I really liked the art of this one and the general outlandishness of the designs. Like you can play as a knife-wielding mummy in trousers or a baby piloting a mech suit. All while moving through colorful environments of escalating wackiness. And it has vehicles which I always like in games like this, even if these are pretty clunky.

I wish there was a super power, though; it’s just attack, grab and jump which while they have nice animations and a few interesting combos, just don’t offer enough variety for my taste. There are weapons, but those all feel pretty overpowered and are balanced around only lasting a few seconds. The core combat just felt simplistic compared to other beat-em-ups I’ve played. It really makes me appreciate the more expressive move sets of the newer ones like Shredder’s Revenge.

Fortunately it’s short, and has infinite continues in the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up bundle, which was enough motivation to see it through to the end in one sitting. Overall not particularly interesting combat-wise but a goofy and eye catching diversion.

To be fair, I did not play this very long. I was expecting it to be extremely corporate and predatory, which it is. What I did not expect was for it to be very poorly made, which it also is. It crashed within the first 30 minutes. Character models are unreadable, homogenous blobs. Action animations look incredibly stiff and artificial. Environments are drab gray smears. The cutscenes... oh my god the cutscenes are SO UNBELIEVABLY SLOW. The characters are so torpid they make Geralt of Riviera look like Sonic the Hedgehog. It's like they inserted a 5 second pause before every line to give it dramatic weight. The actual result is that this action game simply has no energy; the whole thing seems like it's on the verge of a heroin overdose. Combine that with all the on-screen movement consisting of these blobby characters shuffling randomly back and forth, and the writing and voice acting being bottom of the barrel bad, and this whole package looks incredibly amateurish.

Making this some kind of MMO is a weird choice too. What is gained by taking away my ability to pause the game? How is my experience enhanced by seeing "xXxHOTBABESLAYERxXx" running in circles around my armor vendor? Maybe it's just a nod to Sartre; hell really is other people.

I don’t think it's too much of a stretch to say that Diablo invented the loot box. You kill a monster and something might pop out; it might be incredible or it might be total trash. When such tension was novel it was exciting and addictive. Now every live service game has embraced this mechanic as a means of padding out a game's playtime. A regular playthrough of Dark Souls might see you walk away with, what, 30 or 40 cool weapons? A playthrough of any given Diablo, though, will have you looting literally thousands of weapons, each with a minuscule chance of being cool. One of these models perfectly slots into a live service game's carefully calibrated withholding of joy. Too little and you get frustrated, too much and you get bored and/or consume the content too quickly. With the "Shop" tab prominently on display in the main menu, this feels less like a game and more like a mail-order catalog.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I have enjoyed these games in the past, but this really does feel like Diablo in its inevitable final form: a corporate IP with no soul, fashioned into a treadmill of monetizable nonsense (like $65 mounts!). Content mash, to be drip fed forever.

Pep's Detective Deep Dive - Game 9
A game of departures, of sorts. For developer D'avekki Studios, it's a departure from the "interactive movies" of their previous titles, as Murderous Muses is a fully-3D first-person puzzler that lets you wander around a spooky art gallery. And it's also a departure for everyone's favourite FMV actress Aislinn De'ath, as her character in this is A. blonde, and B. actually wearing shoes.

Murderous Muses has you play a night worker at the Argenta Gallery, on the small island community of Mirlhaven. By day, you hang up paintings and learn about the island's interesting, often macabre, history and customs. You quickly come to the realisation that something is very wrong with the place. One of D'avekki's key strengths in all of their games is their ability to world-build and add just the right amount of subtle horror. Even though their games are built mostly around just talking, there's a creeping dread to them, and it's way more effective for characters to imply all the cosmic horrors the D'avekkiverse holds rather than outright show them.

The main part of the game takes place at night, where you must solve the murder of renowned painter Mordechai Grey. Grey was murdered by one of his final six portrait subjects, and as you watch FMV clips of their portrait sessions (via spooky magic, don't worry about it) it becomes clear that they all have pretty solid motives for it. As with The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, the killer is randomised every playthrough, but with Murderous Muses there's a lot more reason to do multiple playthroughs. During each of the game's three nights, there's a puzzle to solve, and solving the puzzle unlocks a room where you can pick up one of several urns. Placing the urn in the designated area unlocks extra videos, centred around the mysterious and sinister young girl, Kira. Kira seems to be at the centre of all the weird goings-on on the island, so if you're invested in the game's story it's well worth unlocking all of her videos, too.

Side note: Kira is played by Rachel Cowles, daughter of the game's creators, and has appeared in every single D'avekki game. Seeing her grown up a bit in this, compared to the other games, was quite sweet. For a child actor, especially in FMV games, her performances have always been pretty damn good (even if she overdoes the vocal fry way too much here).

So how do you figure out who the murderer is? Each night, the six suspects will have three words underneath their paintings. These three words are also placed on empty spaces in the gallery. Place the suspect's portrait on the empty space above each word, and you'll unlock a short clip of the suspect talking to Mordechai about that word and how it relates to them.

These clips are where you learn all about the characters, their lives, and how they're connected with Mordechai. An undertaker with an unusual appetite, a cancelled comedian (and his creepy puppet), a pair of tennis-playing twins... even for a D'avekki game, the motley crew of maybe-murderers assembled here is a particularly unlikeable bunch.

Watch three clips in the correct order as dictated under the suspect's portrait (which takes a bit of puzzling - the word under a portrait changes after you watch a clip, but they change in a specific order), and you unlock clips of police interviews. You're given a clue at the start of each night (in a fun cameo by Poe & Munro's Klemens Koehring) as to how Mordechai was murdered, and by using these clues you can determine whether each suspect is guilty or innocent in their police interview. If you decide a suspect is innocent, you can rule them out, and whichever suspect has three "guilty" interview answers at the end of the three nights is the killer. Simple!

The game only has one real problem, but it's a big one. My explanation of the game up above is a better tutorial than anything the game actually tells you. The game gives you a tutorial room which does a very poor job of actually explaining the mechanics, then the only other guidance you get is one other video guide, tucked away in a corner of the gallery that most players won't find on their first playthrough. Without a guide, most players will absolutely fumble through their first playthrough and most likely guess the wrong suspect - I got it wrong and the killer turned out to be the person I suspected second-least! Luckily, the game has a lot of replayability, and there's no real penalty for fucking up. After a couple of playthroughs, solving the murder actually becomes secondary to trying to unlock every clip and unravelling the mysteries of Mirlhaven Island.

As usual with D'avekki games, the acting is pretty strong all around. It's no surprise to say that Aislinn De'ath is the standout as undertaker Lilith, showing a lot of unexpected vulnerability in her performance. Also, my heart skipped a beat when I saw bonafide FMV legend Rupert Booth's name in the credits. There's even a part where he says "if I was to show you this...", which I swear was written deliberately. Rikki Stone also puts in great performance as the disgraced comedian Otto - he's a barrel of barely-suppressed rage and is very (intentionally) creepy.

Though it seems confusing from the outside, once you get to grips on what to do this becomes a very enjoyable, even relaxing, little puzzle game.

I've now played every D'avekki game released thus far! Safe to say I've become quite the fan of this studio, and they've definitely helped to develop a fondness for FMV that I never knew I had. I eagerly anticipate whatever comes next from them.

Read my reviews for the other D'avekki Studios games here: The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, The Shapeshifting Detective, Dark Nights with Poe & Munro

Pep's Detective Deep Dive - Game 8
Going from "the two good non-Team Silent Silent Hill games" to this is a hell of jump for Sam Barlow. A far cry from the psychological horrors of his previous work, Her Story is a quiet, FMV murder-mystery that definitely goes into the "not for everyone" pile.

The gameplay is relatively simple: you're presented with an archaic police database system, full of clips from a series of detective interviews with a woman whose missing husband has turned up murdered. Your job is to use the search system to find clips, watch them, and find out what happened. That's it.

It's not immediately obvious at first, but you don't need to do anything other than watch the clips. You don't have to place them on a timeline in the correct order or anything like that. Hell, you don't even need to watch every clip to "finish" the game. At a certain point, the game will decide that you've seen enough to know what happened and gives you the option to roll the credits, should you so choose. But you absolutely should try to watch as much as you can. Why? Because of Her.

Viva Seifert's performance as the titular Her is nothing short of mesmerising. She's natural, she's likeable, and the gamut of emotions she runs through in a relatively short series of videos is astounding. Once you reach a certain point in the story, you begin to really notice all these subtleties in her acting, and it really brings the game to another level. That Game Award she won was well-deserved.

The narrative twists and turns as well as any good crime thriller. The non-linear nature of finding the clips means that you only get the story in bite-size chunks, and your interpretation is always changing based on what new info you've just seen. It's like Sam Barlow dumps all the puzzle pieces in front of you and says "figure it out".

The joy is in paying attention, making notes of any potential keywords and finding that next important clip to give you another chunk of the story. Finding the one clip that recontextualises the entire story was an incredibly satisfying moment for me. And even then, when you've seen every clip there is to see, there's just enough ambiguity left in certain story threads to keep you wondering long after the credits have rolled.

It's absolutely not for everyone - hell, a few years back this wouldn't have been for me either - but if you've got a few hours then grab some friends, a notebook and pen and get sleuthing.

It's Rewind Time.

Mega Man is a frustrating game, which is a real shame, as it holds some interesting concepts! I tried playing the original NES version of Mega Man several times before, but always quit early on because of the amount of unfairly placed obstacles and enemies and never even managed to beat a level. This time I decided to give it another shot, as the Legacy Collection has a rewind feature - which turned out to be a real game changer. (Obviously this wasn't a feature in the original Mega Man, so I'm not going to add any points for it, but I'm glad it's in there, so I could experience the game to the end.)

Being able to do the initial six levels in any order as you please is a cool idea, you can just play the stage you feel like playing at the moment. I've only learned later on that there's an "optimal" progression route or something, but I liked being able to choose which boss to go up against next. Despite being seemingly disconnected at first, doing levels in a specific order can change the way you approach them, as each boss you defeat nets you a new power themed after them. Ice Man's power lets you freeze enemies mid-air, Bomb Man's power lets you detonate an AoE bomb and Elec Man's power makes you shoot electric beams in all directions. Each power has a different use and can change the way you play a stage. Unfortunately, there's a specific case if you don't have Guts Man's power before doing Elec Man's stage - you can't reach an item that's required to complete the game. This was the case for me and I was unable to proceed in the final stage, as I was missing the Magnet Beam and had to backtrack (causing me to have to revert to an earlier save file). Speaking of the final stage, I respect everyone who actually beat it without using save states, rewind or anything like that. It's all the frustrating parts of earlier levels cranked up to 11, featuring boss rematches against all the earlier bosses right before the final boss. Flame Man's spamming fire pillars again and you can't do anything against it? Too bad, enjoy starting from Bomb Man's fight again. The infamous Yellow Devil fight wasn't even that bad compared to some other bosses, as he'd always follow the same moveset patterns. I'm convinced Cut Man and Fire Man can actually read your future though.

After having rewinded more than in my entire playthrough of Life is Strange 1, I was able to have a decent time with Mega Man despite the infuriating game design. Hopefully the later entries will cut back on some of the comically placed enemies and obstacles, because I like the idea with the progression and the unlockable powers!

Pep's Detective Deep Dive - Game 6
This was... something different. Rather than the usual "investigating a murder after the fact" murder mystery, Case Of The Golden Idol presents a static scene to you, and it's up to you to point-and-click your way to the truth of what exactly is going on in the story.

Clicking highlighted areas of interest presents you with a series of words, and you use these words to fill in the gaps of an incomplete "scroll", giving you the story. Seems simple at first, but as the game progresses it can get fiendishly difficult as the story spirals and some parts left me genuinely stumped. If you're really struggling there's a hint system available, but I never used it.

The only real thing stopping me from giving this a higher mark is that the story kind of fizzles out by the end, and I was left slightly let down by it. However, there's a 1970s-set sequel on the way so I'll be looking into that.

An interesting concept done very well, I definitely recommend this if you're looking for a different kind of mystery game.

Pep's Detective Deep Dive - Game 4
The bourgeois are not human (literally)

Well, this was a pleasure. Calling Aviary Attorney "Ace Attorney but with birds" feels like it does a disservice to just how funny, well-written and surprisingly deep this game is. I haven't played Ace Attorney yet (watch this space) but if it's anything like this I'm very much looking forward to it.

The art is gorgeous, with every character and background beautifully illustrated. The writing is sharp and funny, and the socio-political commentary is very clever, even down to the choices of which animal would portray what character.

It's funny, it's profound, and what's more - it's all based on real art, real people and real events. Highly recommended.

The diorama style is well done and allows hidden object gameplay to emerge while not being annoying. In fact, the visuals are striking and would be a joy to look at, if the game allowed joy at any point. The narrative continues to simmer on low heat but never changes pace or even advances, unchangingly squirming in a dark place. It shows you another depressing piece of the puzzle, the protagonist says 'oh hey that's depressing' and that continues until the end. It does not even try to make the slope steeper. Maybe that's the intended structure, but it does not work.