Recent reviews by Lead ✨

Well… looking at Getting Over It, a game I found far more fun to watch other people ragequit over than to actually play myself, probably should’ve figured this wouldn’t be my thing much either

To its credit I do actually like the concept of using the triggers to control your feet, and needing to carefully place them for balance so you don’t fall over when walking through the game’s increasingly risky obstacles. Genuine feeling of tension and accomplishment here when you pass through ones that would definitely set you back a fair bit of progress if you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it up, and despite how easy it is to fail there’s not much actual jank to the contact physics themselves (though the camera can bug out at times when up too close against rocks)

What I really didn’t like though was that significant time is just spent struggling to walk through this game’s large expanse of emptiness that is its open world, where you have to press down on the triggers over and over til your fingers hurt, staring at Nate and his ass jiggle physics as you try to keep him from tripping and falling every couple seconds, often getting turned around cause there’s not much sense of direction, and not even having any background music to accompany you beyond droning nature sounds. Like this game took me nearly 10 hours to finish, there are optional areas throughout sure but I just skipped trying to explore most of them cause the act of hauling yourself there and back just felt too boring to bother with

I found the story and humor eh also. Failson Nate’s awkward talks with the other passive aggressive hikers (or the donkey guys with ♥♥♥♥♥ out for whatever reason) was pretty funny, but didn’t really like the improvised dialogue style much in general

Really liked Little Nightmares 2 and hearing Tarsier was making a new IP that goes all in on more disturbing horror was pretty exciting. Though ultimately I came away from Reanimal feeling like it was kinda more of the same? If indeed delivering on a grimier feeling world than what they made before, with the oversized creatures being more grotesque and generally leaning more into overt violence than the sorta restrained style LN had. But I guess I was expecting it to be scarier than it was, didn’t feel particularly more tense than I remember from LN2 but having a focus on co-op this time around (while a fun addition) inherently diminishes that feeling I suppose

The biggest caveat with the game really is just there’s not much of it, finishing out at about 3-4 hours. Which I about expected coming from LN but is a bit more glaring when Reanimal costs $40, or even $65 if you want the additional story DLC that’s coming later in the year. Usually would rather not factor price into a game’s quality but ehh that’s steep for what’s here

Probably the most I’ve enjoyed a game about struggling to climb a huge mountain since uhh… Celeste? I’m already a fan of The Game Bakers with their last two titles, and it’s pretty cool that they keep making games that are so dramatically different from each other. This is for sure the most ambitious and definitely would say my favorite of theirs now

The mechanics in Cairn tend to be a bit glitchy at times but on the whole is very intuitive and not something I’ve seen executed quite the same before. Controlling each limb, you place your hands and feet on each rock bit by bit and slowly pull your way upward, but what makes it interesting is that you need to have a good hold to grab onto along with placing pitons or you’ll tire out and fall

The way this works where you actually have to pay attention to cracks and openings in the rockface (as opposed to having telegraphed grapple points like say Jusant) is actually really impressive to me, cause the mountain design is very dense in scale and it often felt like there were numerous different paths I could take as I made my way through. It’s the closest I’ve played to simulating how an actual climb like this might feel like, and quickly found it really addicting. There’s also a survival aspect where you have to keep track of food and drink resources, and can cook different recipes for bonuses while climbing. This could’ve been a detriment imo but thought it added a lot to how immersive it felt, and didn’t find it too intrusive for the most part

Aside for the mechanics though, Cairn is just a really atmospheric game. The art style is great with really cool sense of scale the higher you get, and the music is meditative with synths from The Toxic Avenger (of Furi fame). I liked the story also, with the focus on how dangerous the mountain is with many climbers already dying on their way to the summit, and questioning why Aava is even risking her life like this. The ending especially felt really memorable which caught me off guard

Positive:

- Despite having the exact same premise and cast as Pathologic 2 just from a different character point of view (playing as Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky and his take on the 12 days in this hellish town), Pathologic 3 takes a interestingly different approach to its gameplay in that it strips down the survival mechanics that made 2 so brutal to play in favor of focusing on a more complex narrative structure. Here, it introduces time travel as a central mechanic and designs its quest mapping around jumping back and forth between days, where you make new choices and try to fix prior mistakes that’ll keep the plague count and town unrest to a minimum each day. The catch being you’ll need to manage time travel as a finite resource that gets more limited the further you push to day 12. What’s so impressive about this is how incredibly interconnected each quest thread ends up being across each day while largely being a nonlinear sequence of events, learning new info in the present day can affect a huge amount in the past that you can try and change, and past dialogue will adjust to account for it. But some decisions you change might end up being a mistake later on that can cost you more time to fix once again. It’s really ambitious actually and it mostly nails it

- The game’s dialogue in general is superbly written, I can’t quite remember how strong Pathologic 2’s was in comparison but having Daniil as the protagonist who’s a generally snarky and pompous city doctor losing his mind with stress the longer he tries to (hopelessly) keep the town and its weird residents alive made the story very entertaining throughout. I also loved how the more you time travel the more jumbled Daniil is with what’s actually taking place and when, and makes you question if his accounts on the surrealism brought about by the plague is actually reliable or not

- Diagnosing patients was also a compelling addition, examining for symptoms and looking at blood samples to pinpoint which diagnosis is actually the correct one was more difficult than it may initially seem

Mixed:

- I didn’t necessarily mind the lack of 2’s survival mechanics (in fact felt like a mercy not having to deal with it here lol), but not quite as much a fan of what replaced it. Managing apathy and mania felt a bit tacked on, dialogue options causing them to shift was cool but seemed more arbitrary instead of feeling like a core aspect of the experience like scourging for supplies and trying not to get infected did

- Combat exists… it’s not good but I probably used the revolver like 3 times in 30+ hours so it’s really not emphasized at all. You can just run past rioters 99% of the time, but one nitpick I had was the camera will always force turn to them whenever you passed by which slows you down. Didn’t need to do that lol

- The town is segmented between loading screens for districts with fast travel instead of being fully open like Pathologic 2. It does kinda feel like a step back on a technical level but also probably helps a lot with optimizing so indifferent about the change

- The dialogue is so good that I wish this had full voice acting instead of the characters just saying some random lines whenever you talk to them lol

Negative:

- Unfortunately given how complex the sequencing in this game must be to keep track of so many different quest states, there’s a fair amount of bugs. For most of the game it’s fine but it does get progressively worse the closer you get to the end, stuff like characters showing as dead or alive when they shouldn’t be, some quests just not progressing properly, etc. This obviously isn’t ideal given that time travel is limited and can make some jumps feel like a waste if it bugs out on you, or in the worst case can lead to softlocks if you run out entirely. Hopefully the devs patch as much as they can though, been a lot of hotfixes already

Very Alien Isolation, I would say derivative even but somehow I missed the memo about this being announced before that game even came out. Wasn’t aware of it til just recently so admittedly I can’t say I may have had the same expectations as someone waiting for it that long lol

But for something that seemed like was stuck in endless dev hell this was pretty well put together. Strong atmosphere and sound design, and it does get creepy at times particularly with the last few chapters (though the robots you hide from in the first half ehh not so much). What I found most noteworthy was how diegetic it was, there’s no HUD or markers and instead you use a CAT mechanic tool to navigate and keep track of tasks, that you need to manually click buttons for and power with batteries to use. You also need this to save the game at these access point screens which I feel like the intention here was in making saving more tense (kinda like the keycard wait time in Alien), though I don’t think the game really succeeds with that because you’ll literally never run out of batteries to find, like every room you come across will have 2 or 3 just sitting around, not to mention dispensers everywhere if you really can’t find one lol. Still cool though

The narrative is alright, I think the short playtime works against it in this case but the lite puzzles and bits of notes detailing what’s going on throughout were interesting. It’s obviously not gigantic like the Sevastopol but generally a retrofuturistic abandoned lunar base is a good setting so found it cool to explore

Pleasant surprise, this brought back nostalgia for Telltale’s best work even if from a new studio. The animation quality’s a major step up from the old jank engine Telltale used and it’s basically like watching an adult superhero TV show the whole way (a la Invincible)

It really shows the writers previously made Tales from the Borderlands, the humor can lean a bit juvenile at times but the characters are really endearing just the same. The performances overall are well done and it’s awesome to see Aaron Paul leading in a game like this, he does a great job

Though what most separates this from Telltale is that there’s no walking segments with point and click gameplay, instead there’s dispatching where you manage your hero team handling emergency calls and a simple hacking minigame. They’re fine additions to make the game more interactive and did enjoy building up hero stats over time, but the story is the main appeal of the game obviously

Wouldn’t say it quite matches the brilliance of Tetris Effect cause… it’s Tetris ya know? That’s timeless and I’m much more experienced compared to Lumines so its fusion of synesthesia and the flow it has felt like more of a novelty to me. But Arise still comes close!

What’s most noticeably iterated on compared to Effect is how dynamic the stages are. There’s more going on with the visual changes and transitions, and the blocks often shift in style as you progress with the music. This does lean a bit more on the distracting side of things, but it’s really cool

The soundtrack is well done of course and just as impressively textured with your inputs being music notes. Though I will say overall it’s not quite as earworm worthy as Effect’s music for me, and the vocal songs are a bit more bland than I hoped. But the instrumental tracks are still a standout

Pros:
- UE5 graphics eye candy which is something Bloober usually does well on with Observer, SH2 and now this. All the environments are very detailed and the dark lighting is top notch (when it’s working that is, HDR is busted and needs a mod to fix)
- The audio design is pretty great, the creepy ambience, all the little gadget sounds, hearing the the monsters as you carefully walk through the building, highly recommended to play with good headphones or speakers
- This is more an unabashed Dead Space clone than not clearly, but the focus on (very) limited resource management and level design with lots of locked doors to open, and hefty controls made it feel more effective as a survival horror game compared to say The Callisto Protocol at least
- Charging shots as the main combat mechanic was pretty fun. Though it had the issue of making weapons that don’t use charges not really useful, I basically just stuck with the first pistol and shotgun the entire game and left the rest in storage to save space
- Initially assumed this was set in space or something, but it actually being in a retrofuture 1980s Poland after an apocalyptic pandemic was an interesting premise. I liked all the notes and tense atmosphere it builds up as you time jump between the present and past

Cons:
- While I liked the setting, I think the story itself fell more flat. Things like who the Traveler really is, their mission with collecting the essences, what the Collective is, etc were interesting to follow initially but the actual characters involved were mostly forgettable to me, especially who ends up as the overarching villain
- The Traveler herself having a wooden voice performance felt intentional so didn’t mind there, but the other characters also sounded more bored than they probably should’ve, and the facial animations are also where the lower budget shows compared to SH2. Also surprised this doesn’t have a Polish dub
- Bit too long, my clear playtime said 15 hours but it felt more dragged out than that at times. Those sections where you have to keep walking between new areas or going through the same looking infected corridors with the monsters stuck to the wall probably could’ve been trimmed a bit
- Occasional crashes, though for the most part performance was fine (especially compared to how SH2 was)

(Got all the endings and finished last run on Lost in the Fog action/puzzle difficulty)

f is a brand new Silent Hill game written by Ryukishi07 of When They Cry fame, which needless to say immediately made me confident in this compared to the usual bar of mediocrity you would come to expect from this franchise. SH2 remake last year showed the series had potential for a true resurgence with a successful original entry, and overall I’m very happy with how this turned out having finished it

Yes some may question how much of a SH game this can be considered given it’s not related to the eponymous town itself and set in a 60s Japan village, but in my opinion being standalone makes no difference to me so long as it still maintains the psychological themes and unsettling atmosphere that’s unique to the series, which this excels in through playing as Hinako and Ebisugaoka as a well realized setting. With her journal and the many documents to find, extensive effort is poured into detailing her character and patriarchal struggles, along with adding context bit by bit to understand the surreal horrors she’s experiencing as per Silent Hill tradition. The puzzles directly tie into the characters and mythos being built as well, and repeat playthroughs add new content that further fleshes out the story beyond the initial ending. Narratively it’s very well done

That said the actual developer behind the project, NeoBards, was definitely unproven with their only other notable works being uhh… some remasters or those less than appealing RE multiplayer spinoffs, so despite Ryukishi’s involvement I was still a bit skeptical same as I was with Bloober last year on how this would turn out as a game. Thankfully though, I was pleasantly surprised in this case as well. Visually it looks great and strongly succeeds in capturing the gradual madness of the setting, and it even ended up a better performing UE5 title than SH2 remake was. In terms of level design I do feel it’s a bit too linear even if you can explore some houses here and there early on, but for basically a first time effort on their own horror game it’s very praiseworthy despite some occasional gripes

The combat though will probably prove the most divisive. The focus on melee weapons (with low durability such that Hinako can break steel pipes in a couple swings), having to time counters and a slow mo dodge, with charge up attacks with perks to collect, and whole ass soulslike bosses pushes this closer to the action horror end than not. This also means it’s not exactly all that scary either, at least compared to SH2 which felt much more oppressive as a horror game, but that’s fine imo

Depending on difficulty you’ll probably have a different impression though, I’d imagine playing on story first is ideal since hard kinda pushed it to frustration on first playthrough for me. But it clicked more on NG+ when you have more upgrades and new perks. The biggest fault really is the enemy encounter design, most of f is fine in this regard and lets you run past most enemies to save resources, up until late game where it starts to make you do mandatory combat arenas (which is not ideal for a game like this), repeating this one spongy miniboss enemy in particular that quickly got grating to fight. But aside for that, I thought the combat was pretty decent given expectations were rock bottom lol

Finally a game that tackles one of the scariest experiences of all, being stuck in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ data entry job

Pretty unique short and sweet concept. Not only was it genuinely oppressive (props to the audio design), I didn’t expect to come away from it feeling more pensive than anything. Since you’re actually forced to type out every postcard word for word with minimal mistakes, it did a good job progressing the player from paying most attention to all the unnerving sounds and computer glitches (a bit cheap but works), to being hyperfocused on trying to push through the intentional repetition. You know it's a dead-end job but you need to make rent, so you have to keep typing. But the more you type, the more mind-numbing it gets, the more your fingers start to creak, the time you need to make your quota keeps getting shorter and the postcards get more and more illegible. The walls are closing in and you wish you could find something else already, but rent is still due and this is all you have, so you get used to ignoring the horrors growing around you and just keep typing…