David Szymanski has created a fair share of shorter horror themed titles by this point. He started with some really cool story-driven titles. Achieved huge success with fantastic classic FPS DUSK and continues to work on another big project currently in Early Access – the Thief inspired Gloomwood. And in the meantime has decided to experiment with smaller action adventure games, starting with the adventure Iron Lung and short but very entertaining Chop Goblins. Which were followed with Squirrel Stapler, The Pony Factory and now Butcher’s Creek. And these titles are all kinda…. okay.
Tag: game review
O tempora: Clock Tower: Rewind
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Discussing Clock Tower is a bit strange. On one hand, the original game is still incredible in many ways and at the time was highly influential. On the other – it never figured out how to become a franchise, despite 3 further attempts. The latest entry in the franchise was released back in 2002, but several other attempts to re-create the experience were made since then… only for all of them to mostly fail as well.
Clock Tower: Rewind is the first official international release of that inventive original game. And it’s a mixed bag of a release, with a lot of good and some very bad.
Belatedly happy about: Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
It’s a bit weird – since childhood I had a fascination with planes. Yet, I’ve never went into much of a “fandom” with the aircraft and barely ever played flight simulation games. But one of the games I did play and enjoy as a teen was Ace Combat 2 that I got in a bundle with the used PS1 my parents got me. I found it quite challenging, but it was an exciting experience that attempted to bring the cinematic and almost arcade racing approach to the flight simulation. It had a cool soundtrack, as titles from Namco (before they were merged with Bandai) of that era used to have. Since Ace Combat 2, I think the only flight sim I’ve played was Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X (which was neat) and that’s it.
But I’ve heard very good things about Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown and after years of debating with myself about if it’s even worth it for me to try it out, I did. And while it remains “not my thing”, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
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Thoughts on: Forza Horizon 5 (with 2 expansions)
For years now I’ve been told how Forza Horizon series are “arcade racing”, a type of racing games that defined the 1990s and most of 2000s, the one I used to like a lot. And for years I didn’t believe people and refused to try them out for myself. Well, now that I’ve played Forza Horizon 5, I feel much better knowing that I was right – it’s not an arcade racing game, not what it used to mean. And while it’s a pretty good title in many ways, and I’ve had a fair bit of fun playing the game, it also made me feel very depressed about the current state of the genre I used to find so relaxing.
O tempora: Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Legacy of Kain has been one of the most important franchises for me personally. While it has not been a series I replayed very often, unlike a lot of survival horror classics, it has remained a benchmark of worldbuilding, character writing and storytelling. The incredible work Silicon Knights did when creating the world of Nosgoth for Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain still holds up. As do the stunning writing and cutscene direction of Amy Hennig and her team with later entries, as Crystal Dynamics became the owners of the franchise. There has been only one dud in the main series (Blood Omen 2), and even that game had its moments. Franchise consistently had incredible music, some of the best voice acting in games and one of the most cleverly written storylines… That to this day remains unfinished. Legacy of Kain: Defiance, the final “proper” entry in the series was released in 2003 and was an ending, but not the ending to the incredible tale started in 1996. And since then only cancelled projects, including some incredibly misguided ones, followed. By now, with almost all of the original team spread across the industry (or sadly not among the living) getting a sequel is not just unlikely but may even be preferable. The industry is too different and Legacy of Kain requires a strong vision and choices that development studios and especially publishers would simply not risk to make.
So, given that getting no future games in this wonderful franchise might be the best outcome possible, let’s look at its past with the recently released Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered.
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Thoughts on: Dragon Age: The Veilguard
As someone, who got into computer roleplaying games due to the first two Baldur’s Gate titles decades ago, my takes on Dragon Age were often considered at least somewhat controversial. While I liked Origins, I never cared about it that much and found it quite boring. As everyone pointed at the copy and paste dungeons of Dragon Age II, I called it the best story-driven RPG BioWare has created, and stand by those words even today. And… Hmm, I suppose saying that Inquisition isn’t worth your time was not a very controversial opinion. But nonetheless, I admired Dragon Age world and even Inquisition, for all of the dozens of hours of boring crap, felt like it still belonged to the same world first shown in Origins. The Veilguard offers only tiny glimpses of that and most of the time feels like a Saturday morning cartoon adaptation of the story. Yet… it can be quite alright to play anyway.
Happy about: Sonic X Shadow Generations
Sonic Generations from 2011 was a solid game, elevated by the almost consistent failures of other entries in the Sonic franchise. As despite some positivity with Sonic Colours and even early positive reactions to Sonic 4: Episode I (which became quite disliked in retrospect), Sonic as a series was in a pretty bad spot. In 2024 the situation has changed quite a lot as while there’s still a lot of criticism directed to first party developed Sonic titles, fans finally got some great entries as well – Sonic Mania (2017) possibly being the biggest highlight. Sonic X Shadow Generations is an expanded and enhanced version of Sonic Generations that contains the original game with some updates and changes and a completely new game called Shadow Generations. And as such, it provides a look at what people called a good Sonic game in 2011 and what might be considered a good Sonic game in 2024.
Thoughts on: Sorry We’re Closed
With the wave of true classic survival horror revival that’s been happening over the past five or so years, I’ve always been more excited about games that don’t just copy the existing formula but try to do something different with it. Yet, most of the attempts at doing that so far have been quite poor, usually due to the relative inexperience of the developers preventing them from realizing their big ambitious ideas. Sorry We’re Closed gets very close to doing things well. But it doesn’t stick the landing.
Ugly duckling: The Thing: Remastered
The Thing originally came out in 2002 and was one of several odd “games that were kind of official sequels to movies that didn’t get sequels”. It was sometimes done really well, as it happened with TRON 2.0, which is arguably a more interesting sequel than the actual sequel that followed less than a decade later. The Thing was not done well, but then again – neither was the prequel released in 2011. I have played this game on PC back when it just released and while I didn’t find it great, it held huge promise. A lot of its core mechanical ideas could support the paranoia driven action horror gameplay… it’s just that they didn’t in practice. Then I revisited the game about 13 years ago or so and my opinion on it hasn’t changed much. Now with The Thing: Remastered being the best this game ever could be (without being a different game entirely) I can safely say – it’s not a good game and could not be. But that promise I saw years ago is still there.
Thoughts on: Mouthwashing
Due to the abundance of story exploration games or “kinda adventure games but not really”, it’s very rare I bother playing any of them unless their story or presentation or anything else really grab me. When I first saw the store page for Mouthwashing, I dismissed it immediately and wouldn’t have considered playing it if not for catching a few streams of other people going through the game. Which has shown that this game has very strong writing and presentation that might be worth checking out for myself, even though I have, essentially, spoiled the story for myself with those streams. And you know what – it was still worth it. Even if, the more this game tries to be an adventure game, the worse it gets. And it’s published by russians.