OlliOlli World is a very specific game, an intense 2D skateboard platformer. I feel like the target audience is the people that got really into the Tony Hawk Proskater franchise but doesn't have that much time for games anymore, each stage is only a few minutes long if you can get through it without falling down.

Let me start off by saying this game gets HARD. It starts of easy enough by just using flip tricks (which also functions as jump) and grinds. The further you get in the game the more mechanics gets introduced like wallrides, grab tricks, manuals and landnings. You will eventually need all of these just to make it through a stage. The cool thing about this game is that you are ALWAYS able to do all of these things whenever, just that the game doesn't tell you until it's neccessary to use it in order to beat a stage. It's a brilliant design where the stages gets progressively more complex but earlier stages will be more fun to return to the more mastery you achieve over the game.

Controller only?
I was puzzled by the complete lack of keyboard controls, but once you start playing you'll get exactly why. The left joystick of a controller is used to jump/flip tricks and grind. Depending on the direction you flick it and if you turn and rotate it before releasing you'll make different tricks, making the simple 4 basic tricks suddenly go up to 20+ just from a single joystick. It's a core part of the game and you'll need to use the other functions at the same time, sometimes requiring you to do 3 things at once which just isn't feasible on a keyboard. The controls are very tight, responsive and handle perfectly, never once did I feel like I failed something because of the game, only because I was too slow or didn't pull something off well enough.

Gameplay:
Every stage have several objectives to work towards. The primary one is just to beat the stage, with a bonus if you never fall down. On top of there's 3 unique challenges catered to every stage, as well as 3 levels of high scores to beat. In the beginning I was having fun trying to get everything in the level, but closing in to the end of the game I'd be happy JUST to make it to the end of the stage. The last half of the game ramps up difficulty considerably, requiring very precise jumps and movement in order to proceed. Since it's a skateboarding game you always want to keep your momentum in order to make the next jump, but keeping a combo going can make you lose speed unless you do it perfectly. At the end of the game, the only way to fully beat all high scores in a stage is to do the full thing perfectly in an ENTIRE combo.

Story:
The story is very silly and family friendly while making fun of the RAD skateboarding culture of the 90s. It got some laughs out of me and have fun characters in it that you can't take seriously, like the old father of skateboarding simply called Dad, or the skateboarding wizard who gained psychic powers by impressing the gods and reaching Gnarvana. You create your own character who's goal it is to succeed the skateboard wizard by impressing the gods with your rad skills. There's plenty of customizing options to choose from and you unlock a lot more from completing objectives in stages. The fun thing is that other player's character will show up in your loading screen!
The story really isn't special but it isn't trying to be, the developers clearly just had a lot of fun with it. A very appreciated function is the ability to completely skip all dialogue if you so wish and go straight to the skateboarding. Even when entering a stage you get an option to skip flavor dialogue and go straight to the stage, or listen to some fun dialogue. The difference between this and completely skipping everything is that some stages have tutorials or introduces new hazards which the characters will ask you if you know about, very handy.

Graphics:
The visual style is very simple and cute, with vibrant colors that make up a world very pleasant to look at. It really helps that all stage objects are mapped to a certain color, so the floor, rideable walls and grind rails all have their own color to make them pop and impossible to miss. The graphic style is timeless in my opinion.

OlliOlli World is a fantastic, short game (3-4 hours) that you can pour LOADS of hours into to achieve full mastery. The controls take some getting used to but are a lot of fun and get super satisfying once you get the hang of it. If you are a more casual player you will need a lot of patience in order to beat the game, but that doesn't mean there's loads of fun without getting to the end as well. If you believe that the pricing of a game should reflect the quality of a game and not just how long it is from start to finish then you should DEFINITELY pick up this game.

*SPOILER-FREE REVIEW*
I didn't know what to expect from The Outer Wilds, I had heard it was good but didn't read up on anything because I like going in blind. What I didn't expect was to find a game I adored so much it became one of my favorite games of all time, and the DLC is no exception. I'm not gonna spoil anything since I want you reading this to have the same blind experience of wonder, stay away from spoilers at all costs! If you get stuck somewhere, try to ask someone who has played the game (hell, send me a message if you don't know anyone) or try to google the specific thing you're stuck on. As of writing this no walkthroughs (that I could find) was even released, so I had to figure everything out by myself.

When you start up the game you'll get a notice about a "disable fright mode" option added in regard to the DLC. I'm gonna be honest, I have played with turning this on and off in certain sections I suspect it'd give effect and I'm yet to see any difference at all, even though it says enabling said option will affect gameplay and not give you the developer's intended experience. The DLC does have some spooky sections so if you're absolutely panicked about horror, consider checking this (or watch someone else play it). As of now, no one seems to know what it does. I will mention that I'm personally absolutely terrible with horror games and still managed to get through this with avarage effort. It was tense, but not heart attack scary.

The DLC additions are added into the base game of Outer Wilds. If you've played the game before and explored plenty, you'll notice a new structure has been added to the home planet Timber Hearth; the radio tower. Inside, you'll find out about a deep-space satellite launched pre-game. This is all I'm gonna say on how to access the DLC content as the first mystery starts already here.

Story: 10/10
I'm a big sucker for the kind of story Outer Wilds tells, and the DLC is no exception. Unraveling the mysteries is as exciting and fun as it was in the base game, if not more. I played the DLC in intervals of 3 hours or more because I just HAD to know what was coming next. The DLC implements itself exceptionally well into the original story to the point of you not knowing it's even DLC if you started playing the game for the first time with it already installed. It will also answer a minor question from the base game never really addressed. Note about the original story: The new additions will affect the original ending to the game too!

Gameplay: 10/10
Very similar to the base game but with added mechanics focusing on light as a way of operating objects and machines . I had one bug through my entire playthrough which caused me to launch into space while gravity somehow applied, causing me to "fall" in space. Beside that it was all very responsive and enjoyable.

Graphics: ?/10
Take this with a grain of salt since I'm definitely not one to judge graphics, but I personally thought it was amazing. Essentially if you liked the original you'll like this DLC too.


Summary:
I don't like the term "perfect game" but man, the base game and DLC both had me on my feet all the way through. I couldn't wait to unravel everything, I would think about puzzles I was stuck on while I was at work and couldn't wait to try them out when I got home. The grand revelation and finale were well worth the expectations that had built up during the gameplay. The only bad thing I can say about it is that once you know all the mysteries, that's it. I really do wish I could delete my memory of this game and experience everything brand-new again. This is also why I STRONGLY URGE to go into this game completely blind, checking the steam trailers and screenshots is fine but please, do yourself that favor. If you're not sure if you're gonna like the game/DLC, look up a let's play and watch a little bit and if it intruiges you, definitely buy the whole thing. The developers has done an amazing job forming the world so that everyone's experience will slightly vary depending on the order you discovered things, yet everyone will end up at the same spot in the end. I highly praise Mobius Digital for their creation and they DEFINITELY deserve your money for it!

As a fan of both metroidvanias and for the lack of better words "Dark Souls-like" combat, Blasphemous really scratched an itch for me. The game really does take A LOT of inspiration from Dark Souls like dodging, parries, leaving a piece of yourself behind that you need to go collect after every death, limited healing flasks and even shrines as healing checkpoints that respawns all enemies. This works both lifts and hurts the game in my opinion, I'll come to that later.

Story:
The first thing you'll notice right out of the gate is a super vague, cryptic story that raises a bunch of questions and eyebrows before you've even taken control of your character. You are the "Penitent One", a man (?) born out of guilt (?) that needs to redeem himself (?). Honestly after two playthroughs the whole story is still very confusing to me to the point where I don't really care to stitch the pieces of information together, something I normally really enjoy. The second thing you'll likely notice is that this is a bloody, bloody game. There's gore and grotesque monstrosities aplenty so if you're squeamish about things like that you should probably not play this. The third thing you're likely to notice is that there's a big emphasis on religion in the story, and the grotesque things you'll see are similar to old biblical stories before they were re-written to be told to children without scarring them. I won't mention more specifics than that, but it goes for almost everything in the game including humans, not just monsters. Overall, it's not a bad theme but I guess it didn't really resonate with me because I checked out of the story pretty quickly and just wanted to fight my way forward. However, the good thing is that Blasphemous really have no problems letting you do that either, there's very little to no story if you choose to skip it. Most of the story is fed to you through NPC storylines and each item in the game have a few lines of lore backstory that you can read if you're interested.

Gameplay:
As mentioned, it's very much a Dark Souls combat system with a big focus on getting hit as little as possible. There's regular attacks, air attacks, charged attacks, a big list of spellcasting abilities to find although only one can be used at a time. Borrowing from the metroidvania genre there's a ton of optional items, collectibles, spells and stat boosts to find across the world varying from impossible to miss all the way to "how the hell would I ever find this" once you look it up online. The combat in Blasphemous is GOOD, it's responsive and satisfying while giving a bunch of options to cater your fighting style. You don't level up your character through stats but find rosary beads that you can equip a number of, this number can be upgraded over time up to a maximum of 8. Most of them are just a little help but some synergize together very well, and the rare ones can have very significant effects.
Enemies in the game are varied per area and all have different weaknesses, so mixing things up is something you'll want to do. There's also no penalty for trying something out since there's no permanent skill investment that locks off the rest. There's not an incredibly huge number of bosses, but the ones that exist are varied and all feel unique to fight.

Level design:
Possibly the most important part of a metroidvania, Blasphemous somehow manages both to pull off a sick skateboarding trick and falling flat on it's face at the same time. The world in general is varied and have very good themes for each area both in looks and enemies. It really does feel like you're traversing through a believable world. The problem comes from the secrets. Some secret rooms and upgrades are very well hidden to the point of you never knowing they existed, or giving you a feeling that you've missed something. When I replayed the game I realized the reason I was struggling so much on the first playthrough was because I had missed half of the health potion upgrades in the game. Most of them wasn't that well hidden, but it can be very unclear what is the way forward until you hit a boss room, and the game often gives you multiple paths to follow with no indication what is leading forward, to secrets or to a checkpoint/shortcut. There's also secret areas that you'll need certain items to get into and on my first playthrough, I didn't find a single one of them. Some of those secret areas held powerful items or health/mana upgrades and I never had a chance to reach them without looking this up online in my second playthrough. One secret in the game actually only triggers after you interact with the same elevator 6 times in a row and there's no indication of this being a thing, that's just frustrating.
Another thing to mention is that the game is very open, but doesn't give much directions. This means that I suddenly noticed a difficulty spike that got higher and higher all the way to a boss that I really struggled to beat, only to realize after that I had actually gone to the wrong area because the game hadn't told me where to go first. I still go through it, but with some needless frustration. That area that took me a good part of 1-2 hours left me strong enough to breeze through the area I was meant to go to in no more than 15 minutes.

Difficulty and accessibility:
This is a hard one to answer since how hard it is really depends on how much you've been able to upgrade your character towards the end of the game. If you're a hardened Dark Souls veteran you won't have many problems with this game, the first playthrough took around 8 hours for me. Even if you aren't you could probably get through it if you're able to adapt to the enemies and bosses you're facing, and trying different strategies. The game does offer a new game+ mode once you've beaten it that also adds additional optional restrictions for a real challenge, and they can get brutal. But the first playthrough is mostly easy once you master the mechanics. To roughly compare it to similar combat style games I'd say it is:
Easier than Sekiro
Similar or easier than Hollow Knight
Similar or harder than Dark Souls 3
Harder than Dark Souls 1



Conclusion:
+ Intense, polished combat
+ A lot of variety in gameplay
+ Good world exploring, plenty of paths to circle back to
+ Very good enemy and boss design
+ Story is cryptic and vague by design, but also not necessary to enjoy
+ High replay value
+ You can pet a dog

- Secret areas and important upgrades sometimes punishing
- Some mechanics are never explained by the game
- It's not obvious if you're going the right way

This is definitely a game worth your time if you're a fan of intense action combat and world exploring. Take it or leave the story, it's not a necessity to play. There's also 2 free DLCs in the game that adds several bosses, time based challenge rooms and a boss rush mode, and a third free DLC in the works. The replayability is high and Blasphemous is definitely worth the price tag. Just don't be afraid to look things up if you get stuck or struggle.