Minecraft:
I was entranced the first time I played Minecraft. Now, not so much. The updates are slow to come and when they do, it seems to be a mob and a handful of blocks. It's been years since something truly game changing dropped. The closest is the deep dark and the warden I guess, but that is almost a pain to play. The slate down there takes forever to mine, even with diamond tools it feels like your dipping your most valuable tools into a vat of acid. The warden is specifically intended to be nearly unbeatable. When you do actuall get down there it's only for like... What? A new sensor block? Luckily there are mods and those still manage to keep Minecraft fresh. 10/10 when it released for the pure novelty of it, 10/10 for what the mods can do to it.
10/10Kingdom Hearts 2:
Similiar to the first one, I played it as a kid and keep coming back to it. The controls are still tight, combat is still insanely fun. The story only gets more convoluted though. It's loads of fun, even when replaying it.
10/10Kingdom Hearts:
I played this first as a kid, and keep coming back to it. The controls are tight, combat is insanely fun. The story is a bit... eh. Convoluted at times. But it's loads of fun, even when replaying it.
10/10Cassette Beasts:
I'm impressed. I've played a few Pokemon style games, but most have been pretty meh. Not contributing too much to the genre. Cassette Beasts is different. They took so many elements from Pokemon, gave them all new twists and paint and then added their own elements to form something that stands out.
10/10Zelda Tears of the Kingdom:
Somehow manages to improve on Breath of the Wild in most ways. I played it pretty much non-stop. My only real complaint is the companion abilities are often hard to activate in the middle of battle. Otherwise, it's damn near perfect.
10/10Okami:
I bought this on a whim mostly due to it's unique sumi-e art style. I had not seen a game use an art style like that. It's a great Zelda-esque game that has references to Japanese mythology all over. The combat is nice and fluid, the story is engaging, the art style is unique, and it's light hearted in general. Also, you play as a wolf. The graphics were sometimes hard to visually parse back when it first came out due to it's stylization, but is nice and clear in the recent re-release. Definitely recommend. Overall, its just a pleasant time.
10/10Ori and the Will of the Wisps:
They took what made the first game good, and made it better. The combat in particular feels more satisfying. This game similiarly oozes polish.
10/10Outer Wilds:
I did not expect to like this game. It's a exploration, space sim, mystery solver sorta game. I held off on playing this game as that sounds... boring... It was not. Not in the slightest. It's such a good game, however there is not much more I can say about it, as the game itself is centered around revealing the mystery. It's good though.
10/10Inscryption:
This is another game I did not expect to like. It presents itself as a horror card battler game. And it is that, technically. But also not. This is another game that is hard to talk about without spoilers, so the less said the better. It's a great game, and worth a try.
10/10Hades:
Another hit from Supergiant. Unlike the last couple Supergiant games, this game can be confidently categorized as a roguelite hack-n-slash. The game requires multiple runs to reveal the whole story, and you can raise or lower the difficulty as needed. Supergiant did not lock you behind a git gud wall unless you want to be. Controls are tight, combat is fun, and they add more rooms and bosses as you complete runs to help prevent some of the stale-ness that occurs with other roguelites. Heavily polished and with a great soundtrack like usual.
10/10Deathloop:
Deathloop has alot of core elements from Dishonored. It's a stealth assassination sorta game still, but with a vibrant coat of paint and it leans heavier on a mystery solving core. The ending was a bit... eeeh. But otherwise, I enjoyed it greatly.
9/10Beat Saber:
The best VR game imo. I was iffy on it at first, but got it anyway and I'm glad I did. I was grinning my whole first session. I still play it periodically. There are unofficial mods and they became basically necessary. The base songs in beat saber are all very techno-y and start to blend together. With mods like beatsaver though this game can be played damn near indefinitely. If it were not for the mods though, this would be a 7. On its own merits, the base songs are kinda bland and the cost for new levels is pretty damn high. Just the 13 imagine dragons levels is 40$! This is counting a near 30% discount for it being a bundle! Including mods this is still a 9 because the beat saber devs seem bent on frequent no-content updates that breaks the mods that make it worth playing indefinitely.
9/10Superliminal:
Another short puzzle romp. The core mechanic involves perspective altering the world. You can pick up objects and scale them by placing them in different perspectives. It's pretty damn cool and worth a play.
9/10Heat Signature:
Heat Signature surprised me in how entertaining it is. You get a random character, backstory and goal, then you then have to make you way through space-ships in a top-down combat style not dissimilar to Hotline Miami to complete that goal. The random nature of each run and variety of items made it alot of fun. I played this several hours straight and enjoyed it. After a few days, I think I experienced most of what the game had to offer and dropped it, but it was alot of fun. Very much a quality over quantity purchase. I feel like playing it again now... Edit: I did. I played it again and it turns out, I had beat it before! I didn't drop it, I finished it. And now I did again. LOL
9/10Monster Hunter World:
I always wanted to try Monster Hunter, and did on the DS at first, but the controls hurt my thumbs. Years later Capcom released Monster Hunter World on PC and I got my real chance to try and... It was pretty meh at first. The combat felt slow, it was clunky, and I had little clue where I was or what I was doing. I did not vibe with it. I then played with my sister and boy, is this game better with friends. Highly recommend with friends. Kinda meh without. Eventually you get a feel for the controls as you play. Similiar to the Souls games, the combat feels clunky at first because they lean into animation follow-through. You can't cancel out of every attack, so you have to time your attacks. The monsters are huge, look awesoem and tower over your character. Combat is challenging with the monsters being a threat, but generally fair. The end-game grind kinda sucks, but I would still recommend giving this a playthrough.
9/10Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep:
I was only able to play this one relatively recently with the release of the Kindom Hearts bundles. I never owned a PSP. This is a solid game, the abilities were neat. The game is split between 3 scenarios, each with a different character. They did a decent job making each character feel a little different. Overall, decent and worth a play.
9/10Transistor:
Another game by Supergiant. It's hard to fully fit this game into a single genre. It's a combat game that is a bit real-time, a bit turn based, all good. Good graphics, many possible builds to try and with a great level of polish.
9/10Pyre:
Yet another game by Supergiant. This game is a sorta sports, combat, arena game. Again, with a ton of polish, great sound, controls, etc.
9/10Ori and the Blind Forest:
This is at it's core a fun platforming game. It looks good, it sounds good, it's open to exploration, and the controls are tight. I basically picked it up and played it non-stop until I completed it. It's oozing polish.
9/10Dishonored:
Dishonored is alot like Thief 2, but instead of theft, it's more focused on assassination. The story is good, game mechanics are great. It rewards stealth heavily, the lore and world building are both excellent. Every map has different routes and tactics to accomplish goals. My only complaint is it's so dark, grungy and depressing. Still, a very well made game.
8.5/10Space Chem:
The first game I played from Zachtronics. It's a challenging puzzle game where you need to make chemicals by building a physical program of sorts. Like visual programming. It was fun, but man, those later puzzles get pretty frustrating to figure out. I still enjoyed it though. Speaking of I enjoyed most games from Zachtronics.
8/10Supreme Command:
Supreme Commander while not the same, it hits a similiar chord for me as Empire Earth. I played the campeign through and it was enjoyable, what makes it even better is the mods from the community which often added whole layers to this game.
8/10Tunnet:
A quirky little game that had me hooked for hours. It's not a long game and will absolutely not appeal to everyone, but I enjoyed it. You dig in tunnels and setup a rudimentry network by dropping down routers and splitters while horrors beyond human imagination show up. Very weird idea, but fun!
8/10Escape Simulator:
Alot of fun with another person. Played co-op with my sister. The puzzle are sometimes difficult but solvable. Community levels are sometimes quite buggy though and DLC tends to be a bit expensive for the amount of content.
8/10Pokemon Alpha Sapphire:
Possibly my favorite classic-style pokemon games. It's Ruby/Sapphire with the polish, pokeamie, and even some pokemon of X/Y. I like this one enough to have done several runs of it.
8/10Viewfinder:
A short puzzle romp with a really cool core mechanic. Using pictures, you can alter the levels. Has some similarities with Superliminal. They do a good job switch things up every set of levels. Its worth a play.
8/10Pokemon Sword:
I like the mix of open world and classic pokemon paths. The world building and design is pretty decent. This game does a better job than most pokemon games in giving the gym leaders personality. It has some performance issues, but overall these were pretty fun.
8/10Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes:
It's been a while since I played this one on steam, but I recall it being entertaing and a surprise entry for Might and Magic. The story was meh, but the core gameplay was pretty solid. It reminds me of some card battlers where you have to stategically place units, and the unites have various abilities. Skeletons for example, become bone walls on death, giving you defense on a specific lane. It was an unexpectedly good time.
8/10Empire Earth:
Empire Earth is pretty similiar to Age of Empires. It's like they seen Age of Empires, and tried to out pace them. It's showing it's age now, but I played this game for too many hours as a kid. It has tons of units, and especially with the DLC, tons of ages. You could go from cavemen all the way to the space age. It was great, I was terrible at it, but it was great. Very much worth a try if you like Age of Empires.
8/10Zelda Breath of the Wild:
Quite possibly the best 3d Zelda to have been released. You are not locked into any path in-particular and are largely free to just explore. It has polish in looks, mechanical design, and gameplay, but hoo boy, there are times where the framerate tanks and the game becomes just a pain to play. That's pretty bad for a dedicated console release. This would easily be a 10/10 if the framrate drops were not so extreme at times. (No, really, like a flippin power point at times.)
8/10Planetside 2:
Planetside 2 is quite possibly the only semi-modern First Person Shooter of this scope. You can have a max of about 1000 players on a single continent all fighting to claim it. There are a handful of classes you can freely swap between and tons of guns to choose. Further there is armor and aircraft to boot. Death does not matter much, and you can jump right into the thick of it after dieing pretty quickly. You certainly don't have to wait for some que to fill up before the game starts. It's free to play with the option of purchasing certain xp boost or weapons. Despite that, the developers do an amazing job keeping the game balanced so it is not pay to win. Literally, the best weapons for most factions, are the default weapons. The only weapons truly better, are weapons you get for completing directives, which involves getting alot of kills, and spending real cash does not really give you an advantage there. The main flaws with the game are periodic bugs introduced in updates, a small developement team, and age in general.
8/10Bastion:
Bastion is the first game made by Supergiant. Its a solid game, that plays as a twin-stick shooter dungeon crawler. It's decently entertaining, well polished, and has a narrator that helps give the game an extra little something. Despite being a good game, this is probably the weakest in the Supergiant catalogue, which just shows the quality of what Supergiant has been producing.
8/10Pillars of Eternity:
Pillars of Eternity is a great throwback/successor to the old CRPG games such as Icewind Dale or Baldur's gate. They have their own game system, lore and history written out, unique combat mechanics, and an interesting story-line. All of the side quests are either quality lines themselves, or server as like, seasoning for larger quests. It's well done and worth a try.
8/10Pillars of Eternity 2:
Pillars of Eternity but with pirates. Similiar to the first game, the quests themselves are quality. The lore, storytelling and such, all quality. I coulda done without the shipcombat, I just choose the option to board and use the normal combat system as it's more interesting to me. They tweaked the combat systems in ways that make it different but not dissapointingly so. Im not a huge fan of some of the moral ambiguity in some of the main quest options though. They added a surprise feature of truely turn-based combat that I may try in the future.
8/10Dust: An Elysian Tail:
Dust was a surprise entry for me. The gameplay mechanics are not the best but are also not terrible, the story is alright. But the graphics are good and the various elements came together to make a game that was generally enjoyable.
8/10Pokemon Legends Arceus:
Graphically it has some quirks, but it performs well. The new-old pokemon are pretty cool. The open-ish world is nice to explore. I wish there were more dedicated details to certain areas, like places that obviously are nested by specific Pokemon species. Example, Pokemon snap has world details heavily implying specific species live in certain areas. Considering that exploration and discovery are elements of this game, those details would make the world feel more natural. But overall I had fun.
7.5/10No Man's Sky:
No Man's Sky had a rough release. I was hyped, but did not pre-order the game. Was still dissapointed by the launch. I tried it after a few updates had released based on the Internet Historian's 'The Engoodening Of No Man Sky'. I enjoyed it at first, but got bored after a few days. The game has mild bugs everywhere, but it is fun to explore, especially the first time. Eventually the planets start to feel same-y and I dropped the game. Then they released Expeditions, and that is my favorite part of the game now. There are multiple aspects to the game, combat, exploration, base-building, trading, horror, etc, but none of it is massively fleshed out. As of right now, 2022-05-10, they are still releasing updates and expeditions, and I get the most fun out of it by jumping in, doing the expedtions and seeing what they added. Is it the best game? No. Is it worth a try? Yes.
7/10Biomutant:
Biomutant is a charming open world hack n slash style game. The graphics are nice and it's pleasant to look at. The combat is ok, with paries dodges and a decent weapon selection. It's story is pretty meh, with choices not truly mattering much. It also suffers from the open world. Like most games of this type, it seems like they struggled to fill the void with anything meaningful and resorted to alot of copy-paste architecture. Dozens of repeated puzzles to get random tidbits to craft better weapon or armor that will get out performed by your next encounter. I'd still recommend it, but once you start to feel like you've experienced it all, just speedrun the story.
7/10Pokemon X:
Story did not pull me in well, but PokeAmie is a great addition.
7/10Kingdom Hearts 3:
This one came out more recently, and I only played it once. The basic combat controls are still tight and enjoyable, but they made alot of... meh decision. Quick Time Events were always part of the series, but they take it to the max in this game. You'll likely end up using the Disney attraction summons QTE moves and hating every moment of the repetitive cutscenes. They are some of the strongest moves, and some battles become pretty difficult if you refuse to use them. The story continues to go nutso also. The graphics are nice however. Some of the worlds are enjoyable, and there are generally some nice events. Overall, 1 and 2 were more enjoyable though...
7/10Dead Cells:
Dead Cells is a rougelike metroidvania. It's controls are tight, and it has dozens of weapons and items you can get on a run. It is pretty difficult though and there are only so many runs you can do before it all feels same-y. The story itself is pretty bare as well. It's an easy recommend if you like this style of games though as the core mechanics and controls are nicely polished.
7/10Skyrim:
Skyrim is interesting to try and review. At the time it came out, it, like other Elder Scrolls games, had a scale that was unique to itself with nice graphics for the time. It is now aging and looking at it again, I can say there are several weak points. I think my main complaints boil down to repetion and quest quality. There are only a handful of quests lines I would say are actually good. The main line, the lines for the guilds, and some of the daedric quests. Outside of those though, most quests boil down to re-hashed fetch quests. Little substance or interest, placed into the game as filler...
7/10Monster Hunter Rise:
Unlike Monster Hunter World, Rise implements more features that are reminiscent of older Monster Hunter titles. Combat for most weapon types has been made more fluid and faster. Typically slower weapons like Hammers and Horns, while still slow, feel alot more enjoyable to use. The wirebug system is fun and the game as a whole has alot more freedom of movement. That said, the map layouts feel simpler. While there is alot of verticality, it's still largely in one layer and somehow feels smaller than the maps in World. The story feel gutted drastically. In world you feel like you are constantly on an investigation to reveal some mystery, where in Rise, you are just sorta... hunting. In world, the reason you are fighting a monster is often to figure out why that monster is enraged, or what it is doing outside it's habitat or something. There is a reason given. Rise just lazily throws a hitlist at you and says, 'choose any 5 of these, kill it and we'll progress the story.' The also split the quests into Village and Hub quests. Village quests are solo-only and Hub quests are for multiplayer, but can be solo'd. The story starts in Village, and continues in the Hub quests. The Village quests coulda just not been a thing. The only benefit is it helps ease new players in with an easier mode. So far, while enjoyable, I am constantly feeling like the game could be better in many ways. Here's hoping the DLC pulls through.
7/10Kingdoms of Amalur:
Kingdoms of Amalur has some surprisingly decent story telling. The graphics are often bright and pleasant, there are a variety of locations to explore, and a few different builds to try. It's also a long game with a ton of filler though. I played for several days straight, nearly maxed out the skill tree and still had half the game to go through. With the story telling that is there, this would probably be an amazing game if the length was sacrificed to remove the filler.
7/10Empire Earth 2:
Empire Earth 2 drew back some of the unit and age counts and came more in line with Age of Empires in that regard, but they decided to go more tactical with land claims. In AoE and the original Empire Earth, you could build largely anywhere, where this game requires you to build a town center on the territory first. It also restricted air units. Overall though, it was still fun and the changes made if feel more like an iteration that a re-release. I still prefer Empire Earth 1 though.
7/10Pokemon Moon:
These games felt like a bit of a slog at times. There are good aspects, Pokemon designs, regional differences, no HMs! But the game was otherwise meh. Straight alleys, little exploration, sometimes slow battles. I ended up dropping the game and continuing to the end like, a year later.
6.5/10Terraria:
It's got alot of good elements, but it takes forever to really start getting into the good stuff. Like, days of playing to get to the first big biome change. On replays, I find myself bored waiting to get to the "Good Stuff".
6/10Pokemon Let's Go Eevee:
It's a good game but I got tired of the capture mechanics. Graphically great, performance fine. I really liked the anime throwbacks like Jessie and James showing up. Love that. Eventually though I got tired of whipping the controller to capture something and ended up not finishing the game.
6/10Pokemon Black:
For the life of me, I don't know why but these games never pull me in. I don't think I ever finished them. I get like, 2 gyms in and fizzle out. I will give this another shot if/when a remake comes out. In theory it will be the next to be remade.
5/10Pokemon Violet:
This is a painful entry in the series. I want to like it, but I just don't. The open world aspect is neat. There is a whole nother quest chain on top of the "evil team" and gym challenges. I like several of the new Pokemon designs. But that's all badly overshadowed by the terrible performance, the repetitive crashing and the terrible graphics. I could excuse some of this if it were a cross platform game, but it's not! They knew the hardware specs and limitations of their target release platform and somehow still released a buggy non-performant mess!
4.5/10Supreme Command 2:
Supreme Commander 2 took an Empire Earth 3 style turn. The camera is uncomfortably zoomed in to emphasize smaller unit numbers, and the game in general just feels more restrictive to facilitate a faster play-style I think. Anywho, by far not what I wanted from a sequel.
3/10Empire Earth 3:
Terrible. There are some good ideas here, let's be clear. They scaled back the civilizations to make them feel more unique. More akin to Starcraft, than just slightly different units and stats. The graphics were also massively overhauled. That said, the unit selection was drastically reduced, the amount of agest were reduced, and you now only have a single resource pool. You no longer have to manage food, wood, metal, gold or stone. It's all just resources. Because of that, resource deposits on the map lose alot of strategic value. If nothing else, you can put down a corn field and use that for all your resources. Corn tanks, corn walls, corn buildings... it does not matter. The pretty graphics also came at a huge performance cost at the time. It was hard to tell how bad the game was as I could hardly run it anyway.
3/10