Recent reviews by Holy Zen!

"Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane" is logic puzzle-oriented visual novel inspired by Capcom's "Ace Attorney" series that takes place in a fantasy world where magic outpaced technology, and dares ask the question "How would the law work in a world where magic was a thing?" Since the society the game takes place in is very caste-driven like a feudalistic society would be, the game often focuses on ideas concerning class disparity, the ruling class being particularly known for skirting accountability in their actions. The gameplay consists of investigating crimes, interviewing people, gathering evidence, and then presenting said evidence in court to refute statements from hostile witnesses and the opposing counsel. If you've ever played an "Ace Attorney" game, you'll know what you're getting into for the most part.

- The artwork on display here is gorgeous, and most of the characters here are very visually-memorable.
- Excellent world-building. The devs went all-out in creating their world, and took careful consideration in explaining the background and rules of their world; it's rare I ever found that I had to turn my brain off to accept something about it, something not even "Ace Attorney" can boast.
- The writing is as intelligent as it needs to be in order to tackle the complicated political themes on display. I found the writing to be more mature than one usually sees in an Ace Attorney game, less focused on quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness and more on the serious end, covering heavier subject matter with the gravitas it deserves.
- The comedic beats happen when they are appropriate and I personally found much of them laugh-out-loud funny. Fans of the "Ace Attorney" series are also treated to the occasional gag that hangs a lampshade on the various tropes of those games, to great effect.
- The devs listen to feedback regarding various aspects of the game and tweak the game's design accordingly. Problems I had with the interface were actually addressed partway into my playthrough, and the devs actually released a patch that retooled much of the story in order to tighten it up.
- The game is more forgiving than "Ace Attorney" in the sense that there are no lose-states in the game. Progressing is just a matter of finding the right solution to move forward.

- The Interface, while improved upon, is still a bit kludge-y at times. I would occasionally skip dialogue without meaning to, and some normal audio cues, like when I submitted the correct evidence, didn't always trigger.
- There are occasional logic puzzles where it is very hard to determine what is needed to progress the story. Sometimes the game wouldn't progress unless I nailed the precise prompt the game was looking for, even if I gave a prompt that basically said the same thing. On rare occasions, I had no idea what the game wanted me to do and I exploited the "no fail state" design to just throw random things out until it let me proceed. In these instances, the thing the game took made sense when explained by the characters after the fact, but I'm not sure how the game expected me to know to present it before that. The devs may want to implement an additional hint system like modern "Ace Attorney" games do when you get something wrong three times in a row.
- The symphonic music is very understated at points; while I'd call none of the music bad, it often comes across as "muzak", background noise that pleasantly fills the scene but has difficulty being memorable. There are very few tracks here I'd listen to after playing the game. To be fair, "Ace Attorney" is a tough act to follow, here.
- The dialogue can occasionally be rather generic when you submit the wrong evidence in the court and towards witnesses during investigation segments.
- Occasional side story bits that could be interesting but don't go anywhere.
- The occasional bugs with the interface that the devs are still tracking down. I only had one instance where the dialogue got stuck and I had to reload, fortunately.

Despite a few rough spots here and there, I consider this game an absolute treat, and it's an easy recommend to anyone that's a fan of the "Ace Attorney" series or people who just like visual novels in general. It could even win over some people who were on the fence about the "Ace Attorney" series thanks to its showcase of political intrigue and less emphasis on gag-dialogue during investigations. I look forward to more work from this developer and hopefully a continuation of the story presented here.

Final Rating: 4.5/5 - Highly recommended

THE GOOD: Plays great on modern systems, looks pretty (with some rough edges), can play all four campaigns through a single UI.

THE BAD: Still some old low-res unit portraits here and there, multiplayer forced to play by Soulstorm rules, odd instances of skipped dialogue during the campaigns

THE MEH: Soulstorm campaign was a buggy mess in the original, still a buggy mess here. Perhaps some extra spit and polish was warranted?

GAME RATING: A-
REMASTER RATING: B-
REMARKS: The game itself is (mostly) outstanding, and this release does little to get in the way of that experience. If you still have the original game and it runs fine on your system of choice, though, there's not much incentive to grab this.
NOTE: It seems they are still adding content via updates, so I suppose this review will get revised if something changes.

Noita is a brutal game that regularly kills you for fun and offers no shortage of ways for you to off yourself if you're not careful

It's also very fun.

Play it today, and channel your inner masochist.

Overall, the story is kind of 'meh'. The continued tensions between Earthrealm and the Lin Kuei were interesting, but the angle was cut short in favor of the uninspiring Khaos storyline, which features Havik as a generic power-tripping edgelord and various evil alts with a punk motif that don't speak much. I kept expecting psychological/body horror elements to be used to make things interesting, but the story never really went there, making the its potential seem under-utilized.

tl;dr - Definitely wait for a sale if you want to play it, but you're not really missing anything by skipping it.

It's a prettier version of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Will it change your mind about Oblivion at the end of the day? Probably not. It's the same game underneath, but with a bit more visual spit and polish.

As someone who played the original game for hundreds of hours when it first came out and thought it was a fun (albeit flawed) game, I can appreciate that this remaster exists and can enjoy it for what it is. If you've never played Oblivion before, now is a good time to give it a try.

This almost makes up for nearly every DLC prior to this completely ignoring machine races!

The Ur-Quan Masters has come to Steam! Happy days and Jubilation!

Originally called Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters, this is a game from my childhood which still holds up well today. The space battle part of the game is engaging enough on its own, but the full game is a sprawling open-ended adventure which will take several hours to complete, even if you know what you're doing. I already know all the tricks and secrets, and I wish I could neuralyze myself to be able to play this game as a first-time player again.

Of note, this is not the original 1992 game, nor a port of the 3DO version of the game, but a community-remastered version to allow it to work on modern systems and use the best aspects of both previous versions -- including the 3DO's (cringey) voice-acting -- as well as rock-solid netplay. You can tell this is a beloved game by the fact this community-remastered version even exists.

If you've never played this game, well, I envy you. Go play it! Go play it now! And if you haven't played the game since its original release, you may want to check out what the remaster has to offer.

It's okay, I guess.

Command and Conquer was one of the pioneers of the RTS genre. The first engine they made for the series had two games made on it: Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn, the first game they released, formerly just called Command and Conquer, and then Command and Conquer Red Alert. Tiberian Dawn is about a futuristic conflict between GDI, a global military superpower, and the Brotherhood of Nod, a terrorist group. Red Alert is about an alternate timeline where Albert Einstein used time travel to eliminate Adolf Hitler before he created Nazi Germany, and as a consequence, there was nothing holding Soviet Russia in check from waging their own world war.

EA, who ended up purchasing Westwood Studios (and promptly ran it into the ground), brings these classics back to life from a much-simpler time, allowing it to be ran on modern systems, in full high definition, with a coat of paint thrown over the visuals to suit HD (though you change the graphics back to classic pixels if you really want to). Both games play pretty much the same, all told, which is to be expected: They both played pretty much the same back in the day, too. The interface is upgraded ever-so-slightly with some modern tweaks, and they allow you to freely configure these in the options; If you really want to, you can strip these tweaks away and experience the game as it played back when it first released. One of the best features of the original two games were the soundtracks, mixing techno-industrial with heavy electric guitar riffs. Not only were all those tracks remastered here, but the game also includes several remixes of the tracks as well as the OST versions of the tracks which have additional soundbites that back in the day could not be included in the game due to technical limitations. Using the game's Jukebox feature, you can either just have it go through the entire soundtrack, or pick and choose the tunes you want to listen to, including the original lo-fi versions of the tracks if you really want to. Both the Tiberian Dawn and the Red Alert tracks can be played in either game, which is a feature I rather like, allowing me to choose my favorite tracks from both games for my playlist. Of note, both games had expansion packs released, and those expansion packs are included with both of the games, which is nice.

As stated before, Command and Conquer was one of the pioneers of the RTS genre, and was made back before a lot of the conventions of the genre were established such as Fog of War, a nuanced interface, and the concept of balancing sides. The remaster doesn't do much to update these mechanics. There's still no Fog of War, meaning that once you've explored an area, you can (usually) see everything that goes on in that area for the rest of the battle; later games only let you see what's going on in that area if you have units nearby. The Interface updates that EA put in are welcome, but the game still feels very primitive on that front compared to games that came out a short time later like, say, StarCraft. Both games had very questionable ideas when it came to balancing each side, to where GDI arguably feels much more powerful than NOD in Tiberian Dawn and the Soviet sides feel much more powerful than the Allies in Red Alert. This is hardly an issue in the campaigns, but can feel rather significant in Multiplayer. Also, the Full-Motion Video cutscenes which helped make these games so iconic back in the day are still here... but they have not been remastered whatsoever, and can appear very pixelated and grainy at high resolutions. Finally, there's a unique problem for this version of the game in that the campaigns have a difficulty slider for Easy, Medium and Hard. The original game only had one difficulty, and this is represented by the Normal difficulty. As a warning, the game's Hard Difficulty does not do anything beyond making the enemy units tougher and more damaging. This can throw off the balance for some missions, particularly those where you the player start with limited resources.

In summary, the remastered version presented here is very much still worth playing, and EA provided a nice number of options to help you configure your experience the way you like it and did a decent job with the remastering. Just keep in mind that these games did originally come out in the 1990's, so certain allowances need to be made.

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