OneShot is a wildly interesting game. It's a few fairly straight-forward puzzles littered around a moderately-interesting-but-also-dying world. You do puzzles to advance the game, and guide Niko to their destiny. Yeah Niko's a cat-person-child of questionable gender but just go with it. Which is kind of the whole premise of the game: There's something weird that isn't explained, but-yeah-just-go-with-it.

I guess that's also the charm of the game. The characters are wacky and so incredibly charming, led by Niko who is so incredibly well-written that you can't help but love the poor little catperson.

By the end, it's so wildly high-stakes and heartbreaking that you can't help but be drawn in.

KIND OF SPOILERS FOR THIS ONE LINE, BUT NOT REALLY: I will say that the "postgame" was a lot weaker to me and felt unnecessary. I was happy with the ending, and continuing it felt just... it was fine, but unnecessary. END OF KIND OF SPOILERS IS HERE

So yeah, I highly recommend you play it because it's so incredibly good. As a caveat, if you don't find it charming by the end of the first area, the game probably isn't for you, because the game lives and dies on the charm of the characters.

The gold standard for survival-crafting-zombie-whatever-early access-genre-whatever games. It's still in early access and has a severe endgame problem (in that there isn't one), but everything in Project Zomboid is so, so good.

It's disappointing that development isn't faster, but from when I bought it until now, if it was a completed game I'd still be incredibly happy with it. If it ends up the way they've planned it, it'll be one of my favorite games of all-time.

It's top-down, doesn't rely on being a great shooter or gaming complicated AI or special infected or monsters or dinosaurs or some gimmick enemies-- it's just zombies. You can have 'em run, walk, shamble, or do some whatever combo. You can pick how many you want. And that's it. Just don't get bit! And feed yourself. And find shelter. Don't get too fat. Make sure you have ways to entertain yourself... Make sure you have an idea for food long-term... And heat for the winter... Oh god, there's so much!

If you're playing with a larger group and enjoy the base building aspect, you can essentially play The-Sims-in-an-apocalypse, which is super cool. There are tons of assets, you can organize a metric shit-ton of different items, there's mod support, there are just so many options in the game.

Unfortunately, once your base is 100% set up and self-sustaining, there's not a lot more to do. Allegedly we're two major updates away from the Big NPC UpdateTM, but NPCs have been added and removed from the game already during engine overhaul. There's a mod that adds them in, but it's a bit janky and doesn't work in multiplayer if that's what you're looking for.

So yeah, you can get your hours out of it and those are high quality hours, but it is 100% not a complete experience right now. So if you're looking for the survival-crafting-whatever-the-hell peak of the mountain because you like base building and survival, yep this is the peak. If you like mowing down hordes of enemies and breaking AI to survive (ala something like 7 Days To Die)... eh, I'm sure there are mods for that, but it's not really supported all that much.

Highly recommend, though. Especially with friends right now. I go back to it once or twice a year for a full "playthrough" until there's just nothing left to worry about and I've re-established a society consisting of like four people.

Bioshock Infinite pulls the same trick that generic action movies do: It looks cool and seems better in the moment than it does thinking back.

I played it at release, I loved it and it was crazy, and then when I thought back on it... it's so fine? It's an average shooter with a fairly milquetoast story with a fairly milquetoast twist, carried by a couple of interesting lead characters.

When I tried it again a couple of years ago, I realized how short it was, and how much of it was just so incredibly hollow. It's fine. It's a generic, average FPS with a kind of interesting gimmick that feels worse and worse the more you think about it in retrospect.

Then again, it's cheaper than a movie and will kill like 8-10 hours on a first playthrough, so it's probably not a bad investment.