A bananas game, and one I had very little interest in due to its seeming dudebro humour and funky physics, but actually giving it a shot allowed it to reveal unexpectedly enjoyable depths in its gimmicky seeming gameplay. Humour’s still shit.

Well, okay, I laughed a few times, and I've played games with worse writing, but it really is there to just give some context to what you are doing, and nothing more.

But what you're doing is a surprisingly fun gun ballet through well constructed levels where each one introduces something new for you to take into account, be it a new weapon, a new enemy, a new environmental detail, or a new twist on an old one. There aren't many weapons and nothing out of the ordinary, but they all feel good to use and offer some interesting approaches coupled with the game's weird character physics and unique movement.

It wasn't long until the start of every level filled me with excitement, both to see what the game had come up with now and to just enjoy its movement and shooting down the artistically adequate corridors (that I did enjoy in some way).

I'm not sure if I'd include it in my favourites list, but the fact that I'm even considering that is such a leap from not even wanting to try it out and doing it only because it was leaving PSN and pushed some button in me. I'm glad I did as I enjoyed the hell out of it, even the somewhat lacklustre finale. I never expected it to blow me away, and it doesn't the way a great game would, but for what it is - fuck yeah, I'd be up for now.

Writing has never been Wild Hog's strong suit, and Evil West doesn't really change that.

At the very least the writing is more palatable than the Shadow Warrior series, exchanging its nerdy wannabe cool guy for a comparably toxic example of masculinity, but at least he isn't such an annoyingly nerdy incel smartass. Still, with a bit of #NoHomo the moment a man dares to show he cares about another and not enough actual feminism in the portrayal of its only positive female character to convince you that they know how to write female characters, it could be unbearable, and yet they manage to somehow keep it bearable enough to not skip the cutscenes, even if they do add little to the enjoyment of the game, just enough context to string the McGuffin-filled missions together.

It's a good thing the game is otherwise enjoyable - while it begins slow and promising little, it starts becoming increasingly complicated (but never too much) and hence more enjoyable with each new weapon you unlock and with its rather neat upgrade system where most of the upgrades actually feel like they add something new to the game, be it considerable damage or a fun effect (my favourite - grenades spawning electric tornadoes) as opposed to just rising some minor thing by 2% like half of these games that saw upgrade systems are all the rage but don't know how to make them actually interesting.

Playing it on Normal I also found the game to have an optimised sense of difficulty where it always feels like you might not make it, and yet usually do - it keeps the player on their toes, trying to use all the game’s systems to the best effect, without ever becoming frustrating, the few bosses I had to try again once or twice hardly a bother.

Which is good because the game has no problems throwing insane-seeming amounts and combinations of monsters at you, most of the bosses showing up as cannon fodder soon enough, what first seemed impossible soon what you eat for breakfast, even if you have to crunch extra hard to make it.

Which is good because it's so enjoyable to tackle them, and it covers up quite nicely that some of the places you're fighting in have very little to show for themselves, half the finale taking place in a huge empty room right out of a 00’s shooter.

But there are some really nice looking maps as well, and I captured more than a few screenshots of some especially gorgeous-looking moments, even telling my partner to look up from the Switch. The character's movement and action also feels nicely weighty, a far cry from Shadow Warrior, another thing I disliked about that game.

All in all, it's a solid 7 - a game safely skippable by those who have little interest in shooters, but a surprisingly fun time to everybody else thanks to its varied and meaty combat system and adequately challenging opponents. Enjoying westerns also helps. If the writing was any good, I might even love it, but as it is, I just enjoyed it, but hey - that's better than half these fuckers I try.

What can I say - it's Worms, man. As a person with a lot of nostalgia for the older games, that's high praise.

I haven't really tried any of the Worms games since the old World Party, because looking at the reviews there just wasn't much point. I played the old ones to death (I still admire my one-worm solo games against a map filled with the hardest AI - I have no idea how I managed to consistently win), but that could only last for so long. The Hedgehogs’ version was a great replacement when the old games became, well, too old (especially as it was free and online), but it's nice to see the Worms back in action, even if the game’s strongest part is doing well what it did great ~20 years ago (the vehicles are so-so).

But to have the ability to play some good Worms in this day and age without going back to an ancient game is quite appreciated (though I guess by now this is also getting there). And as it’s on PSN, even moreso.

Not a game I'll play often, but I'm glad that it exists, and is so good at what it's doing. I won't play it often, sure, but I'll play it again and love it every time.

Had some fun playing it, but it's just so dumb and clunky and the “story” moments of the missions are no fun on repeated playthroughs (which is an inevitability when playing without friends). When I needed more space on my PS5 for another game, this was an easy pick for the first one to go. I might reinstall it some day when I'm in the mood for some rather mindless online shooting with a few somewhat interesting mechanics (mainly the class differences), but I don't know, man. It just ain't that good.

An easy game to love, but also a surprisingly easy game to dislike.

The islands look so cosy, the protagonist is cutesy-cool, the animals you can become are lovely (not to mention that the ability to poop as any bird was a great success with the kids), there are many fun little touches (like being able to pick up animals above your head and deposit them in your bag for later use, or how you can dance on your boat while it speeds into a sunrise), and seeing Tchia kiss another girl made my queer-loving heart jump with joy.

And yet when I had taken photographs of a factory for a mission and the game then asked me to take pictures of three more factories, I couldn't help but feel my finger twitching for the “skip gameplay segment” button.

Because the problem is that the game doesn't have much to offer. The story tidbits can be cute, but most of the game is threadbare and just filler, sending you running across the island back and forth on boring fetch quests while filling the map with icons to gather like you’re in an Ubisoft game (and it's just as exciting as you can imagine). The possession mechanic isn't even as fun as I had expected - you can only possess a handful of things and creatures (no possessing a chair that somebody is sitting on), your stamina for possession is limited per day, requiring you to sleep and eat (boring things) to use the most fun mechanic of the game, and even then possessing items is nearly useless, as none of them have any actions that remain fun beyond the first introduction.

But the clearest sign that the game didn't respect my time wasn't even the factory quest, but when I had to talk to another girl to progress the story, so the game sent me to the other side of the island from her home village where I got the quest, and then gave a short cutscene when I arrived which ended with the girl standing up and walking up a path, calling me to follow. The cutscene ended and I didn't see her anywhere so I checked the map to see where she was and she was back at the village where they had just told me to find her here! A backtrack followed, because I was not ready to quit yet; unfortunately that didn't last.

There are things that are legitimately impressive about Tchia, but unfortunately I couldn't love it, and as it left PSN before I could finish it, hence the grade.

And what's worse - I had plenty of time to return to the game before it left PSN; but remembering the factories I still had left to photograph, I just didn't want to.

Y’know what, I kinda love it.

I think I've played all 5 of the Sniper Elite games, and I have some fond memories of the earliest ones (even if I can't differentiate them), but it would really be pushing it to consider it amongst my favourite video game series. The games were always kind of mediocre, relying on the x-ray killshots to draw attention to them; and yet they had this kind of baseline enjoyability that kept me coming back (as a WW2 FPS fan), and so when I heard the fifth one might actually be a legitimately good game, well, colour me intrigued.

And boy oh boy, it really is. Gone is the whiff of mediocrity when it comes to most of it, with the game sporting some truly fine FPS/TPS action, enjoyably semi-open maps, different ways of approaching objectives, beautiful visuals, and more tasty Nazi headshots than you can shake your cane at.

It's not all perfect of course. The story is as dumb and pointless as they come, even with the AAA level of sheen (though I did appreciate the tiny injections of diversity in the cast, even if I don't think I can differentiate any of the characters on anything but their appearance - where the diversity helps too, I guess). The upgrade mechanic is okay as a minor carrot for a while, but the upgrades are mostly boring and I didn't feel the need for half of them. The weapon upgrade system relies on finding workbenches so if you're looking for anything specific, good luck (ultimately I just googled where to get the sniper silencer). And there are so many options when it comes to attachments and such that I personally felt overwhelmed and mostly stuck with the first thing that worked for my style.

But it just goes to show how good the game is at what it's good at that those are just minor complaints. I ignored most of the writing, as you are anyway wont to do usually as an FPS fan, and took from the upgrades and weapons what I wanted and left the rest at that, because what I wanted the most was to already get into another map and enjoy the moment-to-moment action and gameplay.

Though even then, I played 4-5 maps, then felt it was getting a bit samey, and took a break. A few months later I returned, played 2 more maps, and took a break. And then some time after I returned, finished the game, and wanted more. Partly because I had expected the 9th map to be, y’know, a proper map, but it's such an anti-climatic joke that you can't help but feel like something’s missing. The DLCs are priced preposterously high (at least if you only care about the maps) so I can't imagine getting them without a sale.

Be that as it may though, leaving one wanting might be a good strategy because I sure am looking back at the game with rosier eyes than I had at first, and I feel an urge that the alternate gamemodes are unlikely to satisfy, even if I'm desperate to try (the Axis Invasion is pretty much dead, right?)

So as I said, I kinda loved it; and god, I hope the DLC goes on sale soon.

How fun it is to play evil.

That is, as long as you don't take it too seriously what you're really doing, be it sacrificing your most loyal followers in tremendous torment to horrendous creatures from the deep, or naming your newest cultist “sunflower beauty” and forcing them to marry you, or just making your cultists eat pies made out of their own faeces. It's all in good fun, right?

And I did manage to approach it as such, seeing the cute dark nature of its cult management as hilarious in how horrendous it really is, taking the real life atrocities and lies of cults and adding to them actual supernatural realities. It doesn't really make it any nicer when you strangle your follower in bed for a quest or force your oldest member eat a potentially deadly dish in the hopes of a rare drop, useless as they are for anything else (my god how much ageism this game engenders), but it's far enough removed from reality to amuse instead of horrify. Content warning is still needed though, especially if you do have PTSD from similar experiences.

The combat part of the game is more hit and miss, managing to occasionally be fun but also somewhat chaotic, especially with its weapon selection. But in each and every aspect of its action, it pales when compared to something like Hades, and the crusades quickly come to be in danger of being something you do in order to unlock more things in your camp or to advance the story, instead of something you yearn to participate in.

Speaking of its writing, it isn't deep or particularly involving, but it is delicious in how darkly and forebodingly written it is, the beautiful and moody artistry allowing for more immersion within the Lamb’s eldritch world. I can't say I felt anything emotional at any of the story beats, but I did enjoy the writing for what it was, and I wanted to find out what exactly does happen when I kill the last false God.

The way to that point can be a struggle, and you'll probably fully upgraded all your combat and follower skills long before you arrive there (I hadn't even killed the third boss when I had already maxed them myself). The endgame base management can be a bit lacking then, relying on setting personal goals (e.g. get as many followers you can - quite difficult with the speed the fuckers keep dying) and a late-game free DLC addition (which, granted, is pretty fun, and adds more horrible and amusing options to the game).

But for a few weeks this game was what my partner and I kept returning to whenever we could, developing our cults and swapping tales of new discoveries and our horrific misdeeds. Whatever its faults, its pros are also many, first and foremost how well it suited us gaming together solo, bringing us together in how horrible we were to our poor cultists. For that alone it's one of my favourite experiences of the year.

The game is so good that the moment we finished the campaign in the PSN version with my partner, we went out and bought the full version with both games and all the add-ons. It's simple the most fun I have had in a game in a long time and it's one of the funniest and (occasionally) most thrilling games I have ever played, and amongst the best coop experiences, both when you work as the prefect team, throwing out meals like clockwork, or when some little-big things go wrong and you can't help but laugh out loud at it all.

However, I can imagine this game going really wrong if one of the players is very competitive, controlling, or serious. You have to take it in good humour, both the successes and failures, or you might end up hating it instead (or, more likely, your partner will, and perhaps you too).

Well, I'm off to playing Overcooked! All You Can Eat - already, it looks absolutely delicious.

Pretty pointless timewaster. Lots of stats to balance on the items, if you're so inclined. I'm not though, so the gameplay has to suffice, which it does, to a degree, a bit like a better looking Vampire Survivors, but I found it to run out of steam fast, especially how it seems that on Android you could constantly continue respawning as long as you are willing to watch awful trailers for other games. I did, for a bit, putting the phone aside, until I understood the meaninglessness of what I was doing. Perhaps the paid version on Switch is better - I don't know, and probably never will.

Having completed the tutorial and one level in coop and basically uninstalling it after my partner announced that they don't really like it, I can't really fault them.

While I, as an action-game fan, can see the potential here, and that it's not nearly the worst of its ilk, it's also just not good enough of an introduction for the uninitiated, with its weirdly off-centered character placement on its isometric camera, or how it lets you choose classes but then gives you no class-specific abilities in the first mission (instead overwhelming you with an upgrade screen afterwards), or how the guns feel so light that you can't even feel when they're running out of ammo and they're reloading again (which happens a lot - and the only good mechanic here, tap again to reload fast, was present in the much better Helldivers already), or how there doesn't feel to be any difference between how the guns shoot, or how godawful the writing is, or how the game just doesn't feel much fun and cohesive and you're just running around spraying, praying, and reloading.

Perhaps it gets better, but first of all it should have convinced us to continue. What a shame. I guess I'll try introducing my partner to Helldivers instead.

Funny, until it's not. Intriguing, until it's not. Meaningful way to spend one’s living time, until it's not.

What a disappointment. A game about life and death and partying, it does have a few moments of poignancy, but it's mostly filled with empty blather.

It starts well enough, with a surprising and amusing introduction to its world, but it quickly becomes clear how little the writing really matters and how slowly any development happens, with the main action being leading your twin leads around chasing social macguffins. When around the middle of the game I finally met the devil and he told me that I have to visit two more people before I can challenge him, I groaned at the meaningless stretching of its playtime. Not to mention the long silent runs with occasionally repeating dialogue or sending you from island to island for no good reason or revisiting islands that you've already been to but have nothing visually new to offer while you silently run across through the same boring area, wasting more time whenever you take another wrong turn.

In short, the game doesn't seem to have much respect for its player’s time; or itself really, with its many “meta” jokes about limited player interactivity and barebones world-building and whatnot - it really isn’t that cute to call something you made bad when it really is lacking in what you're making fun of, and I wish creators understood that and instead of trying to be funny, laden with heavy “hi us kids” energy, they would just concentrate on their strong suits instead of mocking the player for even playing their game.

Which is all to say that it's a shame. I would have gladly finished the game on my own, but I just couldn't get myself to boot it up again and so just finished the second half of the game on YouTube. Reading the comments, I wasn't the only one.

And having now finished watching it, I'm not sure whether even that was worth it. There are still some entertaining moments, even some intriguing happenings, and I quite liked where the story of Satan's siblings headed ultimately, but I'm also glad I didn't have to play to get there myself and that really doesn't bode well for something trying to be a “game”.

So much for being excited for Oxenfree 2 ...

Seems like a perfectly acceptable Devil May Cry, but I don't think I really have any room in my life for these games any more.

I loved DMC3 (though when I discovered the penultimate (?) level was just all the previous bosses again, I quit without even bothering), played most of DMC4, and enjoyed DMC (the remake), but there’s just something about the gameplay and feel of DMC5 (and probably dmc overall by now) that leaves me cold. Perhaps it's the clean yet fumbling gameplay, crisp yet unexciting visual direction, or the extensive yet meaningless writing.

I liked that there seems to be a nice variety to the moves and enemies, but it wasn't enough to call me back when there are so many other games vying for my attention (partly coming down to preference because the game I'm playing instead, Evil West, really isn't better, but hey, it works for me).

The female sidekick also has some problems, as expected. She is cool, fast-talking and arrogant in an entertaining way, her dynamic with Nero rife with amusement. But she still confirms it's men making the game, the male gaze for example when she bends to pick up new items in her workshop being rather annoying, and while I cannot deny that it works as titillation, it also works to undermine her character (and my respect for the game).

It doesn't help that every male character also feels like he was written by a 15 year old, typing out their “cool” fantasies.

10-15 years ago I might have loved it, but now it's another series that I just don't have the time for. It's not bad enough for me to be sure I'll never try it again, but since it's leaving PSN, and I have no intention of ever buying it, well the chances are not great. I don't mind much.

This nonviolent game about becoming an adult after you've already come of age would be easier to digest if it wasn't from a company led by a known emotional abuser. I mean, you'd still have to accept its very middle-class fantasy approach to growing up and achieving your dreams, but it sounds good and looks nice and doesn't play quite like any other game I've played; even if I probably wouldn't play a longer game like this for, well, long, because when it comes down to it you're doing very simple things that would probably suit a flash game or something (and if I have to put together one more goddamn speech bubble, so help me god …).

The mechanics also sometimes seem ephemeral - for example I wonder how the relationship survived me replacing the girl’s family photo with the guy’s stupid action figure during moving in or the guy answering with a happy face when I put three sad faces as the girl; the gameplay often doesn't really matter much, is what I'm saying.

But the central relationship is exactly as cute and mostly believable as it has to be for what the game is trying to accomplish story-wise. Having gone through somewhat similar experiences, and being at the beginning of another relationship, there’s some inherent resonance in the story, especially on how the end isn't the end and life goes on, and how fulfilling and enjoyable it can be, even when it feels like that could never be. I didn't find the game not nearly deep enough to matter much, but there's enough verisimilitude to give the game some effect.

Just too bad about that abuse, y’know. From the person apparently still leading the company, y’know. Just too bad.

I think I regret giving them that one euro :>

A pretty-looking and smooth-riding experience, it lacks the thrills of a first-/third person camera due to its isometric view, but amply makes up for it in other regards. The only reason my grade is so “low” is that I quickly found out that these kinds of storyless repetitive sports games aren't really quite for me (I prefer different kinds of repetitive games, e.g. first-person shooters :p ). It also means I haven't made it far into the game and considering I haven't played it once in months, it felt weird to keep it under my actively playing games. But for what it's worth, I still have it installed so I might return to it for a ride or two now and then. That too is a recommendation of a kind.

A comedy game that is trying its best to zap away its fun with frequent annoying repetition (even more before the game informs you of a skip button) and absurd puzzles and continuity. The absurdity is the joke, but if even the settings menu is so incomprehensible that I just gave up trying to understand it, you're pushing it.

Many of the puzzles also run out of steam long before you are done with them (especially some minigames), forcing you to repeatedly retry scenes that have already lost all of their humour potential. The absurdity here works both for the benefit of humour but also to the detriment of solving the puzzles, often relying on trial-and-error to find the correct answer, with a lot of tiresome cutscenes upon nigh-inevitable failures. And if I have to see Steve, the harbinger of repetitive actions for (mostly) lacklustre jokes, one more time …

Ultimately, if you are open to its absurd and frequently scatological humour, there's enough laugh-out-loud moments (and occasional snickers) to justify the game's existence (and the one euro I paid for it), but I still finished it on YouTube.