Recent reviews by avery

fun with friends

good game played on a poor laptop...

The most fun, irritating, recent and best star wars game i've ever experienced.

make you feel like a batman!

Took more than a year to continue the game just to get my mind blown afterwards. Had myself on the edge of seat the whole time, I couldn't stop looking back every now and then... and it was on broad daylight. Horror is not my cup of tea, but forcing myself to play all the way through the end was a torture but a rewarding and a satisfying experience.
Beautiful pacing. Beautiful atmosphere. Beautiful twist. Beautiful narrative. All of that without a single jumpscare. Absolutely brilliant. Yes, I'm a sucker for some good storytelling
God, it's so good you have no idea. What are you waiting for? Go play if you haven't holy ♥♥♥♥

My heart just broke, and then the broken pieces exploded into flames, then the remains of those bits melted. I'm in love

Emily is Away is a heartfelt text story about 3 bestfriends going in a hot tuubbb
Five feet apart cause they have dark unsolvable bittersweet past they can't escape from

veri depres,will message again

Abzu is serene and meditative, calming and cathartic, moving and timeless, its simple components assembled so elegantly as to become something altogether richer.

There's a striking sort of purity about Abzu that invites comparison to another, equally powerful game: Journey. As in Journey, Abzu's characters are nameless, its story wordless, its campaign brief. It also eschews many mechanics we might consider standard for a modern adventure/exploration game, including combat, character progression, and fail states. It even lacks the ambient multiplayer that made Journey such a profound experience for many players. But Abzu finds meaning in other places and, like Journey, evokes a vast array of emotions with grace and ease.

Though the campaign follows a linear path, you're typically free to explore areas at your own pace, following subtle environmental cues toward hidden details or grasping on to massive creatures like orcas and manta rays as they glide effortlessly through the blazing blue water. You can even pause to "meditate" at certain statues, allowing you to experience the world from the perspective of the animals around you. Doing so doesn't earn you anything; it's simply an opportunity to observe and enjoy the thriving ecosystems layered into every environment.

With lush kelp forests, pink coral reefs, and murky black trenches, Abzu captures the otherworldly beauty of the ocean and populates each breathtaking backdrop with its own unique fauna. You'll find all manner of fish, sharks, eels, whales, crustaceans, and more, all of which behave believably. And yet, somehow, I never felt threatened--curious, awestruck, even intimidated, but never threatened. There's something profoundly peaceful about drifting through that world with no score or objectives or heads-up display to break the spell.

Abzu is also more than a simple ocean-life simulator. As you push forward, you'll encounter several straight-forward exploration puzzles and even a few tense moments of action, but more importantly, you'll begin to dive deeper and deeper into the game's unspoken narrative. You'll uncover some strange yet adorable robots almost immediately and start to notice scattered ruins of an ancient civilization shortly thereafter.

Of course, Abzu isn't perfect. The camera occasionally clips through larger objects, for example, and the mechanics walk a very fine line between minimalist and just straight-up simplistic. But these shortcoming are utterly inconsequential in the face of Abzu's countless artistic triumphs--like the music. The soundtrack shifts dynamically as you progress through the environments, stitching together various compositions on the fly to create a mood that matches your surroundings without explicitly calling attention to itself.

And that's not all. At certain moments, the camera slowly pulls back to communicate the overwhelming scale of certain creatures and environments. I swam eye to eye with a blue whale and have never felt more awestruck or insignificant in a video game. On another occasion, I emerged from a tight cavern and was suddenly enveloped by a vast, empty chasm with an endless darkness beneath me. Again, the deft camerawork turned an already memorable moment into something truly incredible.

Art exists to bridge a gap, to communicate emotions or ideas that would otherwise be impossible to articulate. Abzu does this--courageously, confidently, sincerely. Its stirring soundtrack, vivid colors, subtle storytelling, living world, and thoughtful execution combine to create a singularly moving, transcendent experience. In a word: Abzu is beautiful.

Beholder wants to make its decisions moral and vexing, but at the end of the day I gave up on being good and started just playing good - becoming better at balancing the books. To make ends meet, I instructed Carl to make extensive reports as often as possible, and filch a trinket here and there to fence on the side. I understood objectively each of those actions were moral compromises, but they lose much of their bite when it's the only possible way to move forward. Still, while game's darkness is not as deep or compelling as it perhaps wants it to be, if you're curious and diligent you will find plenty to enjoy. Much like beauty, fun is in the eye(hands) of the beholder

Describing Plug & Play is somewhat of a challenge. Imagine Don Hertzfeldt’s Rejected, just shorter, slightly more obscene, and in game form. There is no setting per se, just a few plugs, a few outlets, and a few dudes with plugs/outlets instead of heads. Yeah, let your imagination run wild. The soundtrack is spacey and sometimes operatic, and the sound effects are clear and appropriate. The controls, which are very simple, are immediately intuitive. Since there is so little going on in any given scene, it’s important to get the few elements that are in play totally precise. The game’s designers accomplish this quite well—allowing their hand-scribbled content to be the star of the show, with no distractions.

It was simultaneously jarring and awesome how the game allowed you to direct the action at some points, and then took over at others. All in all, it created this delightful, cringing sense of “Oh gawd, what happens when I press this button?” throughout.

The puzzles in Plug & Play are simple, and only one or two scenes come to mind where I didn’t immediately know what to do to advance to the next scene. This lack of “gaming” is why it feels more appropriate to label Plug & Play an “interactive film” as opposed to a “game.” That being said, the experience of playing Plug & Play is very different from watching the short film of the same title; it allows a different relationship between the artist and the viewer, and appeals to a slightly different demographic.



The game’s incredible use of humor bears mentioning again, to give credit where credit is due. In recent memory, no game has made me so perplexed or caused me to laugh so hard—making it all the more disappointing that the game lasts for a paltry 15 minutes.

The game has gotten some flack for having a $2.99 price tag for such a short play time, but I still think small but smart games like Plug & Play are a welcome industry development. While I understand the tendency to assign value or cost based on a game’s total length, I don’t think this should be applied universally across the medium. I’d love to see shorter vignette gaming experiences like this one, provided they leave a similarly lasting impression.

In the end, what does this short, ridiculous, and at times hilariously disgusting game have to say about the human condition? To quote the artist, it is “about nothing less than love.” And like many surreal and experimental artistic creations, this game cannot be adequately described with words. It’s better to be experienced—in a famously gross internet video kind of way.

Plug & Play is deeply odd, and a real pleasure for it. Plus poo jokes and silly innuendo (in your end-oh). All good.