I decided to play Onde as a pallet cleanser between finishing Hundred Line and starting Silksong. For that it served just fine, mostly because I hesitate to fully label it as a "Game". To me atleast it felt more like an interactive art installation.

With that said its not like there isnt gameplay, its just very simplistic. We play as what i can best describe as a little jellyfish hangar, which occasionally houses little plankton thingies. The goal is simply to move from circle to circle, mostly by riding the circles' expanding radius to reach the next circle. Sometimes you have some control over this as the little plankton will swim to the middle of the circle and let you control it, sometimes you simply have to time it.

This simple gameplay loop would grow stale rather quickly, but the game does a good job of jumping from setpiece to setpiece and introducing a couple new mechanics along the way. It never really reaches any level of complexity though and it is probably better off that way, owing to the limited control you have.

The game's real sell is the music and visuals. Onde sports a catchy soundtrack that i found it easy to bob along with and felt quite fitting for the often psychedelic visuals. The game is quite pretty - In the kind of way a kaleidoscope is pretty. Its full of colours and patterns, often leaving some interpretation as to what they represent, while still giving a clear vibe.

I think Onde is worth a try if its just sitting in your steam library anyway or if you see it on heavy sale. It is fascinating and pretty, but not much of a game. As such I will give it a 7/10 and say i enjoyed my time with it.

This is probably the most conflicted I have ever been about a game. It is a game i want to love with all my heart, to give it a clean 10/10 and tell everyone to play it. But i cannot ignore that there were stretches of time where I no longer wanted to play.

There will be spoilers in this review, so read at your own risk - I will keep them as minimal as possible and no major plot points - except for what is spoiled in the game's own steam page - will be discussed. If you like Visual novels, this is a monument to the ambition possible in the genre and a must play. But do be aware that it took me 160 hours to play through all the game had to offer.

Hundred line is split up into 2 halves, the visual novel storytelling part and the tactical battles in a style reminiscent of fire emblem. Both parts are mostly excellent.

Hundred Line puts us in the shoes of Takumi Sumino, who gets yoinked out of his somewhat normal life in a dome city, in order to serve as the last line of defence for humanity against a threat simply known as the invaders. He wakes up in the "Last Defence Academy" alongside a cast of other diverse characters with the task to survive the onslaught for 100 days. Not much more than this is explained at first, which causes roughly half the task force to refuse the call to battle. The gameplay loop from here will be slowly unveiling the mysteries of this world, the invaders and your situation, while occasionally coming under attack by multicoloured murderous teddy-bear look alikes and the occasionally eldritch monsters commanding them.

When the time for battle comes, the gameplay switches to a tactical turn-based mode. Which lets you move around your units and slaughter droves of invaders to protect the school. This system is damn near flawless, It is simple to grasp at first. In large part due to the starting lineup of characters being fairly simple and forgiving - sporting high damage, range or tankiness depending on the character. As you advance the story, your catalogue of characters expand with more and more gimmicks thrown in and unique playstyles to make use of. The battles are far enough between that they almost always feel like a nice break from the heavy reading of the VN part of the game. The objectives also occasionally get mixed up, though it is often "kill everything on the map before they kill your base". Evemtually the system gets expanded with potions to give temporary buffs and fortifications to funnel invaders or turrets to give some extra damage between rounds.

Between battles you can also upgrade each of these mechanics individually using the currency you get from battles, along with resources you can grab when the game gives you "free time".

All of this works together to make for a satisfying system that stays fresh - at least until around the 100 hour mark. Due to story contrivances you will often be asked to replay battles you have already beaten. This however is neatly sidestepped by letting you skip any battle that is substantially identical to one you have already beaten. I however started play before they expanded this system and as such have gripes with one particular stretch which had me playing upwards of 20 battles back to back.

The main meat of the game then is the story. This is where I have most of my mixed opinions. If you had seen any of the promotion done for this game you would know that it prides itself on its 100 different endings and that is no lie.

The first ending you are likely to get and the route that comes with it is great, It is here the groundwork for the game is built up and it had me engaged from start to end. If you play nothing but this route, you will come out with an amazing experience and will have played the equivalent in amount to content to a full Danganronpa game. I have nothing but praise for this.

It is in all the other routes that things start to get mixed up. There are some true gems in there, some that had me horrified and watching on in terror while events spiralled out of control. While another would have me damn near in tears. The setting gets very thoroughly examined and a truly incredible amount of possibilities always made me wonder what would have happened with just a small change.

But on the other hand, there are also routes with mediocre or downright bad writing. In these characters become cardboard cutouts and large swatches of time simply get glossed out to fill in time. Its a shame, because at least one of these routes wasted a very interesting scenario with drivel.

It is also clear that not all writers were on the same page, there are concepts introduced in one route than in theory should have stayed constant over multiple routes, but never come up again. While other concepts that show up and stay relevant across a ton of routes. I wish they had used more time to better coordinate and weave together the routes, as it would have made for a much more satisfying experience. I hope that the DLC Kodaka has been considering for the game will pick up on some of these loose ends and tie them up.

With all that said, It is still a very satisfying experience and one i expect to become a cult classic. What Hundred Line does is virtually unseen across the industry and the sheer commitment and ambition on display makes it stand out above the rest.

But it is not without flaws and as such I cannot in good conscience award the 10/10 I so desperately want to give it. To me this is a 9/10, an experience definitely worth having and one that is 10/10 for the first 60-80 hours of the game.

It feels like this game was made for fun by a handful of devs with whatever assets they could scrounge together from Saints Row 4.

Gat out of Hell is a standalone expansion for Saints row 4 or atleast thats what it seems like when you play it. Granted, it has its own icon in the steam library and cannot be launched from the main game, but you cannot convince me otherwise. The story follow directly after the end of Saints Row 4 and is by design extremely barebones, to the point that the ingame dialogue breaks the 4th wall to point out that they padded the story with filler. It is in fact so barebones that it might as well not be there, this could have been a sandbox with no direction and have been 90% the same game. You arrive in hell looking for the MC of saints row 4 and simply get told to make as much chaos as you can to attract the attention of satan. This is done by doing open world challenges until you fill in a bar enough for Satan to notice and trigger the final fight. Thats the entire story, sure you meet some of hells residents along the way, but they are present for all of 10 minutes each and just exist to unlock new activities.

So it is the Open world itself that is the main point of the game and it is... okay. A lot of the activities are just go to place, shoot people with slight twists. The gunplay isnt amazing, so that doesnt carry the experience either. Now with all that said, I still had some fun with it. I played with directly after Expedition 33 and it served as a cleansing, low thought game to simply play and turn the brain off. Theres no plot to dig into or complicated systems to interact with, just pure power fantasy and while flying around hell that power fantasy was a welcome break.

That said i cannot in good conscience give it more than a 6/10 and i feel im being very generous with that, considering this is essentially an asset flip. I dont recommend it unless you just need to fly and around shoot stuff, but there are probably better games out there for that.

Expedition 33 is a modern masterpiece. I will be honest about that up front - if you have any inclination to play it, I recommend you do so whole-heartedly. In the interest of not spoiling anyone I will start out with the verdict and move on to the review itself after-wards for this one. This is an easy 10/10, the storytelling is phenomenal, and the core gameplay loop is fun all the way through. I don’t often 100% games, but this one i couldn’t stop myself - I simply wanted as much of the game as I could get.

The most central pillar of Expedition 33 is the story, and it starts off with one of the best hooks I have seen in a while. We quickly get introduced to Gustave and Maelle - two of our main characters and follow them through Lumiere on the eve of the Gommage. The Gommage is a yearly event where a huge figure in the distance called the paintress, paints a new number on her monolith after which everyone of that age and older simply cease existing. This central premise provides a mystery that keeps us going throughout the game. Who is the paintress? Why is she painting these numbers? and why does she seem so sad? It also sets an expectation for the sheer quality of cutscenes, as the first major one features the best cinematography and acting, I have ever seen in a game.

The story and quality of the writing never lets up throughout the main story’s roughly 30 hours of content. It delivers an interesting tale of grief, loss and family. A story that had me teared eyed at multiple junctures and hearing from friends who have played, I am far from alone in this. The story does take a notable turn close to the end, where we are giv-en some major revelations about our characters and the world. I thought this was quite well executed and extremely well foreshadowed through dialogue and cutscenes as ear-ly as the beginning of the game – something you really notice in new game+.

The main gameplay loop takes a lot of inspiration from JRPGs, but with many changes and mix-ups to make it feel more modern. For the record I am a huge fan of classic JRPGs and enjoy the tactical battles at the centre of the experience, that core is still pre-sent in Expedition 33. Each character have a unique mechanic that their gameplay re-volves around – Maelle swaps stances, which give her bonus and buffs certain skills. While Lune builds up elemental stains and can with the right combinations significantly boost her spells. This makes each character feel wholly unique in way that sets it apart from the standard RPG classes – Its not just different spells and abilities, but completely different playstyles. As a result there was no character I wanted to leave behind, some-thing that unfortunately plagues other JRPGs, and I enjoyed using them all way into the game’s late game super bosses.

When in combat a QTE system is also in place, seemingly inspired by a couple older JRPGs. On your turn it is used to empower your own skills – buffs go from single target to AOE or skills deal more damage, when you hit the perfect timing. More interesting though is how it changes combat on your opponents turn. Expedition 33 features a cou-ple different ways to interact with your opponent’s attack. To start out you can complete-ly dodge it with good timing to fully avoid damage or with even better timing you can par-ry it, opening up a chance to return damage to your opponent. Later on, the ability to jump some attacks and a different type of counter is also added, further increasing complexity and asking you to react appropriately. Early on this can be ignored without too much trouble, but late game at least learning to dodge is mandatory to beat bosses and especially the super bosses require you to parry or dodge long strings of attacks. This culminates in one of the hardest bosses I have ever fought as the final late game boss, and while difficult – he took me around 8 hours to beat – It never felt unfair. This system is a welcome change to the JRPG formula and is excellently implemented.
The final wrinkle to the combat system are Pictos and Luminas. A system of items (pic-tos) with a passive skill attached, after winning 4 combats with a Picto, it gets added as a Lumina, letting you use the passive part without having the Picto itself equipped. To start out you have very limited room for different Luminas, but as you get further in, space increases and you have more options for your build. This system allows for a lot of build diversity, while some of the luminas are borderline mandatory, most are situa-tional and can combine with the characters equipped weapon for some powerful com-bos.
The world of Expedition 33 is also jaw-droppingly beautiful, it is full of colours and varie-ty. The art style is inspired and gives the world a haunting and painted look, showing off just how weird it has become after what started this cycle of expeditions changed it. Es-pecially impressive is the huge enemy variety the game features, each area is long enough that you get familiar with its look and enemies – learning their attack patterns along the way. But short enough that they don’t overstay their welcome. The next area afterward is always something completely new, both visually and in terms of enemies, the fact that there are vanishingly few reskins of the same enemies speaks to the effort but into making each part of the world feel unique.

The last thing I want to touch on is what is likely the game’s weakest area – the optional late game. Before heading into the final area, the game opens up fully and lets you ex-plore everywhere you want. But there is a real lack of direction here – The developers clearly thought about scaling all these areas so we would have content from when we are set free till when we hit around level 90 (with the level cap being at 99). But there is next to nothing telling you which areas are appropriate for you at which time. Sometimes i would enter an area and go through it just fine and other times i would enter it and get immediately trounced by way too powerful enemies. In both cases the area was display-ing the “Danger!” warning when I entered it. It also doesn’t help that there is no tracking for where collectibles are. Which means it’s possible to miss a log, record or Picto with-out having any idea where it is. I would prefer if the areas you had cleared just had an in-dicator of “fully completed” or “you are missing something here” at this point. All of this adds up to a relatively minor complaint at the end, I simply ended up using the Wiki to find what I was missing – I would just have preferred this kind of accessibility was avail-able in game instead.

No game is perfect, but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 comes damn close. Only really a lack of late game accessibility holds it back. If you have any interest in RPG’s this is one to experience.

Having already played through Furi once, I knew before going into it again recently to play the Onimusha DLC, that it was one of my favorite games of all time. The DLC did not change my opinion on this whatsoever and reinforced that even this content added years after the game's release still held up to my expectations.

Furi is at its most basic description a boss rush game, pitching you up against a series of bosses in long varied fights while stringing them together with a cryptic story told by an unreliable narrator.

The fights themself are a mix of melee fights in the vein of Sekiro, where you deflect your opponents attacks while looking for openings, and ranged bullet hell style fights akin to enter the Gungeon. It is hard to describe why this flows so well, my best attempt is simply to say it is very well balanced and gives you time and room to learn mechanics, before testing you on them and challenging you. As such, each fight evolves and becomes more difficult as you whittle down the boss health. Each Health bar triggers a new phase, which heals you and restores one chance for you to get back up. These extra chances also contribute to the game not feeling punishing despite its difficulty. Only on one of the last bosses do these extra chances no longer feel like a safety blanket, but instead a necessary tool. Additionally, successful parries will heal us and some shots in the bullet hell will drop heals as well, which means good play will always let you recover from tough situations - ensuring you always stand a chance.

The story that holds the game together centers on your character and a mysterious guy in a rabbit mask that follows you around. At the beginning of the game this man frees you from imprisonment and tells you to kill your captors in order to escape. This framing leads us from warden to warden as we escape this prison system. Between each fight the Rabbit man will introduce every boss and their role in the system, while giving us a reason to fight them. He continues to egg us on and while something about him is clearly not as he says. Whether he was one of our captors or simply wants to help us escape is entirely up to us to interpret.

The Onimusha DLC introduces a different main character - The Onimusha. This doesn’t change anything in the story but does change combat significantly. At first I was sceptical of this as the games combat is balanced neatly around the base kit. But Onimusha manages to walk the line extremely well and still feel both fun and challenging. You now have to juggle between two different stances - one for speed and one for power. Doing this successfully really pays off as you can swap on a dime and punish bosses even better by using the correct stance. Dodging at high speed with the speed stance, only to close in and chunk a boss with the Power stance is exhilarating. Proper use of the character makes me feel like a speedrunner optimizing my kit to destroy the bosses.

Overall Furi is a solid 9.5/10 from me, I only wish there was more of the game and that the final main game boss wasn't so weak (though this makes sense in story context).

When creating a game with lovecraftian themes, most developers tend to focus on the cosmic horror those themes bring with them. As a result the game often veers towards the horror genre, or atleast an undertone of suspense as seen in a thriller.

This is not the direction Call of the Sea goes towards, which quickly sets it apart from its peers. It is at its core a story about adventure, romance and belonging.

Call of the Sea can most accurately be described as a narrative experience, to the point that it brushes up against "Walking Simulators" for most of its runtime. Since the primary focus is on the narrative, it is primarily this i will choose to judge the game on. With that said i will get my comments on the gameplay out of the way first.

Call of the Sea divides itself into chapters, each of which has a small open area to explore and have the main character Norah comment on what she finds. While exploring you will find both story objects and clues for whichever puzzle bars the way onwards towards the heart of the Island. The puzzles themselves are generally quite simple and can often be solved by a quick glance in the notebook Norah fills out as you explore. It keeps track of clues and gives some extra insight into Norahs thoughts on the events of the story. The main exception to the simplicity of the puzzles come at the very end, in a puzzle involving stars. If you are looking for challenging puzzles i would look elsewhere.

The meat of the game is in the story. I will refrain from spoiling anything but the main setup here, but i will say i enjoyed the story and it did explore its themes fairly well.

The game starts you out on a ship headed towards an uncharted island in pursuit of Norah's husband. Norah has been inflicted with a mysterious illness, which has caused her to weaken and develop black spots on her skin. After thorough research Norah's husband came to believe that the cure for her illness could be found on this island, and went off to find said cure. Since then Norah has not heard from him. Spurred on by a package from an unknown source Norah sets out to find her husband and a cure for her illness. In this is a solid setup for a story exploring the lengths we are willing to go to for love and how we define our family and home.

The story is generally well told and slowly fed to us through environmental storytelling, leftover letters from Norah's husband and Norahs intepretations of what she finds on the island. Unfortunately Norah is often a bit too up front about explaining the story, it is especially jarring at the very beginning of the story where she reminds herself of her desire to find her husband, in a speech that can only be described as "for the player to understand the setup". This tendency to speak with the player in mind happens a couple times over the story and took me out of an otherwise well told and well paced story.

In spite of its flaws, I will still recommend Call of the sea for its solid story. This is an enjoyable game to spend an afternoon on and the pricetag is very reasonable.
I rate Call of the Sea 7.5/10

Medal of Honor is almost exactly what you would expect right out the tin. It is a modern warfare fps focused on the american military - If you are the person to enjoy that exact type of game... Honestly just play Modern Warfare 1 or 2 instead.

The game has a singleplayer campaign and a, by now, quite dead multiplayer mode. I only played through the single player campaign. The story is barebones to say the least. It is losely based on a series of actual battles during the US intervention in Afghanistan and follows a couple different perspectives through the action. No thought seems to have been given to making an overarching interesting narrative - since it boils down to "Theres bad guys in the mountains, we gotta go kill them". At one point it is treated as a reveal that theres not only Al-Qaeda on the mountain - but also Chechen and Saudi troops. This reveal goes nowhere, except to describe why some enemies look a bit different.

Bottomline, the story seems to be preoccupied with doing military propaganda - making the US soldiers look cool and brave. It does suceed in this to some degree, atleast on an individual soldier basis. But the overarching story makes command look downright incompetent - so the US military comes out of this looking mixed at best.

The gunplay is another weakness. It simply does not feel impactful at all. Most guns have very little noticeable recoil and feel like firing models rather than actual guns. Mostly this comes down to abyssmal sound effects, that just do not sound right. The only saving grace here are the sniper rifles, which do sound good, feel nice to shoot and have actual impact and recoil.

Only play this game if you have received it for free. Even at a heavy discount theres just better things to spend your time on. I can give this at most 4/10 stars.

Have you ever played a game that made realize why a certain genre is popular and resonates with tons of people? That is exactly what Gravity Circuit did for my understand of Mega-Man games as a genre.

The game follows the very familiar structure of going around different levels to defeat an array of themed robots. You are free to choose whichever you want to go after first and challenge their themed levels. Each level has unique mechanics, which often get used as part of the boss fight itself. This feels great, you have just long enough to master the mechanic before being challenged on it by the boss and none of the levels are long enough they become a drag. The only outlier to this is the hacker level which throws a lot of mechanics at you - all of which i found enjoyable, but none of which are used for the boss.

In true Mega-Man fashion said mechanics return near the end in a classic gauntlet/boss rush - but with a cool twist i wont spoil here.

The game even looks and sounds authentically like something that would be made during the height of Mega-Man. Which a banging soundtrack that makes the levels fly by and an art direction that is old school - but clearly designed with modern learnings smoothing out what frustrations the old game might have had (no janky hitboxes here)

All in All Gravity Circuit is an absolute recommend. The game is short and sweet, so I think anyone with even a passing interest should pick it up and experience a true gem.

Solid 9/10 stars from me