Game 2 of 2025 - Indiana Jones and The Great Circle

Indiana Jones and The Great Circle

Developer: MachineGames
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: PC
Genre: Action/Adventure

Difficulty: Moderate
Hours: 27

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 9.999999999999/10

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I love Indiana Jones!

And this game feels like a decent Indiana Jones movie, in addition to a really fun game. It's even got a Funkstation! See?

I wish we had one of those where I live.

Is it perfect? No. Does stop at all the right stations to get to a good old fashioned Indy adventure? You betcha! 

One of several great recipes in the game.

If you aren't convinced yet, check this out:

You can brain a fascist with a guitar, just like Woody Guthrie would have done!

Game 20 of 2024 - Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: PC
Genre: Action RPG

Difficulty: Moderate
Hours: 52

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 8.3/10

DA:TV is fine. Sure, it's a pretty bog standard paint-by-numbers fantasy story, the dialogue ranges from mediocre to downright embarrassing, and none of the characters are all that interesting, but there is a lot of fun to be had.

Let's start with the positives, I guess. The world is beautiful. Every corner of every city and cave and forest seems to be carefully designed, and it shows. 

 

The battle set pieces are something else, as well. There's some great setups here that lead to some dramatic fights (some annoying ones, too, but we'll get to that later).

How am I supposed to fight that thing?

The combat is also a good bit of fun, if a bit weird. Gone is the grim, bloody combat of the original games; this is some full on comic book shit. I chose to play as a mage, and you might think of mages as squishy back line characters but nope. My Rook was mostly a melee mage, shooting lasers and magic daggers and all that shit. Teleporting all over the damn battlefield chucking fireballs and lightning storms was a good bit of fun. And it's not just the mages that get lasers, the rest of your party gets them, too! They are constantly shooting glowing arrows from midair, breathing fire, and summoning firebombing griffons or whatever the fuck was going on there.

Ok, so now some of the negatives. Exploration is mostly fun, but for some reason there are some jumping/platforming segments and they suck. Awkward as shit. Also, fast travel is prevalent in this game thanks to some magical mirrors. While that saves a lot of time and that's appreciated, it kinda makes the world feel, I don't know, small? 

Combat? Like I said before, it's pretty fun. However, enemy variety kinda suffers after midgame. You're encountering the same groups of guys over and over again, and when BioWare wants a particularly difficult battle, it just adds more monsters. It gets boring, especially when you're just trying to get from point A to B and you have to bring down the same old armored-up HP tanks over and over again.

Speaking of combat, let's talk about dragons. It's in the title, after all. The first dragon fight is kind of exciting and all that, but they quickly grow tedious. Dragons have huuuuuge health bars, as expected, so they are already a time-consuming fight. Remember when I said there are some impressive set pieces? Well, for dragons, they're pretty much all the same. Big open arenas. Kinda has to be, I guess.

Also, some of the dragon attacks are hilarious. In addition to it's breath weapon, dragons also kind of just face plant at you. I guess they don't like using their teeth and claws to fight close quarters?

Veilguard scratched that fantasy action itch for a time, at least for me. It's certainly got it's warts, but overall I had fun. 

Game 17 of 2024: Dungeons of Hinterberg

 Dungeons of Hinterberg

Developer: Microbird Games
Publisher: Curve Games
Platform: PC
Genre: Action RPG

Difficulty: Medium
Hours: 20

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 8/10

Crap, I forgot to get screenshots. :(

Pretty fun little ARPG. Maybe a few too many dungeons? 

Dungeons of Hinterberg has a fun little story about a junior lawyer discovering her taste for adventure in the magical Austrian town of Hinterberg. See, sometime ago, dungeon portals just started randomly popping up throughout Europe (and I guess other places), and a tourist industry catering to would-be dungeon delvers emerged.

Hinterberg is such a place. You play as Luisa, a young lawyer on holiday looking for a little meaning in life. You begin each day having breakfast at the hotel, and your afternoons exploring one of the four different areas looking for dungeons to crawl. You don't even have to do a dungeon if you don't want, you can find a scenic spot and just chill for a day.

After your dungeon run, you come back to town to do your shopping and decide what to do with your evening. Do you want to see a movie or take a rowboat out onto the lake, or do you want to hang with that weird influencer or see who's by the campfire and chill with them?

You can forge relationships with a variety of different folks in town, and this was my favorite part of the game. Hanging with different people raises different stats, and when your friendship advances, you get certain perks, like additional tumbling stamina or specific upgrades.

The dungeons range from breathtaking to downright annoying (especially the wind dungeons, God I was so glad to be done with those); the frozen snowboarding dungeons in Kolmstein being my favorite.

I guess if I had any complaints, it's that the game gets a little repetitive near the end. By then you've fought every monster type enough times for fights to feel like a chore instead of a nice respite from solving dungeon puzzles. A pretty minor complaint to be fair.

Hinterberg is rendered in a pretty cell-shaded style that I really think does the subject matter justice. Every NPC is thoughtfully designed and visually distinct.

Dungeons of Hinterberg draws a lot of comparisons to the Legend of Zelda games, and I think that's mostly fair. They're clearly a huge influence, and if you're going to be influenced by something, it might as well be the best.

Game 13 of 2024: Ghost of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima

Developer: Sucker Punch Productions
Publisher: Playstation Publishing
Platform: PC
Genre: Action/Adventure

Difficulty: Medium
Hours: 36

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 9/10

Sure, I could write about all the things I liked about Ghost of Tsushima; or I could just post a bunch of screenshots and let the one bot that reads this decide for themselves:

One of the most beautiful games I've ever played

here have another one:

Seriously

and another:

You can pet the fox!

Sure, Ghost of Tsushima might be a romanticized, Western telling of a samurai story, but it's compelling with great characters and a gut punch of an ending. Combat is excellent, and Jin, our protagonist, is truly a killing machine. Seriously, I guess if I had one complaint, it's that too many of the missions (and there are a lot) involve you facing wave after wave of Mongol warriors. But hey, when you get tired of murdering, you can just wander the forests in search of flowers and crafting materials.

Game 4 of 2023: Streets of Rogue

Streets of Rogue

Developer: Matt Dabrowski
Publisher: tinyBuild
Platform: PC
Genre: Action Roguelite

Difficulty: Moderate or Hard, really depends on your playstyle and class
Hours: 20 and counting

Finished: Yes, sort of
Final Rating: 9.7/10

hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooly shit is this fun

Damn, my GOTY in early February?!?!?! For some context, I don't always love the roguelike/roguelite genre. There are some exceptions, like Rogue Legacy, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Dwarf Fortress, and ADoM, but it's not usually a genre I usually enjoy. Well, I am pleased to announce that a roguelite is not only one of my favorite games I've played in the past year, but it's probably in my top 10 of all time.

Pure Joy

In Streets of Rogue, you are recruited to overthrow the mayor of a corrupt city arranged in floors for some reason. You start in the slums, and make your way up to the swanky uptown and finally the Mayor's Village. You have a variety of different classes to start with, like the Slum Dweller, Thief, and Hacker, and you can unlock a whole bunch more by completing objectives along the way. They all have unique playstyles, abilities and challenges, and it really allows you to play the game your way. For example, the Hacker might be a 90 pound weakling, but he can use his laptop to hack (and sometimes detonate) all kinds of stuff you find throughout each level. The Jock really packs a wallop when hitting enemies, but he refuses to use computers because that shit's for nerds.

See?

You can sneak around if you want, bribe cops if you want, make friends with cannibals, or just be a wanton killing machine. You can even make your own custom class if you feel like it. The objectives are usually pretty basic (neutralize this guy, rescue that guy, destroy that thing over there) and don't vary much per level, but there is multiple ways to accomplish each mission.

Honestly, the game this reminds me most of is Morrowind. Obviously the gameplay is completely different, but I got the same feeling. Like Morrowind, I felt like I was let loose in a world, free to complete my mission in whatever way I could, rules be damned.

...what's the hell's going on here?

Given it's diversity of characters, playstyles, and mutators (sort of like game modifiers), Streets of Rogue offers a ton of replayability. You can probably finish a run in an hour or two, providing you aren't killed along the way.

A simple pickpocket attempt on the Shopkeeper ended up with a shitload of dead cops.

 

Let's wrap this shit up real quick. Streets of Rogue is awesome and Streets of Rogue 2 is a day one purchase when it comes out later this year.

Game 1 of 2024: Robocop: Rogue City

Robocop: Rogue City

Developer: Teyon
Publisher: Nacon
Platform: PC
Genre: Action, FPS

Difficulty: Moderate
Hours: ~10

Finished: No
Final Rating: 6.8/10

Robocop: Rogue City presses all the right nostalgia buttons for 80s action movie fans while delivering what I would describe as a fairly mid experience. 

The game is faithful to the source material to a fault. Our protagonist, Robocop, is rendered in loving detail (seriously, he looks fantastic) and is even voiced by Peter Weller.  Detroit looks like it does in the movies, that is, a bombed out urban wasteland populated by desperate lowlifes and the corporate crooks that profit from human misery.

gee real subtle guys

First, the gameplay. Robocop moves around just like he does in the movies: slowly, with heavy footsteps. You can sprint, but it doesn't give you too much of a speed boost. You clear stages the same way Robocop would, by slowly and methodically shooting all the bad guys.

Robocop always has his trusty Auto-9, which has unlimited ammo, but can also pick up weapons from fallen enemies, like assault rifles and shotguns. The Auto-9 sounds like it does in the movie, and it's great fun to watch the blood fly as you blast away at the bad guys. What is less fun is the enemies themselves. You spend levels mowing down waves of the same three dudes whose AI ranges from ok to downright stupid. The game makes up dumb enemies by making enemies unerring marksmen that see you as soon as you appear on the level.

The enemies become bullet sponges later in the game, which can be a bit frustrating. Especially ED-209.

yooo fuck this guy

Robocop: Rogue City's environments and protagonist look amazing, but the character models could use a little work. They're fairly generic and often kinda creepy lookin'. Peter Weller's voice acting is excellent, but the same can't be said for the rest of the cast, who range from passable to downright cringey.

One of the best things about the action movies of the era is that they didn't overstay their welcome. They got in, did what they needed to do in around 90 minutes, and got out. They knew what you were there for and respected your time.

I can't really say the same thing for Robocop: Rogue City. I spent more time wandering the police station and hospital making idle chitchat (something that could have been a quick cutscene) and completing silly side quests like fetching a towel for some dude in the shower. I think the game clocks in at around 20 hours, which is way too long for a game like this in my opinion. You can skip side quests, but then you miss out on experience you can use to upgrade your abilities. Speaking of abilities, some seem downright useless (Psychology) while others are absolutely necessary (Armor).

Robocop: Rogue City is a decent game, but I can really only recommend this to diehard fans. If you're interested, maybe wait for a sale.

Game 12 of 2023 - Death's Door (2021)

Death's Door

Developer: Acid Nerve
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Platform: PC
Genre: Action RPG

Difficulty: Difficult
Date Started: Apr 15 2023
Date Ended: May 1 2023
Hours: ~16

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 9/10

I almost quit this game about 10 minutes in. Let me tell you, I'm glad I saw it through, difficulty and all.

When looking into Death's Door, I kept seeing reviews that compared it to various Soulslike games. This put me off at first, since I am terrible at those games. I think I gave Elden Ring an hour, tops, and clicked the refund button after drowning my sorrows in a bottle of Assyrtiko.

What put me off at first was the lack of a map. I have absolutely no sense of direction. Here's the thing, though: once you learn how to play the game, it's actually quite accessible. I gave it some time and explored the world a bit, and eventually I kind of appreciated the lack of a map. You have to kind of wander and read the signposts, taking in the small details and encountering some of the enemies you'll face (and learning how to beat them).

This giant house is one of the first enemies in the game.

Don't get me wrong, Death's Door is pretty hard, but it has a much gentler difficulty curve than the standard Soulslike games. It's fairly forgiving in that when you die, you keep all the souls you collect and just get sent back to the nearest door you walked through. You fight two giant bosses in the first 10 minutes or so; trust me, Death's Door is not fucking around.

You're... going to see this a lot.

Yeah, the enemies can be tough, but as I learned their patterns (and died a lot) I slowly learned how to counter and anticipate the enemies moves to become an absolute killing machine.

Yeah, that's what you get! Plenty to go around!

The nameless crow protagonist, the Reaper, encounters a wide variety of interesting characters, both friend and foe. There's Pothead, an unfortunate soul whose aunt tried to make him immortal by turning his head into a pot. He, of course, asks you to waste her.

"Look, I just met you, but you need to kill my aunt. Kill her good."

Mercy is for the weak. Put her in a body bag!

Death's Door has a charming, humorous, tone that helps the difficulty go down easier, like sugar with the pill. The bosses you face are fearsome to be sure, but you can't help but love them.

Honestly felt kinda bad killing this guy, but I'm a Reaper and a Reaper's gotta reap.

Death's Door is rendered in a simple, cartoony style, but is aesthetically arresting. This, combined with the clever level design and puzzles, provided a great incentive to wander the world and discover its secrets.

A nice room in which to take a breather before reaping the fuck out of little gremlins or whatever.

Gorgeous.

tl;dr: Death's Door is great and you should play it.

Game 10 of 2023 - Like a Dragon: Inshin (2014/2023)

Like A Dragon: Inshin

Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Publisher: Sega
Platform: PC
Genre: Action Adventure

Difficulty: Moderate
Date Started: Apr 3 2023
Date Ended: Apr 14 2023
Hours: 10

Finished: Not Yet/No
Final Rating: 6.5/10

I have yet to finish a Yakuza game, even Yakuza: Like a Dragon which I loved. I guess I just get kind of overwhelmed by all the stuff you're supposed to do. I love the setting and the characters and the story, I just never finish them for some reason.

Unfortunately, I didn't break the streak with Like A Dragon: Inshin. I liked this game at first, particularly the setting. I think I ended up getting frustrated with the combat, where sometimes Ryoma would seem to take my button input as polite suggestions, and the camera which I felt was a little... touchy. I don't know, I'm probably just bad at the game.

It's not like I thought combat was bad. You get different styles: fists, sword, revolver, and a revolver/sword hybrid where you just flip out and wreck dudes but can't parry. The revolver is particularly hilarious, because it fires so rapidly and you never have to reload. Whenever I was feeling lazy I would just run away from the enemies and spam the fire button. It usually worked out pretty well. 

You can unlock a bunch of different moves as you gain experience in each combat style, and many have some pretty visceral and bloody animations, which makes this game all the more hilarious because Ryoma doesn't really kill anyone.

Hot damn that's a lot of blood! Don't worry; he'll be fine.

Ryoma tears through combat like a demon; slicing, shooting, and stomping his opponents without mercy, only for them to just get up and apologize or issue empty threats.

See? He's fine.

If this kind of combat sounds fun to you, don't worry, there's plenty of it. Ryoma can't walk around the corner to the damn green grocer without getting jumped seventeen fucking times by identical groups composed of 3-5 randos. D-Don't the outlaws in Kyo ever speak to each other, like 'hey fellow outlaw, see that guy in the grey robes, with the hair? He's wrecked like 100 of our fellows, maybe steer clear of him, eh?" Well, I guess not. Kyo's lowlifes are more than happy to keep running face first into your bullets.

Speaking of Kyo, it's gorgeous and infused with personality. Like A Dragon: Inshin has a virtue system, where the more you interact with the community (shopping, helping people, etc) you earn virtue points where you can buy upgrades, like additional inventory slots. You can form relationships with shopkeepers and bartenders the more you patronize their establishments, and you're rewarded with virtue points and finding out a little more about the people that inhabit Kyo. I always loved these little human touches in the Yakuza games, and it always made me feel like I was playing a caring human that also happened to be a bad guy stomping badass.

The characters in the game are colorful and interesting, as usual.

Whenever an eyepatch dude shows up, you know he's bad news.

It seems like everyone, even the villains, has an interesting story to tell and that was what kept me playing this game.

 

When two naked dudes go at it, I wanna see hogs flappin'. Cowards!

I found myself enjoying the minigames a bit more than the main game. Fishing was pretty chill, if a little simplistic, and the karaoke minigames are one of my favorite bits of the Yakuza games.

All fishing minigames should be like this.

Karaoke, my favorite Yakuza pastime.

Aaaaaaanyway, Like A Dragon is decent. It's fine. I doubt I'll come back to it, but the ten hours or so I played were worth my time.

Game 7 of 2023 - Salamander County Public Television (2022)

Salamander County Public Television

Developer: Tinzone Games
Publisher: Tinzone Games
Platform: PC
Genre: Minigame, Action, Casual

Difficulty: Easy
Date Started: Mar 20th 2023
Date Ended: Mar 21st 2023
Hours: 1.5

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 7/10

I'm glad this exists. I'm a big fan of WarioWare, and this game is kind like that, I guess?

SCPT nails the public TV aesthetic.

As far as I can tell, SCPT uses stock videos and photographs to tell its story. You, the player, known only as player, are hired by the public television network as a "doer of things." Unfortunately, your ratings are bottom of the barrel because the residents of Salamander county have all disappeared. You need to figure that shit out by the end of the month or the boss is gonna, you know, *makes throat cutting motion*.

Thank God for Ember.

Your job is to film assignments, which are silly minigames for each day of July. Find one too hard? Just skip it, you'll be fine.

I guess mushrooms ARE wheels.

Some of the minigames are hilarious, there are a few that are annoying, and several are just plain confusing.

"That's beans."

I finished SCPT in a lean 90 minutes and had a few laughs. I'm going to give this a recommendation and a score of 7/10.

Game 5 of 2023: Hi-Fi Rush (2022)

  Hi-Fi Rush

Developer: Tango Gameworks
Publisher: Bethesda
Platform: PC
Genre: Action, Rhythm

Difficulty: Moderate
Date Started: Mar 5th 2023
Date Ended: Mar 17th 2023
Hours: 10.5

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 9/10

Well damn, this just came out of nowhere and absolutely floored me.

I tried this on the recommendation from a friend, and I was hooked in the first five minutes. You play as Chai, a complete doofus that accidentally has an iPod thingy implanted in his chest during what is supposed to be a routine cybernetic arm installation. Chai is charming, overconfident, and... kinda on the dim side. He has an alarming capacity for physical punishment that's going to come in handy during his adventure.

Pictured - hapless dipshit Chai, the hero of the tale.

Hi-Fi Rush takes place on the campus of Vandelay Industries, and what starts out as an attempt to escape turns into a quest to overthrow the villainous Kale Vandelay, son of company founder Roxanne Vandelay. The world is vibrant and colorful and is so much fun to explore between combat encounters (called choruses). The environment syncs to the beat along with Chai: trees bounce, gears turn, and pistons pump to a lively 160 BPM.

Hi-Fi Rush assembles one of the liveliest and charismatic supporting casts of any game, ever. Friends and villains alike are creatively realized, from your hacker buddy Peppermint to R&D head honcho Zanzo (whom you defund in order to defeat). The voice actors do a superb job, bringing the razor-sharp dialog to life with with and laser-precise timing. 

Pack your shit, Zanzo, I think you just got fired.

Roquefort - head of finance, robot werewolf

Obviously, the main draw here is going to be the combat. Action and rhythm are melded effortlessly (mostly) and stringing together combos and parries is gratifying.  My few minor gripes include the camera occasionally losing sight of Chai when swarmed by enemies, and the sometimes wonky aiming of your companions. (Peppermint, your ability specifically destroys enemy shields, why the shit would you shoot the enemies without them?!)

After the main campaign is done(which took me around 10.5 hours), there are more challenges to take on, and you can go back and play previous levels, so if you still have the itch to tap your foot while whaling on some robots, you've got plenty to do.

You sure can!

Anyway, I guess the TL;DR of it all is that Hi-Fi Rush is great and you should try it. It's impossible to feel sad while playing.

Playthrough Start: Hi-Fi Rush (2023)

 Hi-Fi Rush

Hi-Fi Rush

In Hi-Fi Rush, you take on the role of hapless dipshit Chai in a rhythm-based action game.

This guy just oozes unearned confidence.

After a routing procedure to get a metal arm goes wrong, Chai's iPod thingy gets grafted into his chest. This gets him labeled a defect, and he needs to escape from the evil Vandelay Corporation before they scrap his ass.

Vandelay boxes

I'm only a couple hours in, but so far this is a complete blast. The platforming sections can be a bit frustrating (Chai has a lot of lift when he jumps, not so much thrust) and targeting enemies can be a pain where there's a bunch of them, but for the most part the mechanics are solid. Timing your attacks to the beat is just so satisfying.

Aftermath of the first boss fight.

The characters are a complete hoot and well voice-acted. The world is well realized and fun, with everything from platforms to exhaust pipes moving to the beat. 

I've still got a ways to go, but this is shaping up to be a crapload of fun.

Game 1 of 2023: Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (2020)

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade - a Thorough and Fair Review

Developer: Squeenix
Publisher: Squeenix
Platform: PC
Genre: Action RPG

Difficulty: Not Sure
Date Started: Jan 1st 2023
Date Ended: Jan 3rd 2023
Hours: 1 (Refunded)

Finished: No
Final Rating: 2/10

I adored Final Fantasy VII for the PS1 back when it came out in 1997 or so. I put something like a billion hours in and when a friend of mine accidentally erased my save when I was grinding materia in the downed Shinra plane I cut him out of my life. I dont talk to him anymore. Fuck that guy.

The title screen of a better game.

I spent hours breeding chocobos and grinding Materia and when I was able to one shot the last boss with a fully-powered Knights of the Round, it was all worth it. I fought all the stupid Weapons and I got all the gimmick weapons for the characters. I'd find excuses to call out of work so I could play more Final Fantasy. On my third or fourth playthrough, I hooked the audio cables on my PS1 to my tape deck so I could record the ending music.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I liked it.

Absolute unit.

26 years later, my memories of this game are still vivid. If I was forced to list my top 10 games of all time this would almost certainly make the list. I haven't really enjoyed any of the Final Fantasy games since then (I guess IX was ok) but man, VII? Formative gaming experience for sure.

It's been a zillion years but these backgrounds still bring up some strong feelings.

Also, Avalanche are just straight up fucking terrorists.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade fucking sucks though and I wanted to die every time a character spoke. Refunded after an hour. That's my review.

Oh well. On to something else.