So, I’m not the biggest fan of turn based RPGs, as I always say when I’m about to talk about one. Neither am I that huge of a “jRPG” fan. I’ve played all of the numbered Final Fantasy games and like most of them, Chrono Trigger is among my favorite games, Parasite Eve is fantastic and all that, don’t get me wrong. But back when the whole PS2 era of Japanese Role Playing Games was happening with dozens of games coming out, I have played almost none of them. Why am I talking about it? Well, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a huge love letter to that whole era of RPGs.
Tag: great soundtrack
In love with: Look Outside
Look Outside is a very unusual type of game. Horror theme in roleplaying games is quite common and some of the most famous examples of the genre and its many subgenres are horror themed. But going beyond just the theme, building mechanics to evoke fear and tension? That’s far less typical. Think of Sweet Home, a Capcom action adventure RPG that is also often considered to be the very first survival horror. A game that is far more of an action adventure than an RPG, basically. Not many games attempt that. From Software experimented with it a bit. There’s the Shadow Hearts precursor Koudelka, of course. Parasite Eve 1 and especially 2. Recently, there has been a resurgence of these types of games, often built with RPG Maker. But they often focus on things that are either too action adventure and barely RPG at all, or vice versa. And those that do focus on being role-playing games often take their main inspiration from titles like Lisa: The Painful or Fear & Hunger, focusing on delivering the brutally hard difficulty, rather than some fun experience.
Now, Look Outside isn’t easy either and I could see influences of Lisa or Fear & Hunger in it. In fact I have played the game on the easier difficulty after attempting to complete it on the normal one first, but I’ll delve into it later. But that’s not the focus nor the selling point of the game. Instead, this game brings the experience that a lot of immersive sims and open world RPGs strive to have – building a personal story in a strange world. And it does it with a lot of style, variety, surreal creativity and fantastic tunes.
Happy about: CULTIC (both chapters)
I am very happy about the rebirth of classic FPS popularity. That said, not many games that attempt to recapture the simplicity and excitement of that pre-Quake/Quake era of titles end up being worth playing. To the point, where I sometimes start to wonder – with how few actual classics there were that passed the test of time and are still beloved, perhaps the “dungeon crawling with guns” approach to FPS is too limiting?.. But then countless imaginative WADs for Doom appear and I come around something like Cultic and my doubts dissipate – no, there’s still a lot of fun and creative stuff that can be done withing the classic limitations. And while I didn’t love Cultic as much as many people seem to, especially the recently released closing Chapter Two, this is a really cool FPS.
O tempora: Sweet Home
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
I’ve talked about movie tie-in titles that became instrumental in shaping the future of gaming when I was exploring The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. But this time, we are going even further back in time to 1989, to a horror themed action adventure turn based party based RPG Sweet Home, developed by Capcom as a tie-in to the movie of the same name. It was released on Famicom exclusively in Japan and has never been officially localized or re-released. Yet, this game and its unique blend of game mechanics are incredibly unique and have never been recreated to this day. And it is also the reason Resident Evil exists.
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.
Read more“Happy about: The Rise of the Golden Idol (with DLCs)”
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.
O tempora: Gex Trilogy
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
My taste in platformers is something some consider unnatural. Despite growing during the era when platforming games of many variations were the dominant genre of games, there were not that many I actually liked. Mario games? Nope. Sonic games? Kinda, but not really my thing. Mega Man? Nah. Classic Castlevania titles? Also no. I admire and respect a lot of entries in those series, but the closer it gets to being just a platformer or action platformer, the less likely I am to enjoy the game, usually. Especially with 2D ones. Exploration focused games, like so called “metroidvanias” I do love. But if it’s just about jumping or jumping and shooting, especially if the game is supposed to be challenging – not for me.
And while there are a lot more 3D platformers that I like, it’s not a gigantic list as well. It lacks Mario, for example. But it does include Gex: Enter the Gecko – a game I have considered to be my favorite 3D platformer for the longest time. So when this game, as part of the “whole” “Trilogy” of Gex games was announced to be re-released, I was super excited. It didn’t need to be a remaster or a remake, just a very good re-release (emulated or not) of the original titles. Gex Trilogy is not quite there, though I’m still happy it exists.