Have you ever played a game, where you’ve been leveling up to the point that you are now a cloud of menace, and everywhere you go you wreak havoc? This is the whole idea with Vampire Survivors. You start off with one little dagger. You kill one bat at a time, but soon you’ll be leveling up your weapons, and start killing the enemies in droves, until you’ve become a living walking cloud of bullet hell. This game is an inverse bullet hell, where you are the bullets and hell is all around you. It’s fun. It’s very satisfying. It makes your head hurt if you play it for too long in a stretch. One cool thing about this game is its simplicity. You only control the character. You do not shoot, dodge or do anything else than walking around avoiding enemies. The shooting is done automatically for you. This would make it a perfect game for introducing kids to gaming. The controls are so easy a 3 year old would understand. This is also the game’s weakness. You quickly reach a point where the game stop being challenging and become repetitive. Once you’ve unlocked the weapons and their evolves, there isn’t much else to see. There are lots of different weapons you can unlock, and when you find out how you can combine them for the optimal damage output you will become unstoppable. It took me a while to find out how to unlock the last stage to fight the end boss. I followed some instructions on the internet about unlocking secret levels, and that information was outdated. All you need to do, to unlock stage 5, is to reach level 80 on stage 4. I rate this game as GOOD. ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. ### _Related_

I decided to play the Alan Wake 2 DLC’s while I got the ball rolling. So I bought the Digital Deluxe Upgrade, which is apparently how you get both DLC’s on a PlayStation 5 nowadays. I will review them separately. **Spoiler Warning** : It will be impossible to review this without spoiling some events of Alan Wake 1. I will try to not spoil anything of Alan Wake 2 though. ## Alan Wake 2: Night Springs DLC Night Springs is a TV show that is featured in the main game of Alan Wake, and it is apparently written by Alan Wake himself. Since Alan has this weird ability that everything he writes comes to pass; when the TV series features people from the community of Bright Falls, it makes me wonder if this actually happened, or if it’s just in the TV series. Makes your head hurt. There are three chapters and they take about an hour to complete each. They are completely separate from the main game, with some overlap regarding location and characters. The stories are crazy and weird, and pretty much what you’re looking for after playing the main game. It’s like a comedic fallback which lightens the mood somewhat, while still carrying the horror theme. This DLC didn’t bring much to the world, but it was entertaining. I would rate the Night Springs DLC as GOOD. ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. ## Alan Wake 2: The Lake House In contrary to Night Springs, The Lake House DLC is not stand alone from the main story. It covers what Agent Estevez did before she turned up in the story of Alan Wake 2. Some of it is covered in the base game if you read notes and reports closely. The Lake House was a research facility by Cauldron Lake where the FBC conducted experiments to learn more about the dark presence in the lake. Of course something has gone wrong and Agent Estevez is sent there to investigate. This could easily have been a chapter in the main game. It is much more horror focused than Night Springs, and builds upon the world of Alan Wake. It contributes to the story and that is why I will rate this as GREAT. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. ### _Related_

**SPOILER WARNING** : Because Alan Wake 2 is a direct continuation of Alan Wake 1, it’s too difficult to comment on the story of Alan Wake 2 without spoiling the outcome of Alan Wake 1. **Consider yourself warned!** When I heard that Control was getting a sequel, I decided that I needed to play Alan Wake, so I played the first game earlier this year, and now I have also completed the second game. The first game ended with Alan getting swallowed by the dark presence in the lake, trading his life for Alice’s. The second game begins 13 years after the events of the first one. Alan has been stuck in the Dark Place for a long time, trying to find a way out. The story is very good and very very dark, but I think it is impossible to follow if you haven’t played the first game. So before playing this game you need to play or watch a play through of the first game. Saga is an FBI agent, and in her Mind Room she tries to puzzle the Bright Falls murder and mysteries together. The detective parts of Alan Wake 2 is quite enjoyable. The game starts with you playing as Saga Andersson, FBI agent, arriving at Bright Falls to investigate a murder. Immediately when I walk the streets of Bright Falls in daylight, a creepy feeling runs through my spine. It’s like remembering a nightmare that you’ve had, and that is so good. The story this time has two main characters, Alan and Saga, and you play their chapters independently to bring the story together. Saga is trying to make sense of all the weirdness going on in Bright Falls, and Alan is trying to get out of the Dark Place. The story is this game’s strongest part. I like how it is told through these two characters, and I really enjoy the FMV aspects of the story telling. It makes the characters much more real. I also enjoy the humor of it, and returning characters from Alan Wake 1 but also from Control. If you like well told stories in video games, then this one you shouldn’t miss. The rendered graphics is mixed with live action recordings of actors playing the different parts. I love this. It brings me back to some FMV games I used to play in the late 90’s. It is also very well done. The game play has improved much since Alan Wake 1 which was very much an action/horror game. Here I think Alan Wake 2 has improved a lot by dropping the action part and focusing on the horror. Sure, you still have a gun and a flashlight, you still have to fight shadows, but not at all to the extent of Alan Wake 1. Here the focus is on the story and keeping it creepy – not surviving waves of enemies. There are only a few action focused parts of this game, that I think the game could’ve done without. The game make things very hard for itself sometimes. It introduces these loops, where you do the same game play over and over again to try to break the loop. It might be a thematically good horror idea, but as a gameplay mechanic it’s not very fun. I don’t want to be stuck in a loop going round and round. I wish they could’ve found another way to represent this element of the story. Also the chase sequences are not particularly fun. The action elements are my least favorite parts of the game. Not that they are hard if you turn down the difficulty, more that they seem unnecessary. This is the second game this year I’ve played where the music plays an important part. Every chapter ends with a song, and that song can both summarize what the chapter was trying to tell you, or hinting on what is next to come. I really enjoyed the musical elements of the game and I think it fits really well into the story. To summarize it, if you like story driven games this is as good as it gets. You might have to overlook some of the gameplay but it is worth it. I’ve bought the DLC’s and are going to play them as well. I rate this game as GREAT. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. ### _Related_

Mixtape is a coming of age story of three friends and their last night together before they all go separate ways. The game is a walking simulator with arcade elements, very much like What Remains of Edith Finch. Skating down the road with the light coming through the autumn leaves is a vibe. The game is built around the mixtape concept, that there is a song that is suitable for every moment, and the main protagonist Rockford always has the right song for the right moment. The licensed soundtrack for the game is excellent, and that is what kind of carries the whole experience. I also liked the graphics, which are dreamy nostalgic 90’s vibe. The main protagonists are quite shallow and not very interesting. I expect more for from a narrative driven game. The story itself is very simple. Three kids looking to get booze for the last party of the summer before Rockford goes away. You keep alternating locations, and in every location there are callbacks to memories of this friend’s group. Some of the memories turn into arcade mini games, the craziest is a kissing scene where you control tongues, … yeah. Popping off fire works while the car is racing down the beach was maybe one of the least satisfying mini game. It’s a short nice little story that fits well into an evening, reminiscing of a time that was, or maybe never been. It speaks to every high school movie of the 90’s and by the end it’s absolutely fine. I rate this game as OKAY. ⭐⭐ Rating: 2 out of 5. ### _Related_

This game is a JRPG, and while I don’t like that genre, I actually love this game and in this review I will explain why. In Clair Obscur you start on the city island of Lumiere. During the fracture, a sort of global natural catastrophe, the city of Lumiere was cast into the sea and since then its inhabitants have been sending expeditions to the main land every year. None of them ever come back. You play as Gustav that sets out from Lumiere, as part of Expedition 33, after a night of festivities, to explore the continent. The writing is the best I’ve seen in any video game and the voice acting to go with it. That’s all I can say without spoiling anything. The story of this game is very strong and the writing is the best I’ve encountered in a video game. Both the story arc as well as the banter between the characters is incredible. The voice acting is superb, and if you removed the game play you would have an incredible movie. The game play is classic JRPG. If you’ve played Pokemon you know the drill. You walk around in an open world and then you meet an enemy and the game turns into a turn based fight. However it does have an unexpected twist to it which makes the fighting much more interactive and engaging. They have incorporated the Sekiro parry mechanics into the combat so when an enemy attacks, if you parry at the right moment you can perform a counter strike which makes a ton of damage. This makes the combat so much more fun and interesting. In the beginning these counters are quite simple, but as you progress they are built up with different moves making it quite elaborate. The complexity of it progresses slowly, so when you’re at the end of the game you’re pulling off counters you could only dream of in the beginning which makes you feel invisible. The combat is classic turn based JRPG combat with a twist. With the correct timing you can dodge, parry and counter any incoming damage which makes the combat much more interactive and fun. The graphics in this game is some of the most beautiful I’ve seen, and it’s not just because of the high graphical fidelity but because the art design is out of this world. Everywhere you look you see something new and interesting, and each bend in the road offers a sense of wonder. You can never really predict where the game is taking you so every time you get smacked over the face with the sense of wonder, and you just stop and stand there gobsmacked. This, and the engaging story is what makes the game very hard to put down when you play it. This review wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention the music, because it has a huge impact on the experience. Games’ soundtracks usually are something that goes on in the background but in Clair Obscure it is very much in the forefront of the experience. Every character has its own theme, the songs are very memorable and I find myself humming them when not playing the game. The art design is out of this world. If I’m going to provide one piece of criticism it’s that the game has Return of the King syndrome. It never seems to want to end. The ending is very long and drawn out. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every minute of it, it all brought value to the story, but it was way too long. Right now I’m feeling that my EXCELLENT grading doesn’t really cut it for this game. It stands out on every aspect and I’m willing to break my grading system. I rate this game a MASTERPIECE. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 6 out of 6. _(excuse me while I go back to Clair Obscure to finish up some side quests and extra content)_ ### _Related_

I never played Alan Wake in 2010 when it was released. Not sure why, but I think there was this prick on a podcast talking warmly about it so I decided it was not for me. Then I played Control and I realized there were references I didn’t get because I hadn’t played Alan Wake. Alan Wake 2 came out and I didn’t feel I could play it because I hadn’t played its predecessor and now there’s a new Control in the making and I need to get up to speed. So I played Alan Wake Remastered. Alan Wake is a third person horror game where you play as Alan. You are a writer and have gone to Bright Falls on vacation with your wife. However, things transpire and you find yourself without wife, hunted in the forest, in the night, by crazy shades that want to kill you. The game is about rescuing your wife from the darkness. Most of the game takes place in the dark and the only thing that can protect you from the Taken is your flashlight. (and a huge load of bullets) This is absolutely a PlayStation 3 game in new clothes. It plays like a PlayStation 3 game. It looks like a PlayStation 3 game. It has one gameplay mechanic, running through the woods fighting shades, and it repeats that until the end. In the first three chapters there’s very little change of scenery at all. You move from light to light, getting ambushed in the darkness between, and the game is quite boring. Then the story picks up. First I wasn’t feeling it at all. Yeah, yeah, this writer is writing the story that he is experiencing. I had already been spoiled of that, but then it takes some seriously dark turns and even held some surprises for me at the end. It was the story that kept me playing and got me through this otherwise pretty dull shooter. Sometimes inanimate objects will be come very animated and throw themselves at you. The music and sound scape is also something that really stands out in this game. It does a lot to the atmosphere and I really enjoyed the musical outros to all the chapters. When I was at it, I decided that I was going to play the DLC as well. There are two extra chapters, Special 1 – The Signal and Special 2 – The Writer. Both of these are really good and I enjoyed them much more than the base game. Now I’m really looking forward to Alan Wake 2. I rate this game as GOOD. ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. ### _Related_

It’s been a while since a video game made me laugh out loud. Sure, Baldur’s Gate 3 had me snicker a few times, but a full out bellow must have been Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Dispatch is a game where you play as Robert, a dispatcher on a superhero-for-hire call center. Distressed citizens of Los Angeles calls in and you dispatch the most appropriate hero for the mission. You have your own team of super heroes to dispatch out on missions. Read the mission carefully and make sure you send the most appropriate hero. From the looks of it, I expected the game to be a visual novel, but there’s enough gameplay elements to take it out of that category. The dispatching, the hacking and the eventual quick time events make this more interactive than what you would call a visual novel, but I do believe there are accessibility settings to make it less interactive. You frequently get dialogue options that will change the story and how characters in the story perceive you. What I love about this game is the writing. The characters are really well written and the banter between them is hilarious. The overall story is good, not fantastic, but the animation is excellent, matching the characters and the setting perfectly. The dialogue system is fun and satisfying even if it’s a bit tricky to see where a particular answer will take the conversation. Also, you get far too short time to respond, but I guess I could change that in accessibility settings if I were so inclined. I don’t care much for the game play elements. I think the dispatching is okay, I don’t like that there’s luck involved if your heroes succeed or not in their missions, and I found the map quite tricky to navigate. It is the banter between characters that makes the dispatching fun. There is a hacking mini game and it is often done on a timer. If you fail it will have consequences in the world. The hacking mini game is neither my cup of tea. It’s not hard, I think I only failed two in the last episode, but they aren’t much fun and I miss the characters while doing it. It feels almost like they added that in late in the development cycle because they felt they had too few gameplay elements. Over all, the animation, the story, the writing makes me craving more. I hope they’ll make another season of it. I rate this game as GREAT. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. ### _Related_

It’s always hard to criticize a game made by one person. You’re essentially criticizing their life’s work. I’ve had small teams reach out to me after a bad review and – I’m sorry I didn’t love your game. It was an impressive feat nonetheless. Ball x Pit is like Space Invaders, but instead of shots you have balls that bounces and instead of five rows of aliens you have more and more enemies coming in. You get special balls with different abilities and you get to combine balls into new balls, evolving new balls with new abilities to take on the horde. You also have up to 16 heroes each having their own specialities and unique ways to shoot balls. All this combines, makes no round in Ball x Pit the same. Make those balls bounce to make really high damage numbers. In the game you’re unlocking blue prints for houses and when you’re not in the arena, you’re outside, building a city. Each house brings upgrades to the game in the arena and every house is also upgradable. You have resources like gold, wood, crop and stone to buy and upgrade these houses, but it’s never really any choice of what house to buy, because you’ll end up with all of them upgraded to the max anyway. The game is entertaining the way an arcade bullet hell game is. With all the upgrades and combinations of balls it doesn’t get as monotonous as it should be. It is very satisfying when you find a stellar combination of balls that makes the whole screen light up like a Christmas tree from enemies taking damage, and when you roll out damage numbers in the thousands. That’s really neat. Each level ends with a boss. The bosses are quite uninspiring and very easy. The hard part is getting to the boss. Once you get there you have basically won the level. Ball x Pit has 8 levels. You need to complete each level 2-5 times with different characters before you can proceed to the next level. The last level you need to finish 8 times before you’ve completed the game. This makes for a minimum of 30 rounds to finish the game, if you manage to win all the rounds. You won’t so expect about 60 rounds each 15 minutes long. This makes the game at least 15 hours long. I think this is the main problem. The game is way too long. Each level is the same. Two mini bosses and one end boss. The mini bosses are just bigger and stronger normal enemies and the end bosses are not that inspiring either. They shoot tons of projectiles and sometimes rushes towards you. The different levels aren’t that much different either. You get enemies in a slightly different hue with more health but the strategy doesn’t shift. You can do the same thing through the whole game. You upgrade your abilities in a city building mini-game. This might be my least favorite part of Ball x Pit. The city building is not very fun. I see why it’s there but it is not something I look forward to between my bouts in the arena. I also had some technical difficulties on Nintendo Switch 2 where the game crashed on me several times. Also playing on the handheld screen gave me headaches repeatedly, from the constant blinking lights when hitting the enemies with balls. It was fine on the big TV though. I rate this game as GOOD. ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. ### _Related_

This game is the continuation of the first two games. I really loved the first game, I thought it was brilliant. I thought the second game was good and now we’re up for a third. In this game you wake up in Nowhere as two characters. You play as a beak character or a green character. You start off in a dark place where a giant baby wants to kill you, squish you or play with you. It’s a bit unclear. You go from area to area with some kind of boss at the end of each and I think there are four in total. The game is not very long, not very hard, not very scary and there are no real puzzles to account for. I really dig the art direction, the environment and the ambiance of the game. What I love about this game is the graphics and the art direction. The game looks fantastic. The dark grueling world seems to have descended into complete evil and ruin. Everything seems hostile and just standing in a corridor even the walls leans in over you. I love it! The game is very spooky. It’s a kind of cozy spooky and not a scary spooky that the previous games had. Where the previous games could have my heart race, this one makes me just slightly on edge. As it has been before, the platforming and controlling your character is very bad. I got stuck several times, thinking that I must be doing the wrong thing as I keep failing, and then I look up on a tutorial and they do exactly the same thing. It’s just that the controls are so bad that it is partly luck based if you manage to pull off a jump and grab. This game seems much easier than previous games. There are no real puzzles or obstacles. You just go through the environments with an occasional fetching of a key. The game has several scenes where it’s just trial and error. There was no indication when you entered the room that you needed to be sneaking, so you get eaten at once. The only way to get past the chase scenes is by doing it again and again, because there are no clues of what you’re supposed to do. You just have to die and try again. My greatest disappointment is that you play as two characters, and it is possible to play with a friend over network, but not in couch coop. I would’ve loved to play this game with my son, but we do not own two PlayStation 5 and I don’t think we would’ve bought two copies of the game either. Too bad, it was a missed opportunity of a great couch coop game. My last criticism is that the story is a complete mystery to me. I have no idea really of how I ended up in this world, what the objective was and why it ended as it ended. I rate this game as GOOD. ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. ### _Related_

It feels a bit weird to review another Mario Kart game. A little bit like reviewing the latest version of FIFA. It’s a bit better. Some things are new. Whatever. Mario Kart is not a single player game. It’s a game you play with your family. That’s where it shines, and I can think of no better couch co-op game. This has been true for previous games and it’s true for this one. We’ve been having a blast playing it together. This game is at its best when you play it with friends. You can play up to 4 players in couch co-op. The new tracks are fine. It feels like it has a lot of discoverability. I enjoy the updated graphics and I like that they changed the formula a bit. Not all tracks go in a circle. Instead they go from point A to point B. I like the way that they can be stringed together as one long track. It makes the game less monotonous. Another change they’ve introduced is when you pick up a power-up, it immediately moves to defensive position, so if you get hit by a shell, the power-up absorbs that hit. It makes the game more tactical, when to use power-ups and when to keep them. Sometimes it is very hard to see where you’re supposed to go. This is just a problem for new players, as you quickly learn the layout of the few tracks that are included. As usual, what I don’t like about Mario Kart is the luck based aspects. You can be hit by seven shells just before finishing line and end up at 10th place and there is no way to protect against it. It’s just luck. And you could be almost last, get a super power-up and end up first and winning even if you played like an ass. This makes it a lousy single player game, but a super fun party game. I rate this game as GOOD. ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. ### _Related_

Again we are at the end of a year and I’m going to reflect a bit on the gaming year that has passed. I had a lot of fun playing many different games this year. Apart from previous years I didn’t really have a hiatus this year, but felt like playing games the whole year. I don’t have that much time for it while working, so most of the games I play are during summer and winter vacations. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage was one of those games that I played during the summer. I played a lot of smaller titles that you can complete under 10 hours. I’m still unwilling to start a game that is longer, because I feel that it’s such an undertaking and if I don’t like it I’m stuck for tens of hours if I want to finish it. I played several platformers like Disney Illusion Island, Prince of Persia, Ori: Will of the Whisps, Blasphemous 2. In all I played 22 new games. No game was a **R EPLAY**. The total length of those games is 266 hours and my average rating is GOOD. ## Nintendo Switch 2 This was the year that Nintendo Switch 2 was released, and while I was very hyped before the release, it cooled off once the reviews came in. It seemed more like an incremental evolution of the Nintendo Switch, and the number of games that utilized the new performance of the Nintendo Switch 2 was very limited at launch. My wife got one for me, for Christmas present and my initial perception was correct. It is an upgrade, rather than a whole new console. However 6 months later the Nintendo eshop is full of games that have been upgraded for Nintendo Switch 2. Even if I don’t plan to replay games because of the higher definition graphics, it’s still nice that I can find new games tailored for my new console. I prefer Nintendo Switch 2 over Steam Deck because of the exclusive titles like Mario Kart World. For me the combination of having PlayStation 5 as my main console for the TV and a Nintendo Switch 2 as handheld is a good combination. I was contemplating getting a Steam Deck at the beginning of the year, but I still enjoy the occasional Mario game, so I think this combination is better for me. ## Looking forward to 2026 There is actually not a lot of games that I look forward to in 2026. Many games that I was looking forward to came out in 2025: Hades 2, Civilization 7, Little Nightmares 3. I hope it’s time for us to get another Mass Effect. It has been brooding for far too long. I’m just scared that the people working on the disastrous Dragon Age: The Veilguard is now working on the next Mass Effect. It could be the last nail in the coffin of our beloved series. Will 2026 be the year we’ll get another Mass Effect game? After being delayed (twice?) it is probably time for GTA 6 to come out, and I stand by what I said last year, that I might get a PlayStation 5 Pro just to play it. I also believe that no other game will dare to release at the same time as GTA 6 so we will have a pretty uneventful autumn. Maybe this will be the year that I will clean out my backlog completely? 🤣 _My next post will be game of the year 2024._ ### _Related_

I played the first Dragon’s Dogma on PlayStation 3. It is one of those cult classics, very much like Demon’s Souls. I think, mostly because of how weird it was. It also had some unique features like climbing monsters and the whole pawn system. I never finished it though. I ran into some wolves that killed me, and every time I reloaded they would kill me again, and again, so I quit. I was quite excited when Dragon’s Dogma 2 was announced. Even if I didn’t finish the first game, I still have some fond memories of playing it. Then the reviews said that it was a micro-transaction hellscape, so I lost interest. I think I bought it a couple of years ago on a sale, greatly discounted. Thought it might be worth a shot. As the Arisen you get your own Pawn (companion) to follow you on your journeys, and you get to hire two Pawns from other players. My first impression was “oh shit, this is still a PS3 game!”. Me and my son making fun of the weird looking characters, animations and the physics during the tutorial. Also the script seemed to be laughable, something taken out of a 13 year old game. It didn’t stop there. The game’s design is stuck in something reminiscent to 2013 rather than 2025. Inventory management is half the game, like it’s Diablo 2. Characters keep repeating the same dialogue like the Skyrim guard “taking an arrow to the knee”. Wolfs dropping out of the sky as they spawn right on top of you, and physics making both NPCs and enemies fly skyward. You keep running back and forth between objectives because there is (almost) no fast travel. Exploration is the strongest part of Dragon’s Dogma 2. You never know what you will find around the corner. I had a ridiculous situation where I was fighting some goblins, and suddenly a griffin comes out of the sky. Goblins are stock enemies in the game, but a griffin is a real challenge. If you take on a griffin it must be on your own terms, so I legged it and immediately ran straight into an ogre who mushed me like mashed potatoes. The problem is, this is not a bad game. I think it’s because every discovery takes you by surprise. Exploring in this game is a real treat. In modern games everything has a place, if there is a cave then there is a quest for that cave. This is not the case for Dragon’s Dogma 2. They have created a world, and then created the story in that world. When you walk off the beaten path, you are destined to find some really weird and exciting stuff. I was exploring a cave, no quest had brought me there, just that it looked interesting – and in it I found a giant lion, with a goat riding on its back. The goat was spewing magic everywhere and after I killed it, it dropped dragon’s blood. Weird! Some of the enemies you fight are terrifying. Don’t try to fight a griffin unless you’re really prepared. The game manages to make you scared of the dark, excited for a new journey, and make your heart skip a beat when you see a new monster. And this ties back to my Demon’s Souls analogy. That game is not particularly well designed, but it has a soul, something that makes it exciting without the need to be perfect. Dragon’s Dogma 2 has managed to embody that same feeling. I rate this game as GOOD. ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. ### _Related_

Blue Prince is a walking simulator combined puzzle game. You start each day entering a house. Each room has 4 possible entries and every time you open a door, you draft 3 possible rooms and get to pick one. This way you build a labyrinth of rooms throughout the house and your main goal is to find the 46th room. The story is that you’ve inherited this house, on the condition that you find the 46th room. During this expedition you will learn more and more about the history of the house and your family. In this regard the game is very much like What remains of Edith Finch, but here the floor plan changes and in that game it is static. You start each day in the Entrance Hall. You choose a door and draft a random room. You have 50 rooms to enter until the day runs out. I really like the vibe of this game, it’s very chill. Progress is slow, and every detail is important. Even if you have drafted the same room 10 times before there are slight differences. Every new day brings something new, but there is never any stress that you need to make progress. Either you do it or you don’t. Maybe you will get better luck next day. This is also what I dislike about the game. I am a very result focused individual. You can do everything right, and still get screwed because of bad luck. Some of the puzzles are alright. What I like about them is that they are slightly different for each day in game. Some of the puzzles stay solved after you solved them once, mainly the more difficult ones and I dare say that I wouldn’t have solved any of those without looking up the solution on internet. One of my favorite puzzles is in the parlor. One box has a true statement. One has a false statement. One box can be either true or false. You need to find the box containing the gems. I passed this room 40 times, and not once was the statements repeated. Playing this game it will sometimes feel like you’re stuck, even if you’re not. It is a combination of progress being so slow, but also that you need to wait for the correct combination of rooms to be drafted. Most often you don’t even know of the combination that you need, but you happen upon it by chance. All in all I enjoyed the calmness, the graphics, the story and some of the puzzles. It was a chill game and just what I needed. I rate this game as GOOD. ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. ### _Related_

It’s been a while since I played a proper walking simulator. This one is not a pure walking sim as you are required to hide from monsters, push some buttons and shoot matchsticks, but close enough. In the game you wake up as ”the burnt one” meet a friend named ”pot boy” and together you venture the Midnight Walk to the Moon Mountain. Along the way you meet characters, communities and you learn about the dark world that you travel through. The game is played in first person and pot boy is your companion. This was not entirely clear to me from the trailer. What makes this game unique is its graphics that is mostly made out of clay, and it gives it a very distinctive look. It is made as a VR game but I failed to play it in VR. I started out in VR but couldn’t solve the first puzzle because I couldn’t reach where I needed. My play area was too small. The story, the graphics, the music are all excellent. I’m not a fan of the hiding mechanics, but it is not over-utilized so I could stand it. When you die, you start over just that action you failed, so it’s not that annoying. The atmosphere is fantastic, and everything plays a part – the graphics, the clay, the music and the sound effects. It’s all masterfully done. If you’re looking for a cozy spooky game, this is prefect, VR or no VR. I rate this game as GREAT. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. ### _Related_

My main problem with rogue-likes is that they have a hard time keeping the game interesting. You may create the absolute best gameplay, but it always breaks down and becomes repetitive after a while. What Hades 1 did, which was a winning recipe, was to keep it interesting. There was something new happening every game loop. There was new dialogue, a boss changed slightly, new set of upgrades to try out. The game kept it interesting and you wanted to see ”what comes next”. Melinoë is a much better protagonist than Zagreus ever was. Hades 2 is Hades 1 but more. You have a new protagonist, new story, a whole new assemble of characters, new areas and new enemies. It takes some time getting used to it all, but once you do this game is an iteration upon Hades 1 where every aspect of the game has been improved. I’ve only just played until the credits rolling, but it feels like the game has so much more to give. The story continues, there’s more dialogue, I ran into a whole new boss last game loop, 44 loops into the game !! and I haven’t even dipped my toes into the challenge runs. The game is gorgeous, it plays extremely well and there is a vast amount of levels, weapons, upgrades to play around with. This is a game that keeps on giving, and I believe it is one of those games I will not uninstall when I’m finished, because I’d like to play another round now and then. I rate this as EXCELLENT. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 5 out of 5. ### _Related_

I quite enjoyed the first Mario + Rabbids game. A tactical shooter game like X-COM but cuter. When I started this game I just felt “oh no, what have I done?”. Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope is a tactical shooter, a spiritual continuation of the previous game Kingdom Battle. You follow a quest line, run into battles where you choose three of Mario’s friends and fight it out in an arena against evil enemies. There are five worlds to explore and a sixth ending which is more of a gauntlet. Move from world to world and kill the big baddie at the end. No fuss and no surprises. The story is really bad but thankfully it’s skippable. The writing of the game is the real weak point. It is awful. I’d rather prefer there be no writing at all to be honest. The dialoge between Beep-0 and the space ship AI Jeanie, will go to history as the worst in all video games. Thankfully the dialogue cut scenes are skippable. The tactical battle arenas are okay. They are moderately fun, but have some problems. It is both very hard to predict what the enemy will do in the next move, and at the same time very easy. It is hard, because if you’re clever enough you can pretty much move around the whole map. And yet it is easy, because if you bait the AI with a dummy that stands without cover, the AI will always go for the dummy. You go around these worlds looking for trouble, and once you find it the game switches into arena battle mode. The enemy progression is fine. You get tougher and tougher enemies through the game, but the new enemies are mostly rehashes of old ones with new abilities. Your heroes don’t gain new abilities though, but you can attach abilities to your heroes with sparks, and that way find new ways to kill enemies. It’s still quite boring. Just like the enemy progression is rehash of old enemies, the sparks are mostly the same attack with different elements, instead of fire attack it will be lighting. Not very inspiring. Once you enter arena battle mode, the game is totally okay, even if it becomes repetitive after a while. I think that sums up the whole game. It’s not very inspiring. The dialogue is awful, the story is boring, the enemies and the bosses are boring, and even the main villain is completely uninteresting. You find some fun in the arena matches, but they also becomes repetitive quite fast. I rate this game as OKAY. ⭐⭐ Rating: 2 out of 5. ### _Related_

Wait a minute, haven’t I already reviewed this game? Yes of course, I played it when it was first released as an exclusive to Apple Arcade. Now the exclusivity is gone and the game is out on PlayStation. Naturally I played it again, and this time I platinumed it. I still agree with all I said in my previous review. There aren’t any noticeable changes between the versions, but since I’ve taken the platinum trophy I have some more insights. The game is still great! I did buy it again and spend another 20 hours in it! But it has some flaws. The racing is a lot of fun in an arcade style racing kind of way. Do not come to expect realistic physics. This is all about having fun. The first flaw is the progression system. When you start you have 3 cars to choose from, and you earn experience for each car which will allow you to upgrade them. But soon you unlock more cars, and then you stop playing with the old cars so you never really upgrade one car fully. At the end you unlock fully upgraded cars, and then I wonder what the upgrade system really is for. Every car you unlock is also noticeable better than the previous, so there is never a reason to go back to old cars or stick with the car you have. Once you finish the main campaign you will unlock the best car, and so there is never any point of changing cars. There are two more unlocks but they are more of a novelty than anything else. The game is a lot of fun as couch coop and it’s easy enough that everyone can learn to play it in seconds. Another thing that bothers me is that when you play so much that I have for the platinum trophy you start to see the algorithm behind the AI for the other cars. It is the same every race and the rubber band effect is very noticeable. It’s still enjoyable but it kind of ruins the game a little. The difficulty is also very uneven in this game. I finished all the tournaments with Gold medal on my first try, except the last one where I was unlucky and had to do it twice. Then we have the time trials where I spend hours on the same track to pop all the time bubbles. I finished the last track of the campaign on my first try with gold medal, but I still had time trials from 3 continents past that I hadn’t even achieved bronze medal on. Customizing your car is fun, and you will unlock more options as you finish races. However once you’ve unlocked the best car there is no reason to play with any other. I did struggle for a long time, but then I found out that if I put my TV on gaming mode, the time trials got much easier. Who would have thought? 🤣 Still a really great game. I had lots of fun with it and I will play it again when I just need something quick and arcady. I rate this game as GREAT ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. ### _Related_

I played Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun back in 2018. I thought it was good but way too long. At the time the development studio Mimimi made a DLC for PC that was never released for console, until now 2025 after the studio have shut down. What a weird thing, or maybe not so weird. If you are a publisher and have this game with a DLC that only needs to be added to the already released console version of the game, you’re looking at a low investment with potentially high profit. The gameplay is about combining the different abilities of your assassins to solve situations. Use the right character for the right job, queue up actions and then execute. This is the same game as I played in 2018, except that it’s shorter as you only get the DLC levels. There are 3 major missions and 3 small ones. A major mission takes about 2 hours to finish, so that is more than enough content for me. The missions are quite hard, because they take place just before the end boss of the main game, so you need to use all your cunning to solve the puzzles. The game has some useful tips at the first mission to help you get back into the gameplay and I thought it was just the right amount of help I needed. I haven’t played Shadow Tactics for 7 years but found no big obstacle to get back into it. The game is fun and the maps and missions are great. They are just the right amount of complexity. You run into a scenario and wonder, “how the heck am I supposed to deal with this?” but you always figure it out. That’s what makes it feel awarding when you finish a mission. The characters are very well balanced. Maybe that is why you don’t get any new mechanics, because it would ruin a delicate balance. In the end you win if you use the strength of all your characters combined. As far as I know the DLC didn’t introduce any new mechanics, no new character or anything like that. It was just a couple of new missions. It would have been fun if they dared to go a little bit beyond the original formula. But I did have a ton of fun with the new content. It was never too hard, it wasn’t too easy and I find the console port to be perfect. I rate this game as GREAT. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. ### _Related_

Do you remember playing Diablo 2 when it came out? Not the years of playing it after it came out or playing it now, but just when it came out. That game was hard as balls and you died a lot. These days I know exactly how to play that game so I rarely die and I play through it in just a few hours. But back then when you were new to ARPGs it was a hard game, but fun nonetheless. This is the experience I have with PoE2. It is hard, but fun. It is easy to get overwhelmed by enemies, they hit hard and you die. Bosses need some learning before you can beat them and there are a lot of things going on in the boss fights. The port to PS5 works very well. It is obvious that they have put some time and effort making the user interface usable with a controller and making screen text readable. I think my main problem with Diablo 4 was that the gameplay isn’t very interesting anymore. The game is too easy and the bosses are not doing anything that require any skill. I sailed through that game. It has become more of a cookie clicker for loot than an actual game. This is what makes PoE2 more intriguing because it will not hold your hand. It will beat the shit out of you, and if you fail to dodge when the boss hits, you’re kind of screwed. However, making a hard game that is so open as PoE2 is, makes it very hard to balance. How do you create a boss fight that is fair to every starting class, which takes the huge skill tree into account, but still make is challenging? I don’t really think it’s possible without dynamically scaling the boss to your specific character or build. Otherwise the boss will become too easy for some, and impossible for others. Sadly I chose a class and a build that cannot beat the boss of act 1. The game encapsulates the sprit of Diablo 2. Everything from the graphics, to the characters, music and atmosphere reeks of Diablo 2. Maybe I am the problem. I’m not good enough at the game. But I have upgraded all my spells to level 5, I am 3 levels over the boss, I have hunted down the resistances needed, and I have given it 20+ tries. This is the point where it stops being a fun game and just being frustrated. I would love to continue to act 2, but the game won’t let me. I will not re-roll to a different character and I think there are more fun games I could spend my precious gaming time on. So far my experience of act 1. The game play is fun and challenging. The graphics are cool and the atmosphere is really dense. They have failed to deliver a story by this time of playing and I find the skill tree and the upgrade system very confusing. I rate this game as OKAY ⭐⭐ Rating: 2 out of 5. ### _Related_

I don’t think I would’ve looked at this game twice if it weren’t for Don’t Nod made Life is Strange. That is an awesome game. Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a game very similar to Life is Strange. You’re playing as Swann, a girl, couple of years younger than Max, and the game takes place in the late summer while school is still out. Swann is a loner who likes to film with her video camcorder, and one day she meets some new friends and they get to share some experiences by the last days of summer. Late summer, the sun is going down over the beautiful landscape. The art direction is on point. From there the story plays out in two parts. The first part is setting the stage and you get to know Swann and her friends. In the second part the game ties the knot and completes the story. I was thinking this would be a 5 chapter story like Life is Stange, and I would have to wait for the rest of the chapters, but it seems to me that part 2 is the final ending. I understand that I’m not the target audience for this game, but I had some real issues with it, especially part one. The kids are very cringe. It’s in the things that they say, how they say it, and the voice acting. It’s also in the things that they do. I can’t remember being so cringe at their age and if I compare it to my teenage son, the goal of his whole being right now is to be as not-cringe as possible. So I don’t find this portrayal very believable. I don’t like the script, what the voice actors do with it and I don’t like the main protagonist Swann. I have trouble liking the characters, especially the main protagonist Swann. The dialogue is so cringe. I think it’s her insecurities that really gets at me. I understand what they’re going for in the story but I don’t like playing her. It’s like playing my own internal monologue at times and it’s painful. The game gets better in part two, just like Life is Strange got better once you got a few chapters in. You see a fair bit of character development. The girls get tougher and more confident. The game gets a bit more enjoyable. Then it ends. It ends just when it starts to get good, and that is a bummer. I think the story is quite good, but the ending didn’t hit me as hard as Life is Strange. I think it was because I had just started to like the characters and then it ended. If they had capitalized a bit more on the character development, I think this could have been really great. Using Swann’s camcorder to film things and characters around you is an important part of the game and sometimes it is used to move the story forward. I didn’t like it at first but got used to it. One more thing that I really didn’t like was the whole romancing part of the game. I have no problem with girls kissing girls, but it felt so unnecessary. There was no place for it in the story which was about a group of friends and their shared experiences. It felt like the romancing was only there as a game mechanic. A lazy way of making you more invested. This was a miss for me, but it did have its moments and I started to like the game by the end. I rate the game as OKAY. ⭐⭐ Rating: 2 out of 5. ### _Related_

There is nothing more suitable quote for this game than this. > “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” – Oscar Wilde This game is a carbon copy of Hades to the point that a lawsuit is in order, and the only reason there hasn’t been one is that people playing this game doesn’t take away from people playing Hades. You can play both, and Hades will not have fewer sales because this game exists. It is a rogue-lite where you start from a base. Here the story is progressing, you talk to characters, upgrade your arsenal before you head out for the next run. Then you go progressively through 4 stages, where each stage has a couple of rooms, a mini boss and a major boss at the end. You receive bonuses and health upgrades along the way, and for every time you die you will get a little further next time. This game is such a carbon copy of Hades that even the vendor is a hooded figure called Chairman (because he’s sitting down I guess) Many games work this way, but this game is like they’ve taken the source code for Hades and just shamefully replaced the graphics with the Turtles motif. Even the vendor is called Chairman (Charon in Hades) and is a mysterious hooded figure. One of the bosses is a girl that moves quickly over the map. One of the bosses are two, where one is more nimble and the other heavy. The last boss has two phases where you kill him and then he comes back stronger. Do you recognize it? There are a few things that Turtles do that Hades don’t, and it’s not for the better. Turtles is in 3D graphics while Hades is 2D. This makes Turtles much harder, because the 3D elements are not as precise. It is not as clear what is happening on the screen. Sometimes you end up behind something so you cannot see what’s going on. The art style is antialiased so it’s kind of fuzzy which makes it harder to make out what you’re looking at. Another main contribution to the formula is that Turtles is multiplayer. You can play up to 4 (?) players. I’ve only tried couch coop with 1 other player and it’s way too chaotic and since the turtles look almost the same you end up believing you are the other person all the time. There’s also so much going on at the screen when you’re two, that it is impossible to actually play well. It is just a flurry of motion. Couch coop is a great idea but the game becomes chaotic with just two players, and it becomes impossible to follow what’s happening on the screen. There is also a problem with telling the different turtles apart. Apart from that Turtles is like Hades but worse. It is not as balanced. Enemies are not as well animated. You cannot tell attacks apart the same way. You get attacked from off-screen all the time. Enemies have attacks I’m not sure you can dodge. The story is not as interesting, the music isn’t as great and the upgrades not as fun. I didn’t finish this game. I got to the second phase of the last boss and then I decided that it wasn’t worth my time anymore. I rate this game as OKAY. ⭐⭐ Rating: 2 out of 5. ### _Related_

There are things that I love about Blasphemous 2. I love the lore and I love the design, the art direction. It’s awesome. It’s so good you can’t take your eyes away from it. Then there are things that are not so good. I never finished the base game because of the difficulty spike by the end. The game was fine difficulty wise right up until the second to last boss, Eviterno, and that took out all the fun for me. The DLC features one new area, and expands on a couple of other areas. There are a couple of new enemies and two new bosses, but nothing noteworthy. I was looking forward to coming back to Blasphemous 2, because of the lore and the fantastic design. You want to be in that world and you want to play it, and this time around I was going to get my hands on Mea Culpa, the legendary sword from Blasphemous 1. I would be unstoppable, and maybe I might even be able to beat Eviterno. It didn’t work out that way. At the end of the DLC I ran into another one of these difficult bosses that stopped me from progressing. I spent two hours knocking my head against the wall with no obvious progress until I gave up. My dreams shattered, and I wonder what the point of me playing this DLC really was. As always you play Blasphemous for the incredible art direction and the lore. It’s what makes it stand out from other metroidvanias. Apart from the stupid boss at the end, the DLC has one new area with a couple of new enemy types. It has one other boss that is totally manageable, but most of the DLC is different platforming sections and a fetch quest. So even if the ending was a big let down I thought that the DLC overall was underwhelming and I would’t recommend it. I rate this expansion as OKAY. ⭐⭐ Rating: 2 out of 5. ### _Related_