While a lot of people recommended me The Darkside Detective, a comedic point and click adventure game from Spooky Doorway, when I did try it for myself, I wasn’t a fan and never finished it. Nonetheless, when “Eldritch House” was originally announced a couple of years ago, I got intrigued. It was shaping up to be a very curious investigation focused adventure game with some cosmic/weird horror flavour and with interesting visual design too. That game was renamed The Séance of Blake Manor alongside the release date announcement and now that I’ve had time to play it, I’m very impressed. Even if it’s a flawed game.
Tag: game review
Happy about: The Lacerator
When you first see The Lacerator store page pop up, you almost instinctively want to move on. It looks like one of way too many linear trashy horror themed action games designed as low budget slasher movies that became extremely popular ever since Puppet Combo cracked that formula. But where those types of games are linear romps with little to no interesting gameplay, The Lacerator is the complete opposite. It’s a branching paths non-linear horror themed action adventure game with a crazy amount of variation and discovery. Not quite as ridiculous as True Crime: Streets of LA was back in the day, I suppose, but fresh and impressive nonetheless.
Laughing at: Dementium: The Ward (now on PC)
This one’s a bit of an outlier. You see, I have played Dementium: The Ward back on Nintendo DS. And watched people play it to completion on streams. So I was fully aware of what an absolute garbage this game is. But I wanted to get it out of my system, I guess, and have a playable PC version. And be able to easily install it to listen to some of the worst soundtracks in history of gaming. So, without going any further – you shouldn’t consider this game seriously at all. But, it is very cheap, the PC port is really good, so if you’re in the mood for some astonishing horror themed trash, this can be entertaining.
In love with: Silent Hill f
Even before Silent Hill died, many fans of the original 3 games (and The Room) had doubts it can come back. Apart from pleasant surprises like Shattered Memories, that played completely differently anyway, the franchise has turned into crap. One last glimmer of hope was Silent Hills that got cancelled almost at the same time as it got revealed and the dream was dead.
And then, after years of Konami going full pachi-slop, there were serious hints of the series revival that I personally dreaded. When the garbage called Silent Hill: Ascension was dumped onto the world (“I like to make jams!”), it only reinforced my feelings that we will see more crap. Silent Hill: The Short Message was better, but played like Shattered Memories except with extremely heavy handed messaging. Only when Silent Hill 2 remake came out and turned out to be solid, if incredibly safe and forgettable, did it start to feel that maybe the franchise can be revived.
That’s how we get to Silent Hill f which is both the best Silent Hill game with combat since Silent Hill 3 (I admire The Room, but it’s a difficult game to enjoy), but also… not much of a Silent Hill game. It’s weird, but in a very good way.
In love with: Sword of the Sea
Journey by thatgamecompany has been rightfully considered a classic for over a decade now, a perfect culmination of ideas the team has played with up until that point. But when several team members left and created their own studio Giant Squid, their first project Abzû was highly liked, but never reached the same cult status. Which is a real shame, because it is one of the most beautiful and medidative games I’ve ever played with really fun movement. A few years later, the team followed it up with The Pathless, another game with really cool movement, but that one I did not finish. It felt like a very odd mix of open world-ish design with the meditative pace of Abzû (that had linear levels), so the end result to me felt very boring. Several years later still, the team decided to mix the best ideas they’ve had in all projects since Journey into Sword of the Sea and it’s really fun.
In love with: Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025)
It’s very odd to attempt to review a game like Tokyo Xtreme Racer, released in 2025 after a year in early access, as it feels both too simple and too complicated to explain in modern day game market. Because, it’s a game about street racing, where you battle other cars on a section of the Shuto Expressway to see who’s fastest and… that’s really it. The mechanics are simple and they don’t really change across the entirety of the game that can easily take over 20 hours or more. The rule of the “battles” are also dead simple. And most of it has not been changed drastically, it seems, since the original Shutokō Battle on Dreamcast came out in 1999 that was localized in United States as Tokyo Xtreme Racer. In a way, it’s a game from a bygone era. And yet, that’s the best thing possible.
Happy about: The Rise of the Golden Idol (with DLCs)
A few years ago The Case of the Golden Idol really impressed me. It was a solid investigation game that drew a lot of ideas from Return of the Obra Dinn, where the gameplay revolved around investigating a scene frozen in time to get certain key words, and then putting those key words in specific forms to explain what happened. It had a unique visual style, really fun plot that gradually revealed itself through your investigations and even the later DLCs were a great addition to the game, providing a solid prequel to the invents in the main game.
But the developers decided to go even further and develop a sequel and then also plan a year worth of DLCs for it. Which is the main reason I have not reviewed the game up until now – I don’t like playing “unfinished” story-heavy games. But now that it is finished, I have to say that the sequel is considerably less fun than the original game, but is still really good.
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Thoughts on: Mafia: The Old Country
Well, Hangar 13 has finally had a chance to make a proper new Mafia game again. While it seems that Mafia III had its fans, I found it to be terribly boring and having barely anything to do with Mafia in structure, tone, storytelling or anything else. Then was the remake of the original game, awkwardly named Mafia: Definitive Edition, that was certainly not “definitive”, but a very good attempt at a remake of a classic, that was even better in some ways. But still, it was a remake of an already great game, so not original or new. And now Mafia: The Old Country – a story set decades before the first game in Sicily, a fresh setting and an attempt to tell something new. They certainly tried with this one, that I can’t help but respect, but the results are not as exciting as one would have hoped.
O tempora: Heretic + Hexen
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Just as it was the case with the original Doom titles, I’ve only played a little of Heretic in the 90s. My proper “formative” FPS experiences, I suppose I can call them that, happened later with Duke Nukem 3D and Half-Life. And for one reason or the other, I never had much desire to revisit the “Doom clones” from Raven Software, even as they became the “reliable mid-budget game developers” during the 2000s and 2010s, before being completely absorbed by Activision and turned into another machine to pump out Call of Duty content. Plus, I’ve heard horror stories about the level design of Hexen, so I wasn’t really keen to experience that either.
But, in what appears to have become a yearly tradition, Nightdive Studios have created yet another remastered release of the classic FPS titles that are running on some version of id Tech – Heretic + Hexen. “As you remember them” collection of both titles, both of their expansions and with two new expansions on top. And I’ve decided that it was finally time to experience what if Doom was fantasy.
In love with: Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater
Half a year ago I was revisiting the Metal Gear series with the Master Collection Vol. 1 that is now finally in a good state, and was pleasantly surprised by my experience with MGS3. Up until that playthrough, I had more respect for the entry than love and have far preferred the first and the second games. But the replay has shown Snake Eater in a new light to me, which was one of the main reasons I’ve decided to grab Metal Gear Solid Δ (Delta): Snake Eater. At the end of that previous review I wondered if Delta will be the better way to experience the game. And now I can definitively say – yes.