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: Recommended
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.
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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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.
Happy about: Caput Mortum
Imagine the look of an early 2000s horror themed FPS mixed with elements of King’s Field and Penumbra, all wrapped in influences of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, with a pinch of mood of Arx Fatalis and Clive Barker’s Undying. This is a lot of references, but the idea here is that Caput Mortum is a freshly released horror themed action adventure game, but it feels like it could come out back in 2003 and feel right at home there. I mean it in the best sense. And while the game is quite short, it uses its runtime exceptionally well.
Happy about: Herdling
With how many times I’ve seen games going for a moody games about a journey that feature no words over the decades, all I want from them is to just know what they want to do and when to stop. Starting from cinematic platformers of the early 90s and evolving through Ico and Journey, we’ve seen this approach taken so many times. All of the games like this are pretty and atmospheric, but they might focus on different aspects and mechanics. In case of Herdling – it’s about herding cute wooly cattle-like creatures on a journey from a city into the mountains and helping them avoid dangers. It lacks traditional puzzles, doesn’t really have a lot of “challenge”, has some optional exploration at times, but is mostly about moving forward. And it knows what it wants to do and when to stop.
Happy about: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
A few years ago Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered had a surprise PC release so I had a chance to finally experience the new superhero open world title – something that I don’t find enjoyable as often as I’d like. But the game, despite having several notable flaws, was really fun and in many ways felt like a new benchmark on how to make an open world title with fun traversal around said world, and how to build the main and side story content in a way that feels well paced and rewarding, while also fitting with the main character so well. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales followed soon after, and while it was still good, it also felt a bit “too much of the same”, without fully fixing the issues of the original. So where does this leave Marvel’s Spider-Man 2? Well, in some ways it is the best game in the series so far. But in some – it loses a bit of the personality that the first two games had.
Happy about: World of Goo 2
Many many years ago there was a cool website called Experimental Gameplay Project, that, as I didn’t even realize at the time, was full of university projects (specifically of students from Carnegie Mellon University). There were lots of short but very memorable and fun little projects, some of which were just silly fun like Attack of the Killer Swarm, On a Rainy Day, Gravity Head, Tower of Goo or Super Tummy Bubble! (which is basically Suika Game decades before the actual “Watermelon game”) and some were more mysterious and strange like The Crowd. The team behind this project would later form Tomorrow Corporation, but even prior to it, they’ve collaborated on other projects. One of which was done by a mostly two-man team at 2D Boy. The game was a fully realized idea previously shown in Tower of Goo – World of Goo, which was released in 2008 to huge critical success and become one of the earliest biggest examples of independent developer success stories (at least from the critical reception perspective).
Yet, despite the success, following that game up with a direct sequel would’ve been strange. It felt like a more or less well developed idea and its “story” was quite simple. So it made sense that Tomorrow Corporation worked on different puzzle titles that continued some of the themes and ideas, but played very differently. However in 2024 World of Goo 2 was released on several platforms (but with odd exclusivity deals on PC). With the latter being finally over, I was able to complete it and while I have enjoyed it quite a lot, I have to say its existence still feels strange.
O tempora: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – The Definitive Edition
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
While Grand Theft Auto has existed since 1997 and a lot of its basic structure and ideas remained the same to this day, Vice City was an important milestone in its development. Still full of crazy arcade-style elements, this was the first game to try focusing on a story, interesting characters and gameplay that was “grounded enough”. The second game of the “3D era”, a considerably smaller in scope follow up to GTAIII, it used to be my favorite entry in the series. And while revisiting it with the updated and extremely flawed Definitive Edition, I was glad that it didn’t age that poorly.
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O tempora: Tomb Raider IV-VI 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.
Almost precisely a year ago, I’ve experienced Tomb Raider I-III Remastered collection and my thoughts on it were conflicted. One one hand, it was the best way to experience three classic titles in the influential franchise. On another – all games apart from the original weren’t that good and collection itself had some questionable choices made. As a result, I was quite curious about what Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered could be, given that I already considered The Last Revelation the best classic TR title and liked most of Chronicles. These were the games I’ve played a lot and the games that, in my opinion, aged a lot better. The collection includes The Angel of Darkness as well, of course, that I did not expect much from this re-release, given how dreadful my first and only experience with the game was over 20 years ago. So, how did it go this time? In some ways worse with the collection itself raising a lot more questions.