I like the pleasant surprises with games. When you’re seeing something that looks very unassuming and then it turns out to be much more than it first appears. While I don’t remember if I’ve ever played the very first original freeware adventure of Detective Grimoire, I did play the second game Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp. It was a cute little thing that didn’t feel that much evolved over the freeware adventure titles you’d see back on Newgrounds, even though it had good visuals and voice acting. So I didn’t expect much from Tangle Tower either. Turns out, this time the developers decided to really step up their game. Even if it’s not all great.
Tag: Recommended
Happy about: Yakuza Kiwami 2
Less than 2 years ago I’ve finally experienced Yakuza series for myself with Yakuza 0. And it was the best and the worst way to get introduced to the series, it seems. The best, because it was an absolutely amazing game. The worst, because neither the remake of the original, nor this remake of the Yakuza 2 get close to what was great about 0. That said, this game is still really great on its own.
Happy about: Black Mesa
Several months ago I’ve decided to replay original Half-Life and it’s official expansions and it was done mostly due to this game I’m going to talk right now. Black Mesa is a full remake of the original Half-Life made by a huge team of fans over the course of the last 15 years and it went from being a fan response mod to the buggy Half-Life: Source to a completely standalone commercial release permitted by Valve. I originally played both the old 2012 mod release and the commercial version in Early access about 5 years later but didn’t get too far. It felt rough, some balancing changes were pretty bad and overall I didn’t have much hope in the project. Now that it’s out as a full game, I gotta say that the polishing the game received over all these years is pretty amazing. Even if a lot of my original concerns turned out to stay true.
Happy about: DOOM Eternal
When the new DOOM came out in 2016 almost everyone was in love with it. Me personally? I thought it was a fun game, but it lacked a lot of things I liked about FPS games. With the classic Doom titles the entire level was the challenge, whereas 2016 had a more arena-based design where each separate encounter was the challenge. At times, I found it boring, at times it had genuinely good moments. But overall it was a solid FPS that got elevated into something more due to its technical elements, its visual design and most importantly its fantastic soundtrack.
DOOM Eternal, right from the first teasers of it, was showing willingness to reintroduce a lot of the exploration and a lot of arcade silliness of the classic FPS titles back into the formula crafted by DOOM (2016). Was the resulting mix successful? Well… More often than not. It’s the “than not” parts that kill the enjoyment with the game.
Happy about: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
When Koji Igarashi left Konami and later announced a Kickstarter project to revive his “IGAvania” take on Castlevania series, I was excited. Despite usually preferring the exploration, rather than the action RPG aspects of the projects IGA has worked on before and despite not sharing the same reverence for Symphony of the Night as so many people have, Bloodstained sounded exactly like what I’d want to play. It looked like a cool mix of ideas from later Nintendo DS IGAvania entries combined with a more grand presentation of Symphony, something lots of people will find enjoyable in their own separate ways of playing it. 4 years later and one surprisingly good (but completely not my cup of tea) side-game later, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was out. And yeah, it’s pretty damn good.
Happy about: Devil May Cry 5
I’ve had pretty high expectations of DMC V. Capcom have been on a roll recently, initial looks at the game were promising, reviews from everyone into the series were praising the game and what I’ve seen of it played live looked very fun. But I wasn’t in the mood for Devil May Cry most of the year and have only gotten to playing it now. Perhaps I’m still not fully in the mood, perhaps I’m a tad disappointed, but while really good and fun, Devil May Cry V didn’t excite me as much as I expected it to.
Happy about: Trine 4 (and a few words on Trine 3)
It’s been a long time since I’ve played a Trine game. I didn’t enjoy the original much, but the second game was really good. Third title had a very bad reception for reasons I’ll explain, and I expected the series to be dead due to it. Yet here we are, Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince was released a few months ago to everyone’s surprise (or at least mine) and I decided to check it. And also 3, while I’m on it. It was a rather pleasant experience.
Read more“Happy about: Trine 4 (and a few words on Trine 3)”
O tempora: Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve played a Half-Life game… They were never really as important to me as they were for so many people. I did enjoy them all, I played quite a few mods, tried making mods myself (never got far), revisited them a couple of times and still have a lot of respect for what all of them were going for and how they innovated and influenced gaming in general. But I’m not really specifically a fan of the series, more of the admirer.
I planned this revisit since the fan-made remake Black Mesa is nearing its completion, and after finishing the original decided to revisit both of the game’s PC expansions developed by Gearbox Software (the third official expansion Decay remains officially console only, though there is a mod I decided not to play). With all of this done, I feel like my overall opinion on the game hasn’t changed much.
Happy about: Spyro Reignited Trilogy
Despite playing a lot of PS1 games as a teen, I completely missed out on the original Spyro trilogy and haven’t played it until 9 years ago. Back then I decided to give both best known PS1 platformer mascots a go and while Crash Bandicoot series didn’t click with me at all (I did kinda like the last of the original games, though), Spyro was an incredibly pleasant surprise. It controlled well, had great levels, stellar music by Stewart Copeland, visually aged shockingly well and felt like a true timeless classic – and this is coming from someone who rarely likes platformers. And while I liked the sequel a lot as well, I did get bored by the third game that felt like it was going for needless gimmicks instead of simply being fun and never finished it. When I heard of the remaster coming I was curious about how the games will be handled and if any of the occasional annoyances will be fixed since the game was being completely rebuilt from the grounds up on Unreal Engine 4. The Reignited Trilogy ended up being enjoyable, but somewhat confusing.
Happy about: Blaster Master Zero
Despite playing Blaster Master on NES (well, NES-clones, as it was all we had) as a kid and distinctly remembering its amazingly catchy soundtrack, I never got particularly far in that game. Actually, I never even fully understood how it worked. So when a remake, Blaster Master Zero, was released on 3DS and Switch, I didn’t care much. As time went, however, I discovered more about the game (via the amazing Digital Foundry episode on the port, for example) and got increasingly more curious. The game had an exploration focus a slight metroidvania vibe and I love that stuff. With the PC release of the game earlier this year I no longer had any excuses to not play it. So, here we are.