Doing this for the 2019 Steam Awards badge but seriously, this is one of the most relaxing games you will ever play. I hate driving in real life but just love exploring the world and discovering new places in this game. I'm at my happiest driving a valuable cargo to a new destination with my favorite Spotify playlist or in-game radio station cranked up (you can add your own to the game if your favorite radio station streams over the internet). SCS is one of the best developers in video games, adding new free content and paid dlc frequently and hosting fun in-game events through the game community, World of Trucks. Even if you've never dreamed of driving a big rig, I can't recommend this game enough!

Note: Doing this for the Grand Prix event. Better review will come at a later date.

But until then, would you kindly please just play this masterpiece of a game?

“They will eat them Mandus, they will make pigs of you all and they will bury their snouts into your ribs and they will eat your hearts!”

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Although billed as a sequel to the widely acclaimed Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is actually more of a spiritual successor.

The Dark Descent set the standard: A man awakens with amnesia, must regain his memory by exploring dark environments with only a light source and no weapons, solving puzzles, and searching for his lost journal entries that somehow got scattered everywhere. All of that is present in some form in A Machine for Pigs, but those looking for the same cadence and rhythm of scares and thrills The Dark Descent produced will largely be disappointed – although not all of that disappointment is warranted.

What A Machine for Pigs succeeds at the most, and dare I say even better than The Dark Descent, is the development/characterization of the protagonist, Mandus. Now, I am NOT talking about the writing of the overall plot: You’re going to figure that out, and accept it, LONG before Mandus does, especially if you’ve played The Dark Descent.

What I am talking about specifically is the journal entries and phonograph recordings scattered in the world, though unlike the first game you are less likely to miss. Most of them are in your direct path and you tend to be funneled very linearly through the world with little to explore (perhaps in keeping with The Chinese Room’s walking simulator roots). That’s a blessing in disguise though, since the hard-to-miss memoranda carry most of the weight of fleshing out your surroundings and, best of all, Mandus himself. His theological and philosophical fervor, as well as detailed descriptions of the functions of the massive machine are as fascinating as they are shocking. I always looked forward to obtaining the next entry or finding the next recording to play to further the madness. I’m not sure I would call it “the darkest, most horrific tale ever told in a videogame” though. It’s pretty close.

It would be closer if the gameplay did not suffer so badly.

The Chinese Room decided to tamper with the Amnesia formula, and it doesn’t work out quite so well. Puzzles, dare I even call them that, are far simpler than the ones in The Dark Descent; pull a few levers and turn a few wheels and there you have it. You still have your trusty lantern, but it has unlimited light and does not need to be filled with oil this time. It even flickers to warn you when monsters are nearby so you can hide. There is also no insanity meter and no candles need to be lit to help you navigate; you mosey around in the dark for as long as you want to. That means the fretting about if you have enough fuel and tinder boxes is gone, and so is the need to explore the world. I also found the AI of the monsters lacking; a couple of them spent more time walking into a wall than pursuing me.

What this all translates to, especially for those who have not played The Dark Descent, is A Machine For Pigs tells a “horrific” story indeed, but is not nearly as terrifying as the game that came before it. Ultimately, I think the story that it tells through the collectibles redeems it enough for me, but not everyone will agree with that: Those expecting scares like The Dark Descent will be disappointed. But those who are looking for shock factor and chilling mental images could find a lot to like in the belly of this beast.

ANOTHER OUTSTANDING short film based on a game I have never played! Definitely worth your time!

That last shot feels just like This War of Mine...maybe we can get a short film for that next? :)

Fantastic short film! I have yet to play the game but I would love a full length movie of this! Great scenes and acting and what an ending - well worth your time even if you've never heard of Papers, Please!

If you liked Gone Home, you need to play this one: you haven’t seen the half of what environmental storytelling can do.

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Just doing this for the Steam Awards 2018 badge. Better review to come at a later date.

I often feel like the only gamer in the world who doesn’t have a fascination with Japanese culture. Who doesn’t want to be a ninja. Who doesn’t have a rabid appetite for anime.

But I love stealth games. I always use stealth approaches in video games whenever possible (well, ok, at least at first until I muck it up and have to go loud). I love the Batman: Arkham games’ cat and mouse Predator challenges and tactics. I love being the hunter watching my prey, plotting how to take them all down.

It was difficult to decide if Mark of the Ninja would be worth a try.

I do not regret my decision.

Mark of the Ninja, in my humble opinion, is easily one of the best stealth games ever made. Stealth is the only option in Mark of the Ninja, really; your enemies are equipped with guns, riot shields, and in later stages, equipment that can sense you if you get too close. Fighting any of them outright is almost always lethal, and being detected also reduces your mission score. Instead, you take to the high ground, swooping down on vulnerable, unsuspecting guards, or avoiding them entirely (if you can). New techniques are yours to unlock the further along you progress, allowing you to string guards up, pull them over ledges, drag them into grates, and even allow you to move quieter and increase your armor. Lethal and distraction equipment are also available for you to unlock, such as firecrackers, smoke, and traps. There are a lot of combinations and variety, and completing the challenges in each stage will unlock costumes that can alter your play style even further. New game plus is also available for those who want an even greater challenge to their ninja skills.

The warrior behind this impressive arsenal is an unnamed ninja who takes upon himself a sacred—and cursed—mark that will give him power to defend his clan against the armed mercenaries that attack it in the opening stage of the game. It’s a solid semi-revenge story with a twist and surprising choice at the end. I personally love Dosan’s character the most, and enjoyed the Special Edition DLC with him, but your companion Ora is also well crafted. You’ll get more invested in the characters, including the unnamed and mute protagonist, than you will initially believe, making what happens along the way more meaningful than it could have been.

It is clear a lot of effort was put into the visuals, and it shows. Intricate level art and well-animated 2D cutscenes are very pleasing to the eyes. For also being 2D, character animations are also extremely well executed, both for your protagonist and the armed guards. I always looked forward to seeing what the next level was going to look like, as well as what it was going to throw at me.

My biggest complaint of the game, and it is a minor one, is that the controls sometimes didn’t feel intuitive to me. I was able to adjust to them, but they’ve never felt fantastic. I pity anyone playing on a controller, though some people would probably argue the game is better that way. I also ran into one or two checkpoints that would drop me in the middle of frantic situations (right as a guard was spotting me, or even right in front of them) but these were extremely rare instances. Mark of the Ninja is also a surprisingly bloody game, and one of the cutscenes has elements of gore. But with the 2D and anime type renderings, it is quite stylish, and manages to somewhat fit with the experience without being overly gratuitous.

I don’t want to blanket recommend this game to everyone, although I think there would be very few people who would not like it. But if you like stealth games and/or Japanese culture, despite the sometimes weird controls, playing this game is an absolute must. It will leave its mark on you in a way only the best video games can: an incredibly high bar by which you will measure all your future video game experiences.

Antichamber will mess with your head. You will be expected to understand what is not explained. More than likely, you will need help.

And that’s ok. All of that. All of that is ok.

Why?

Because that’s LIFE.

And Antichamber is the most abstract game about life you will ever play.

And you need to play it. Trust me. You need to.

Why?

Because for every time Antichamber messes with you, it encourages you. For every time you figure it all out, you get humbled. For every time the path seems uncertain, there is another way to go.

Because Antichamber is life in cubes, vibrant colors, mind-bending puzzles, and snippets of wisdom.

And you are not here.

In short, Year Walk is the mobile port of a game you never played (but should), and about folklore you never knew about (but should).

In long, Year Walk is based on the pagan ritual of Årsgång, and the Swedish folklore behind it. In theory, if the participant survived or passed certain tests during the Walk, he would be able to see into the future.

Done on nights that were believed to be more magically and spiritually charged than others, such as new years eve, Christmas eve, and solstices, the participant was required to deprive himself of food, rest, and light for a day before making his way through the woods to the nearest churchyard. It was there, if he was deemed worthy enough, he could learn his fate and the fates of others in the year to come.

In the game, you are one such individual, and making your way to the churchyard is your task.

But you are not alone in the woods.

The demons, sprites, and figments of folklore surround you and test you on your journey. They do not wish you well, and they will make you prove your worth in the woods. There are light puzzles you must solve, usually revolving around backtracking and fetching...things...which can get very dull. Fortunately they are short, save one, which I highly recommend using headphones for, otherwise you will more than likely have difficulty. You’ll know it when you get to it. I almost wish this one wasn’t in the game, though the conclusion of it will stick with you for quite some time.

In fact, most of the game will likely stick with you. The spirits of the woods are subtle yet terrifying to the core. The sounds of the woods are quiet and haunting. The color palate is soft, yet foreboding. The in game encyclopedia is a wonderful, and for one of the puzzles, required, read. Or at least a quick scroll through. I won’t spoil for what here, but let’s just say it’s one of the best uses of an in game encyclopedia I have ever seen. Though nobody may say so directly, Year Walk is an often subtle, a few times not so subtle, short, horror adventure.

If you can get past the odd, mobile-friendly navigation of practically strafing through the world instead of walking through it, as well as the aforementioned backtracking, you should definitely play this, especially if it’s on sale. It’s not long at all, a couple hours at most, but very meaty and entertaining for those couple hours. There are incentives to replay, too, through some mysterious achievements. Year Walk will frighten you, scare you at times, and chill you almost constantly. Maybe even frustrate you, or stump you. But yes, you should definitely give it a go.

Why?

Well, I think we all, at one point or another in our lives, have wished we could know some of what our futures hold for us. Though debates could rage at what the idea of seeing the future means to us. Some would want to know it all; some would not want to know anything about what is to come. Some could say the future can be changed; some would say everything is written in stone. Some would say if they knew their future they would try to change it; others would say they would leave it alone, come what may. Year Walk offers a glimpse into a world where such discussions would have merit beyond character studies and musings. Where such a privilege would have to be earned in a dangerous world, in a snowy evening, in a churchyard.

Oh, to be a kid again! To run and play without a care in the world! To explore life’s endless possibilities with fearless naivety and abandon! To dodge lasers, to jump between conveyor belts of furniture, to slow down time for one grand leap over an ocean of Science Juice!

What? That last bit doesn’t describe your childhood memories at all? Yeah, mine either. But it certainly does for the hapless, danger-prone, ten-year-old protagonist of Quantum Conundrum.

Arriving at his professor uncles’ mansion to find no one around and parts of the place in disarray, our fearless lad’s stay turns into a game of staying alive while figuring ways out of wrecked experiments and the rat nests of his uncles’ eccentric and confounding architectural design decisions. Fortunately, there’s and IDS device for that.

The IDS device, also referred to as the Phase Shifter, allows the user to alternate between dimensions. Let me explain that, as it’s probably not quite how you are imagining it.

In Quantum Conundrum, the player can change between the Fluffy, Heavy, Reverse Gravity, and Slow dimensions, plus the “real world” dimension. That might sound hokey to some, but it’s actually a fun and fantastic gameplay mechanic. All of these dimensions are distinct and fun to use to manipulate your environment. That safe blocking your way? Switch to Fluffy so you can move it. Lasers keeping you from where you need to go? Stack some fluffy safes and switch to Heavy to give yourself a shield. Need to cross a chasm? Throw a fluffy safe, slow time to jump on, and tap Reverse Gravity a few times for a “safe” flight. There are many, many more of these scenarios throughout the game and its DLC. While you don’t always have access to all dimensions, and not all are available right away, I think you have the point: The Phase Shifter is a solid device that adds and stays fun throughout the entire game.

That being said, there is a slight problem. Many of the puzzle scenarios in Quantum Conundrum are very physical based, (running, jumping, moving objects, etc.) often with time constraints. In other words, figuring out how to solve the puzzles is only half of what is required to solve it. Personally, I love that Quantum offers these puzzles requiring such physical prowess, but the floaty controls just don’t meet the challenge. Running is very fast, almost feeling like ice skating or roller blading, and the jumping is very loose and imprecise—quite a headache when trying to jump from conveyor belt to conveyor belt while avoiding lasers. True story.

If you’re wondering about the plot in all this craziness, well…as is usually the case in puzzle games, plot takes a back seat to gameplay, and it does so in Quantum Conundrum as well. Fortunately, though it is basic, it is enjoyable, which is really all that matters. However, I vastly enjoyed the small yet fascinating cast of “characters.” It’s a little bit difficult to call them all “characters” when most of them don’t directly speak, but they are such a huge help with so many of the puzzles—many that could not even be completed without them! I doubt I’ll ever forget helpful DOLLI (Dynamic Object Linear Ligation Interface), and all the times she spit out a safe on my head and lolled her metallic tongue at me. Or adorable IKE, (Interdimensional Kinetic Entity) the dimension-shifting traveller, always helping me find what capsule I needed to activate the right dimension. Even Desmond, (Repetitive Periodic Articulating Gruidae) the rocking/drinking bird who’s name will make players of a certain franchise crack a grin if they can connect the dot, is unique, even if he really isn’t even alive. And last but not least, there is Professor Quadwrangle himself, making every floaty control death bearable with his Things You Will Never Experience jabs.

Aside from the aforementioned loose controls, there are a few other areas of annoyance in Quantum Conundrum. While it is great fun to throw objects around, let’s just say you will be throwing (and seeing) a lot of the same items for the entire game. And once you’ve seen one hallway, wood texture, sofa, table, and safe in this game, you’ve seen them all. There is also the annoying bit of lag /freezing when the game loads each room, due to the fact that the game itself has to load each room individually. It’s nothing major, but knowing that there’s no way to fix it is just slightly perturbing.

The ending of Quantum is not fantastic, but it does make a viable excuse for a sequel. This sequel, however, has about the same probability of existing someday as does the IDS device: Airtight, the developer, closed about a year after Quantum’s release. Though this is the sad reality, I am glad Quantum continues to exist in the video game reality. It is certainly a fresh and friendly spot in my oft-serious Steam library, and it is my hope that players young and old can experience phase shifting for themselves for many years to come