We never really know what we have until it's gone.

I Am Dead is a exploration-based puzzle game that is half hidden object game and half cut-it-in-half simulator. Telling the story of Morris Lupton (who is dead), we travel across the quirky island of Shelmerston to try to communicate with other lost souls by finding mementos from their past. Each of the locations is brimming with life and detail, and it never bored me through the 7 hours of gametime finding little objects that defined a character or connections from one thing to another. Shelmerston feels like a world that lives and breathes, and it only helps that NPCs move around frequently and have fully realized stories of their own. This is mainly a puzzle game, and there are various ways the game has you interacting and solving its interesting mechanic, but you are staying in the game for its excellent world design and lore. One of my favorite experiences of 2020 and another brimming success.

For fans of: hidden object games, The Room series, To The Moon, Return of the Obra DInn, Outer Wilds

I really don't know how to talk about this game without being absurdly biased because this is so My Thing on both an aesthetic and thematic level. It is definitely rough around the edges and there's a bluntness to the storytelling that renders its emotional beats a lot more inert than they should be but the payoff (specifically one of the two endings), is so genuinely beautiful that I can forgive a lot of it and I really really hope Out of the Blue gets to grow as a dev team and continues to make such wonderful, dreamy games moving forward.

I had no intention of buying this game when it was revealed back at E3. The showing was genuinely terrible and I immediately wrote it off. And then I saw a gameplay demo a few weeks before it came out, and I was surprised to see that it didn't look half bad. After I finished it, I'm happy to say that this is easily one of the best games I've played all year. And I've played a LOT of games.

I can't look at many games these days and confidently say that they're made with a lot of passion and heart. The 20 hours I spent with the Guardians easily put the game in that category. The game itself has a lot of problems. From a pure design standpoint it's nothing special. Lots of walking and talking sections, especially at the beginning, followed by battles from big room to big room. Commanding teammates in and out of combat for really easy puzzle solving. On the surface, it actually sounds pretty boring. But once you throw in the staples of this series, like it's excellent characters, dialogue, locales, classic rock soundtrack, and everything else that Guardians is known and loved for, you get a formula that doesn't get old throughout the entire run of the game.

Guardians of The Galaxy is one of the prettiest games I've ever looked at. You travel to so many places in such a short time and every single one of them is jaw dropping. Character models have so much detail on every inch of them, and the effect work is really well done too. Animations can be a bit wonky sometimes, especially outside of custcenes, but the hand animated cutscenes that play during important story beats are really impressive.

Like I said before, from a pure game design perspective, the game can be kinda boring, but the banter between the Guardians that is constantly happening makes everything worth it. The only character I didn't think was up to par was Star-Lord himself, but he wasn't bad at all, and he really shines in the last couple chapters. Anyways, when the game hits it's stride, everything flows so well. Combat sequences are especially fun when the guardians are working together and yelling shit at the enemies and each other while they fight. It's really endearing.

The plot itself is really good, and it takes it's time setting up stakes that you can really find yourself personally invested in. I won't say much about it because spoilers, but I really loved seeing the villain give the story a way to delve into each guardian's trauma and problems. I've never read the comics, but the game did a much better job of communicating how fucked up this ragtag group of criminals is than the MCU ever could, given the opportunities of this medium. Addressing each character's trauma and past mistakes with a unique villain that opened the door to a TON of good storytelling opportunities that the dev team took advantage of. They could've gone further with it, but I think this was a great first attempt.

It's a little clunky, and it's no masterpiece, but it's easy to tell that Guardians was had a lot of talent behind it, and that the people who worked on it love this series and wanted to do it justice. Highly recommend.

Humor can be hit or miss but, at its core, Guardians of the Galaxy remains true to the spirit of the ragtag team of misfits by injecting them with a flarkload of heart and passion, replete with many quiet moments of empathy and growth amidst a sea of laughably easy combat encounters.

Eidos Montreal may have been toiling away in the Square Enix IP mines for a while but it's clear that they still have a team of talented creators at the helm. Would love for Square to let them finish Deus Ex now. Or any time. Please, I need more... I'm asking for it. It's been too long. Please, Square.