Platform: PC

John Romero has finally made me his bitch and it only cost 97¢. This game was widely panned when it came out and I always thought that it couldn’t possibly have been that bad. Well, I’m sorry to say, Daikatana is not a good game even when considering the context of when it came out. The fact that this shipped after Half-Life and Deus Ex adds even more weight to the case against it.

It was an ambitious game: a first-person shooter with a deep story and sidekick characters to help you along in your quest all played against the backdrop of time-travel and wildly varied environments. What we get are overly-long exposition dump cutscenes, constantly trying to keep your sidekicks from getting stuck on ladders, and, most egregiously, bland FPS shooting mechanics.

Thankfully there is a fan-made patch that helps out with some of the technical problems that still exist and also does away with some of the worst design decisions such as limiting saves based on collecting “save tokens” in the game. If you can make it to the first time-travel jump, it does get somewhat better, but the first episode is absolutely terrible. You are immediately (well after a 10 minute cutscene) dropped into a swamp in which you can be instantly killed by well-camouflaged mosquitos and frogs. I powered through but I can’t say it was worth it.

From the intense non-stop first-person action of demon hordes, to the intense non-stop first-person action of Russian fishmongers! The first Metro game was a just-ok first person shooter with a limited palette of monsters, environments, and, yes, colors.

The second game in the series adds a bit more color and character to the world of post-apocalyptic subway tunnels but never quite hits the mark in terms of game-play. Much of the Metro Last Light borders on being a “walking simulator” as a good chunk of the game is devoted to moving through areas as plot exposition is dumped on the player. Memorable action set-pieces are few and far between.

Apparently you are rewarded for non-lethal kills and interacting with NPCs, but this is not telegraphed at all. I spent most of the stealth portions of the game shooting enemies point blank with a silenced pistol. As a result I got the lesser game ending, but at least I got to off a bunch of commies and neo-Nazis along the way.

I didn’t hate the game, but in the wake of Doom: Eternal I found that there was more to be desired. Mainly, a chainsaw.

The follow-up to 2016’s Doom reboot is an absolute blast featuring some of the most fluid FPS mechanics ever implemented. Narrative takes a backseat to action set pieces in which you must keep moving and shooting. The primary challenge beyond FPS aiming skill is being able to manage when you perform “glory kills” to replenish your health and when you chainsaw fodder enemies to gather ammo. This is the closest thing you can get to a 3-D version of Robotron 2084 and that’s some of the highest praise a game can get.

It’s a Dishonored 2 stand-alone expansion pack! If you liked that game you’ll probably like this too. You play as the Billy the ship lady from and do all the usual sneaking around and save spamming that you remember from before. Most of the game centers around a single section of town with one unique zone (like a residence or bank) to explore in each chapter. I spent most of my efforts trying to complete a no-kill play through. Turns out there is no real penalty for killing until you fget to the final choice of whether to kill the “Outsider.”

The premise of this game intrigued me: you play as a character in a 50s sci-fi B-movie whose actions are narrated by the director’s DVD commentary track. The design is supposed to be retro-futuristic but you see strings and bad rubber masks, etc.

Turns out that this premise is not executed very well. The voice of the director is completely wrong. There’s a winking, self-aware DVD producer voice that ruins any sense of immersion. Creatures which are supposed to be bad stop motion, just look like sloppy game animations. The characters just look like the monsters they are supposed to be and never feel like actors in costumes.

On top of all that, it feels like hardly any effort was put in to making the actual game play fun. It’s sort of twin-stick shooter-y at times, and point at bad-guy and button mash at other times. This is the sort of game mechanics that you would create if you were following a “let’s make your first game in Unity” tutorial. If it’s any consolation, at least the game was short.

I initially liked the no nonsense action-oriented combat of this RPG but I soon realized that it was just the same thing over and over again. I think the biggest hook here is not the insipid cat theming, but that the entire game is played on the over-world map. Other than that, the story is immediately forgettable, there is no actual “role playing,” and there is no variety or strategy in the battles.

It’s another freebee game from the Epic game store! I guess it was okay. There’s a deliberate Studio Ghibi vibe here in that it’s a story filled with Asian spiritual mysticism that takes place in a quaint European village. You control a mouse who is granted electrical powers from a spirit and you must go through the village and restore power to the various frustrated citizens.

The vast majority of the game play is exploring the town looking for collectables—not my favorite—as you help minor spirits accomplish various tasks. These range from “find every mailbox” to “match the symbols.” This is definitely a kids’ game. A kids’ game in which the main character commits suicide in the last reel. Fun stuff!

My first and biggest complaint about this video game adaptation of Mad Max is that there weren’t enough Australian accents. And, aside from some of the vehicular combat, it doesn’t really feel like Mad Max. Sure, it does a good job in replicating the look of the movies complete with War Boys, endless desert, and fantastical cars galore. But the whole post-apocalyptic wasteland was much more interesting in Fallout. Here the open world seems barren and the characters inhabiting it are just as empty.

Despite all this, as a game is does what it needs to do. On foot, the combat is a poor man’s version of the rhythmic punching of the Batman games. Time your blocks and mash the A button when you get an opening. The game is at it’s best on convoy missions where you chase down a group of cars and shoot, ram and run them off the road. It’s not quite the epic automotive battles of the movies, but at least there is some sense of the mayhem that George Miller was able to capture on film.

This is definitely the weakest season The Walking Dead games. Apparently, halfway through development Telltale went out of business and the game had to be taken over by a new company (made up of many of the same crew).

On the plus side, we are back to focusing on Clementine’s story by directly controlling her and her choices. One the minus side, most of the characters are dopey teenagers that are all, for the most part, kinda friendly with each other. There isn’t that slow boil conflict between survivors that was in the last game.

Your job throughout has shifted from survival to focusing on influencing the development of young A.J. At one point in the game he makes an unbelievably stupid choice and there’s no getting around it. It’s just a means of adding conflict between the main characters without any grounding in how real people behave.

Despite this annoyance, the story moves forward and we get some nostalgic scenes with characters from Clem’s past. It all leads up to an ending that feels about right and manages to pull the heartstrings (and the zombie guts). They’ve also added a “collectibles” aspect to each episode and the quick-time event sequences are as jarring as ever. All-in-all flawed but worthy conclusion to this excellent series.

It’s about time that I got back into this excellent series. I had forgotten how stressful these games were. There are never any good choices, and, just when you think you’ve found one, something goes wrong and messes everything up. I wasn’t too happy about the focus on the new character Javier instead of Clementine but there’s enough interaction with her (and a couple of flashbacks where you control her) to make it feel like you are still affecting her character in a meaningful way. After years of the T.V. series and all these games the stories and characters tend to fall quickly into tropes. There’s always the guy who can’t keep his cool or the group leader who seems to have brought back civilization but ends up being a wacko.