witty, except the internal dialogue is so simplified, cringey meta commentary, or over-explanatory. It has a strange difficulty, where some fights with fish and bosses is a struggle to survive, while puzzles are almost entirely explained for the player. It's also incredibly forgiving too, which actually makes it pleasant.

Overall it's a very great game and definitely has throwback gaming feeling to it but not just ascetics. I'm probably too critical of it than others though and still highly recommend it..

It's Monopoly.

Monopoly can be an incredibly frustrating and long game. This isn't any different. It is nice that it offers a lot of interesting gameplay modes and options to match how different families and groups play Monopoly.
They also did a good job at compressing a lot of options for each player on their move while looking like a pretty decent board. Trading and purchases are surprisingly pleasant on the console, especially since it was a surprise to even see these kinds of things even implemented.
My family currently has three saved games, which we refuse to finish. The curse of Monopoly's standard game mode is that it is chance and predictable - when someone's ahead, they stay ahead. There's no rubber-banding in a game like this, maybe a push-and-pull between first and second place, but there is a threshold in which there are clear winners and losers before it's actually done.
Global capitalism is a virus that's killing us and our planet.

It's the most recent iteration of The Game of Life, which is a very mediocre board game. This era of the game is shorter and incredibly simpler than anything prior to 2017.
This game entirely depends on a spin of a wheel chances and possibly choosing between two options. There's not much to strategize or think about, which makes it decent for requiring little focus. Most games last about 15 minutes and all animations and cutscenes can be skipped or fastfowarded, which is a huge bonus.
There's some stuff to unlock, but it's all cosmetic.
It's not great, but that's mainly because of the source material.

Jackbox Party Pack 10 is a real test with these party packs. It's a test of what new experiences will work with your friend group, what will work with your phone and what works generally as a gaming concept.

I was able to play the >3 player games a couple of times each, before a significant update on November 15, 2023. Rating each of these packs requires a breakdown of each game, so here's what we thought of the 10th one in the series.

Fixy Text was loved by everyone, but me. I believe this is where the device bugs hit the hardest. It's an interesting design that is kind of like Job Job and Quiplash from other packs. The fun lies in how interesting, creative and funny your friend group is, with some minimal support from the game. The game provides some prompting, but doesn't rely upon it, so role-playing elements depend on the group you're with, like Roomerang or Hypnotorious from this pack. I experienced a lot of bugs while playing, including my cursor and typed letters being randomly applied in the text message, making me a chaotic disaster to play with. Everyone else really loved freestyling text messages with minimal prompts and having their wit acknowledged by others gifting them points.

Tee K.O. 2 was a hit among my friend group, and this has definite quality of life improvements over the first. My problems with the first one are mostly resolved in this one, you can re-use text and pictures that weren't used in previous rounds. However, I really didn't like the last round re-using the shirts we've already made and won with - our group really enjoys the surprise and hilarity from introducing new shirts, but this is a new favourite of ours despite this issue.

Dodo Re Mi is a highlight. It's Guitar Hero for your phone, which I'm very surprised hasn't been done yet. It can be played solo or with one other person, and has been incredible fun just for my partner and I to play through. It's what we've spent the most time with and had the most connection to from both myself who has mastered most Guitar Hero games and someone who has never played a rhythm game before. This could have been an entirely standalone game with the amount of work going into it. However, my Samsung A13 really struggled, often skipping, lagging and freezing during the game, or having inputs not recognized or seen, but that's probably all on my phone model.

Time Jinx is a decent trivia game that is something closer to Guesspionage than a You Don't Know Jack or Trivia Murder Party. It makes good use to contemporary popular cultural historical events for trivia questions. It also has decent for rubberbanding for players who either struggled to remember timelines or guessed poorly. It's fun and interesting, albeit not as much as their other trivia games.

Hypnotorious could potentially be the weakest one of the pack. It relies heavily on the group's roleplaying ability, which mine isn't good at, but also has a somewhat confusing premise and prompting. Our group will have to revisit it, but some of them did enjoy it.

The November 25th update seems to resolve some issues and improve games somewhat, but I have yet to try. This isn't the weakest of the Jackbox Party Packs, but it's far from the strongest.

This is the new Simcity.

I was never good at Simcity or knew what I was doing when I played it for years as a kid. While I didn't understand the UI and management aspect of a city, I understood the vague premise: create zones until you make money to build service buildings.

Coming in to Cities: Skylines a couple of decades later and understanding the genre a bit better, I've come to appreciate the micro-management within this kind of city-builder. However, there's more important parts to this game than I've ever seen in a city-builder.

The first part is the actual relationship between systems, from a citizen arriving in your city, building a home, getting a job, and driving between both, everything inch of the city feels like it talks to one another. It's not just zoning and distances from service buildings, but rather, the route, schools, industries, taxes, policies and every aspect of a city-dweller's life feels intricate.

The levelling system is very incredible, especially with the Industries DLC. Towns unlock new features, buildings and policies as they grow, and it impacts playstyle - and vise-versa. I feel limited with a new city, but I feel like it's important, and that my city has grown because of my decisions.

While there's a lot of working systems together, the tutorial and onboarding seems to work well. I'm a veteran of the genre, and while it did come easy for me, learning the new mechanics Cities: Skylines brings to the playing field was well communicated to me.

The one thing that I can't stand, and I know other players feel the same way, is the traffic system. While I understand a lot of what this game explains to me, right down to the reason a building was abandoned and why it was my fault, I can't seem to figure out traffic. I'll build the most progressive and free bussing system ever imagined, but people still choose to drive and block intersections where emergency vehicles will have to get through.

As well, some of those limitations feel frustrating, especially on multiple playthroughs. While I know I want to eventually build a higher-level building, I'm offered expensive lower-level buildings that I'm not inclined to build. The sectioning off of what I can and can't do sometimes feels arbitrary or confusing.

However, this is an incredible city-builder that despite some pushback to the seamless and fun gameplay, it holds up after almost a decade. It also makes me want to buy the sequel immediately when I don't normally buy new releases until sales and patches. I'm just too excited to see what will be coming from Cities: Skylines 2!

I wanted to really like this game, but I only kind of do.

First off, it's cute as heck, the dialogue is fun, everything looks great and it has fun gardening, creature collecting and deck building. It's like a Stardew Valley meets Pokemon meets Slay the Spire combined!

Except it's very minor in all those aspects. Growing plants in the garden serves as the goal for fetch quests, cooking, recruiting Ooblets or selling. It does have similar systems as Stardew Valley, but not as robust or deep as the farming simulator. It also seems somewhat simple, as I'm now hoarding seeds, plants, cooked food and Ooblets, which I'm not sure if a fault of my grinding behaviour in games like this or if the game is not demanding enough from me.

The Ooblets are very cool! Running around towns to find the little creatures then coax into dance battles is fun. They make little noises, follow you around and serve as the basis for deck-building. I mix and match them for dance battles typically as counters or because of their synergy, such as ones that require a high amount of resources to spend their cards along with ones that accumulate resources per turn.

However, these dance battles have huge problems. This part of the game is incredibly easy, and I don't believe that's because of my skill level. Your team always goes first, which is a huge advantage. There's usually a clearly visible order of operations and limitations when looking at your cards, which the AI absolutely ignores. For example, it will play cards with "+2 points" then "+1 to all points gained" and then "+1 point for every card played this round" - we humans should know that the opposite order should be played to get the most points, and it's laughable how bad the computer plays this game. Counter strategies aren't even really necessary, because the computer tends to play cards in a random order without taking advantage of Ooblet unique abilities and synergies, how they can interrupt the players' round or whether the cards can even be played! The computer attempts to steal points from me when I don't have any.

While this is frustrating, my biggest problem with dance battles is the camera. Your Ooblets are super cute, fun to look at and have really cool dance moves. However, when it's their turn to dance, they're obfuscated from view as the camera zooms out, pans upwards, and gives the worst angles of your Ooblets during the dance battle. I want to clearly see these little guys do the "One Step Pep" then "Gavotte Trot," but they're either obstructed or too far away to really get a good look at. Then, when you inevitably win the dance battle, there's beautiful shots of each of your Ooblets gaining experience points, but they're not visibly in the spotlight when they're doing their signature "Boogie Blossom". Also, the music is good with some real bangers, but it needs more of it if the dancing is so intricate to the game and done often.

It's so odd that an incredibly cute and fun game does a disservice to itself. The difficulty and views are my major gripes and if they were somehow patched, it would be definitely be a 5-star game. I recommend this despite my disappointment with some aspects of it.