Eternity in a Box

Signalis gets under your skin. I will, past it’s runtime, continue to live within you. This horrible tragedy, horrifically engrained in your mind. Twisting and turning in your psyche until it cements itself as one of the most impactful experiences in recent memory. If you’re not put off by the dozens and dozens of references and homages to other media, it will manipulate you to love every frame of its horrifying tale of dying in a long dead machine.

I am shaken to the core by this experience and it became one of my favorite games of all time. I feel lucky to having been born in Germany and thus being able to read most of the untranslated text on screen, with the exception of maybe the Japanese text. It is a game deeply tied to the DDR and other eastern countries under the Soviet Union. All of my ancestors lived in eastern Germany and thus have I been heavily influenced by the tales of my parents and grandparents alike, for all of my post Mauerfall upbringing. Signalis is a punch in the gut. A sweet one. A pain I did not want to end. Having the historical cultural knowledge to view Signalis through a lens of the divided Germany’s elevated my experience a lot in that sense, I believe.
Mechanically a wonderfully done Survival Horror game with lovely puzzles and very well executed difficulty curve that never felt unfair to me, narratively a shiver inducing psycho-horror mindbend that will stick with me forever.
The soundtrack goes from somber to hectic and chaotic in a heartbeat, pulling one into the many locations of Signalis world.
I’m in awe of this masterpiece and by no means done thinking and writing about the game, while probably replaying it a hundred more times before I go under the ground. I can’t express my love in a totally for me satisfying way yet, but eventually I will find the words to do this masterpiece justice.

Spark's pretty neat. It does all of the things Sonic can't seem to pull off even tho Sonic Team being an enormous team. Mainly, it convinced me that the Sonic formula of Adventure actually can work.

I technically didn't finish it, because I died in the last level after 20 minutes, because the game taught me earlier not to dash on walls, as dashing during the speed passages on walls normally disconnects you from the floor, so I didn't try when the game expected it from me and I'm not really willing to replay these 20 minutes of gameplay, because the dev thought it would be a good idea to introduce a life-system just for that one level. I fundamentally disagree with his design-philosophy here, it doesn't serve anything other than frustration should you run out of lives, in a game that doesn't have them in literally any other level.

Before that tho, the game's really fun and has great levels it's fun to speed-run actually. The combat is brainless mostly, but better than what Sonic Frontiers cooked up last year and as this is a direct Sonic fan game I will excuse the comparison here and I hope you do too.
Soundtrack goes REALLY hard and the overall presentation works pretty well too.
It this goes on sale and you like speed-based platformers, I highly recommend this to you.

For 2 days I own a brand new PS5 with Demon Souls and God of War and all I'm playing is this at my silly little desk...

Don't see me stopping anytime soon

Update: I stopped. This can't go on forever. I saw what I would need to do in order to unlock the Devil and anxiously backed off

This is actually way better than I would've given it credit for by just looking at footage of the game.

It's actually a pretty solid and fun platformer with a surprisingly good soundtrack and fun little references to older PS games. The way it shows of the controller while stil being fun is a welcome surprise. Think of it as the portal themed games Valve puts out to showcase their new hardware. They're all pretty short, charming and very to the point.

This is basically one of those, but without the Portal in it, so 0/5 stars :(

For me, Bayonetta is a lot of fantastic setpieces, breathtaking choreography and cinematography, combat and immaculate vibes that all culminate to a game that wastes a lot of its potential.

The setup and world really intrigued me in the beginning, but halfway through, I lost most of my interest in and hopes of any plot-threats resolving towards the end and it came as I expected. The story in terms of overall strucutre is really messy and to see how it is merely reduced to stitch together the interesting levels, it is just that. Hideki Kamiya seems to have written the story himself and it shows. For example, how often the flashbacks from the beginning are repeated over the game had me rolling my eyes more than once.

My second major issue with Bayonetta has to do with the minigames, which I can for sure appreaciate, but go on for too long imo, especially the rocket level.

I can aknowledge that I'm not very good at Bayonettas gameplay, so I will refrain from making any remarks about difficulty, enemy placement or combat pacing, though I had encounters that were buttery-smooth, where my brain faded into a moment of really clicking with the different mechanics, before I got my ass beat the moment another group of enemies spawned 10 meters further in. But I would say that I can appreciate the mechanical depth of the game and what a great mechanic dash-offset actually is.

All in all I'm really happy I played it. I liked it a lot, other than my review would suggest, but I really did. The sheer style the aesthetic, UI and animation bring to the experience really took my breath away and I just wished aspects such as the story and dialogue were given a bit more consideration and coherence. Personally it's on par with MGR Revengance for me, another Platinum game I played this year. They may go for different styles, but the feeling of extravagance and high quality gameplay and cutscenes served the same itch for me personally. Really looking forward to playing 2 and 3.

"It's only in the deliberate destruction of potential that the thing you make reveals itself"

Producer 2021 goes HARD!
Finding meaning in this post apocalyptic hellscape while vibing to the immaculate Jazz tunes in the car, composed by none other than ThorHighHeels themselves, is all I ever asked for.

The visuals are brilliant and transitions from scene to scene often happen seemless, which makes the world feel so much more real and grim altogehter. The interface too is snappy and responsive, wasting none of your precious time.
Lots of characters and scenarios from Producer 2021 will stay in my mind as the writing is really really good. I deffo want to play it again and discover all of the things I missed out on in my first playthrough. The attention to detail in every scene is really really cool throughout.

This game features a menu button for trigger warnings and although this shouldn't be as special and outstanding as it is, the way it has been implemented is phenomenal and I wish for more games to have it.
Easily one of my favourite games of the year

The four extra campaigns are definetly neat, but limiting the player to only play them with the cars for the base game and making the added ones the reward for beating these extra storylines definetly works, but feels less exciting than to go in trying to figure out the new drifting mechanics of the new vehicles.
I just disagree with the design philosophy of structuring the DLC in this way, as I found myself having unlocked all of the cars, but not really having anything to do with them. By the time I had them all I just felt like needing a break from the game.
The mechanically incredibly tight game that is Inertial Drift still works throughout the experience. It's my favourite arcade racer and getting back into it brought me a lot of joy. The new tracks felt a little confusing and counterintuitive though and the overall feeling of this experience is pretty similar to the base game.
The bottom line of this is, that the Twilight Rivals Edition works wonderfully as an extension of the base game, but does not break any new grounds. The new little opening sequence is nice though and the price is really fair.

I hate to rate this as low as I do, because while playing I loved it and was ready to give it a tasty 4/5 just for being so fun and having well designed stages.
Sadly though, I can't, as this game severely lacks content, is artificially stretched out and with it's overload of menus becomes frustratingly slow over time.
The gameplay is fantastic, I loved it.
But having to play every single song once in the campaign to unlock it in challenge mode is fine imo, but why can't I choose the difficulty for the campaign mode and have to play all of the songs on the lamest and easiest difficulty first? When I learned that there are various difficulties for the spirit mode, but you have to unlock them by playing all of the songs on the higher difficulties in challenge mode first, I got dizzy. You have to play every song multiple times to even attempt it on a harder difficulty. This progression makes for horrible pacing, because after the first two songs, the easiest mode will become boring to most players, but you are forced to play it through regardless. This worked against my enjoyment.

This game could be amazing, with more songs, a better campaign mode, less time in menus and if the DLC button were not directly on the title screen, almost doubling the amount of content for 1€ per song.

From what I've heard FF Theatrhythm Curtain Call is just that. I have only played the demo of that as of right now though but am already happy about the addition of button-support.

Holy shit, it's sooooo good.
The hint system is PERFECT and every adventure game like this should integrate a system similar to this one.

After seeing the ending, I couldn't stop simultaneously crying and laughing for over half an hour. I'm pretty sure my flatmate is very concerned with my well being right now, because I definitely sounded crazy.

I have nothing but love to express for this game and the incredible team behind it <3 !
I feel just like I did after finishing Thimbleweed Park. I'm so incredibly excited for what terrible toybox will do next.
It feels like nothing they announce could ever hit me as hard as the teaser for Monkey Island 6 did, but they did it once, they may just fucking do it again.

If I admire this studio for one thing, it's their subversive approach to adventure games. And I'm here for it! I will always be