Recent reviews by MewMew

In making the sequel to Portal, Valve managed to take everything incredible about the previous masterpiece and improve on it. The white test room boxes of the original looked fine, but they became mundane after several hours of gameplay. This game maintains the test rooms, but adds additional impressive environments to gaze at while solving puzzles. The original game excelled at character, and Portal 2 continues this with the addition of more wonderful characters that are always a pleasure to listen to. While Portal 1 excelled at character, it lacked a traditional story to place the characters into outside of a very basic setup and conclusion. Portal 2 adds a brilliant story, treading the player along with constant hints and mystery while they explore more of what Aperature Science was like during its peak. More Portal puzzles are always a good thing, and the additional mechanics are implemented extremely well. Everyone with a computer capable of running this game should play it.

A masterpiece of videogame design, easily one of the best games ever made. The difficulty is paced perfectly, regardless of skill level or experience with videogames. Veteran videogame players will speed through puzzles to reach points of difficulty while new players can feel free to take their time and get comfortable with the mechanics. The game excels and introducing new mechanics to keep the gameplay fresh, giving the players time to become comfortable with them while also using old mechanics in interesting ways. The puzzles never feel too easy or too high. The game also excels at character, with one of the most iconic and interesting antagonists in gaming. For a 2007 release, the game still looks nice, and slightly dated graphics do not detract from the experience. Play this game.

BIoshock Infinite is an interesting game. It has some truly incredible moments, but also has many core flaws. The highs are extremely high but the lows are quite low. The game's aesthetic is absolutely gorgeous, still standing out as one of the best videogame aesthetics to date. The colors are vibrant, and the environment is unique and immersive. The narrative is easily one of the best narratives in gaming. The primary character, Elizabeth is used brilliantly and truly shows the strength that good use of ludonarrative can have. The plot is consistently interesting, maintaining frequent twists and intrigue. However, the gameplay is extremely mediocre. The shooting of the guns is standard, nothing bad, nothing good. However, the real draw of the combat is the vigors. They seem to provide the immersive sim freedom and variety on paper, but almost all of them end up feeling the same, either being some sort of damage or stun power. The game has guns carry limited ammo, intending you to drop and pick up guns depending on the situation. However, this becomes problematic late game. The game has an upgrade system for guns, which seems fine on paper, and it works early game. However, as the difficulty increases later in the game non-upgraded guns become near useless. Limited money and expensive purchases result in you only being able to upgrade a few guns. This, combined with frequently running out of ammo, results in a system where your good guns run out of ammo and you are forced to use weak guns at worst or are forced to ignore the gun switching mechanic, leading to an even more mediocre and dry gameplay experience, to the point where you become sick of the gameplay after only 10 hours. There's a lot to love in Bioshock Infinite, but that content is often muddled by chunks of mediocrity. You could love it, or you could find it unenjoyable.

The Stanley Parable was already a brilliant game, and Wreden was able to follow it up with another masterpiece meta commentary on games, this time focusing on game criticism. It's a short game, so the less said to spoil the experience the better, but the game provides a deeply immersive and atmospheric experience that leaves quite the emotion impact.

The game beautifully shows the strengths of Immsersive Sims in a modern era. The worldbuilding is incredible, with notes and details scattered everywhere with notable encounters hidden wherever you poke around the map. The sheer depth of the levels is insane, with so many ways to play through the levels and the ability to consistent learning more about all of the levels on each playthrough. The stealth is endlessly satisfying. The direct combat is shockingly solid for a stealth title, with plenty of opportunity for counterplay through skill while still feeling underpowered enough to discourage engaging in combat. However, the game does have weaknesses. The story is easily the weakest part of the game. The characters are not very interesting and their motivations are often unclear past helping the Loyalists. The middle portion of the game is weak story-wise, with little plot progression besides "here is the next person on a checklist of people you need to take out. Nonlethal blatantly provides a worse experience than lethal play. When choosing to play nonlethally or low chaos, using majority of tools and powers available is greatly discouraged. Attacking people nonlethally feels terrible, requiring several seconds of standing in place holding a button. While this does create tension, those are several seconds you could be spotted at any time, (and players who intimately know levels can often avoid enemies and by extension the mechanic entirely) it still feels poor when you know there is no chance of you being spotted, especially when you know you can do a brief dagger strike at any time if you were just playing lethally. In addition, the beginning of the game does not start off extremely strong, with the first level easily being the weakest due to how limited the player's tools are without powers, with the powers and tools being what truly make the game stand out, and likely marked the end of many players' time with the game.