Platform: PC

This one was a freebie from GOG.com of which I knew nothing about before playing it. Turns out, it is a 2.5-D platformer—meaning, it’s a 3-D rendered game but you only move in the standard two dimensions of a classic platformer. I’m not a huge fan of platform games, I’m not very good at them. Thankfully this one is slow-paced, not too twitchy and yet, it’s not quite a puzzle platformer either. There is just enough action and thinking to keep an old-timer like myself interested for a few hours.

There is a little bit of a story which is told mostly through comic style art cut-scenes. There is also plenty of junk to collect if your the type of OCD gamer that goes for that sort of thing. Exploration is limited and it doesn’t take much effort to uncover secrets. Overall, and enjoyable game that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

A while back I gave this game a spin during a Steam free weekend and ended up setting it aside I guess because I couldn’t quite grok the stealth mechanics. On this second go around I’ve realized that it’s all about using your magic skills for just about every encounter. In fact, by the end of the game the player is well-nigh invincible will his arsenal of teleportation, mind control and time dilation. I’m too old to be wasting my time mastering a video game, so I welcome it when games feel like they get a little easier as I go along.

There’s enough of a thread of plot to keep it engaging to end. It’s all a pretty basic damsel in distress narrative with the usual litany of video game story-telling cliches. At least it is set in an interesting steam-punk world. Or more appropriately, whale oil punk.

I managed to finish the game only having to kill two characters, so I got the “good” ending. Hurray! I suppose.

Games journalists (I can’t believe that’s really a thing) seem to love this game, I thought it was tiresome. Every game a new world is generated that you’re supposed to jump around looking for treasure, secrets and rare upgrades. If you die, that’s it. Permadeath. A game for shut-ins and the insane. So, why didn’t I like it? My problem is that I don’t find you basic platform-game mechanics all that interesting and, without a narrative hook, I lose interest fast. Believe me, I tried to like this one but no thanks. Sayonara, uninstalled-ed!

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. This game is the epitome of bland first person shooters and Id Software should know better. They still seem not to know that there are colors beyond brown. There are no attempts at originality here. The post-apocalyptic setting is like a colorless, un-fun Borderlands. The barely-there plot is a rehash of the Fallout fish out of water structure. The driving sections are a bore and you are forced to do win all these tedious races. I guess the shooting and A.I. is acceptable but you are constantly back tracking to the main hub to get new missions. This game is not worth the five dollar sale price I paid.

I thought it was Game of Thrones, but this is definitely the weakest Telltale release. I don’t mind that this is geared for children, but the thing that makes Telltale games work is difficult choices. I felt all the decisions in this game were pretty obvious and didn’t have broad ramifications. Also, when you have Patton Oswald and Pee Wee Herman as your lead voice actors, you’d think there’d be a bit more room for comic hijinx. Alas, this is not the case.

Witcher 3 is a massive open world RPG that’s full of detail in terms of visuals and story. It’s was no surprise that it would take weeks for me to finish. As of right now GOG is telling me that I spent 100 hours to complete the main story line and I still have two expansions to complete. There’s just so much to explore and do.

I played on a normal difficulty, so the combat was just enough to be challenging but not a bottleneck to the story. I felt like I wasn’t as reliant on potions and magic as I was in Witcher 2. That game had some truly challenging boss fights. This one was much more casual feeling. I could pick up and play at any old time.

The strength of this series is the characters and story. Even NPCs from minor side quests are given a little story blurb in the character logbook. There’s so much rich backstory, at times it get to be a little overwhelming.

The sequel to Shadowgrounds doesn’t offer much new. There’s the same aliens, same corny voice acting, and the same top-down shooting mechanics. However, I liked this one a bit more. This is probably due to the slightly improved control scheme. I also think the game was helped by the lack of an attempt at creating deep narrative. You get a paragraph of text and some narration before each level and then you’re off to shooting hordes of aliens. Simple, short and worth the two bucks I spent on it.

Life is Strange uses the same branching story game play as Telltale’s games. The twist here is that your character has the power to reverse time and undo choices. There are a handful of puzzles that require some creative time shifting but the reality of this mechanic is that it is simply an alternative to using a quick-save. The real focus is on story and characters. In early episodes I was really annoyed by the mindless teenage banter. I get enough of that phoney YouTuber-style psychobabble from my own daughter. After about the third episode I began to get used to it. What’s left is an interesting drama about renewed friendships, a missing girl, disturbing visions, and the darker side of a quaint Northwestern hamlet. It’s like a somewhat sterile cross between Twin Peaks and Donnie Darko.

The first F.E.A.R. game did a really good job of building up the tension to provide creepy scares and atmosphere. This one is just an in-your-face string of loud, quick cuts of Alma that fire off with such regularity that they just become part of the background noise of the game. This background noise also includes the multitude of text info items you pick up and never need to read. So, as far as a horror story goes, this wasn’t so great. I didn’t really know or care about what was going on.

The main attraction here is the first-person shooting with your enhanced bullet-time super power. This is fun for the most part, but it gets quite repetitive as you traverse in a straight line from one generic military compound to the next. There are a couple moments of variety in the middle of the game in which you control a mech and can just mow down everything. But other than that, this is a straight up hallway shooter and I could take it or leave it.

Kathy Rain is a point and click adventure which uses the same AGS engine that all the games from Wadjet Eye games use. Visually it’s as impressive as the best games in this niche. The Wadjet connection goes a little further in that all the voice over direction was done by Dave Gilbert. Unlike his games, here there is no commentary track filled with gushing praise of New York based voice actors. Thank goodness.

So, with all that said, fans of the genre will know what to expect in terms of quality and game-play mechanics. I found the puzzles to be mostly fair, although there’s a whopper of a riddle in the middle that just tested my patience. The story has a very strong beginning which sets up the primary mystery to be solved. However, as the game progresses it descends more and more into the supernatural(?) and starts to lose its impact. Maybe they are setting up a larger story arc here, but the ending just didn’t feel complete.