Recent reviews by Elfangorax

The main thrust of this game is dashing through the stages, using acrobatics to clear obstacles and take out enemies in style. It genuinely feels very cool when getting into a flow with it and reacting to surprises as they come up. Unfortunately, that gets a little undercut when suffering a death, because from that point, it becomes an exercise in memorising those obstacles and iterating on a solution (with a mercifully quick restart à la Super Meat Boy), whereupon it feels more puzzle than high octane action. That's not inherently a bad thing, but it's clearly not the vibe this game is trying to sell.

Further and more severely undercutting the vibe are the actual puzzle sections in the Cybervoid. Some of these are platforming challenges, which begs the question of why the game takes away all the most interesting traversal abilities for them. In some cases, this seems done to facilitate controlled tutorial experiences for new abilities, but ultimately they just kill any sense of momentum.

Speaking of killing momentum: collectibles! I spent the first couple stages assuming there weren't any -- partly because they didn't jump out at me but mostly because it felt ludicrous that a game all about blasting forward headlong would incentivise stopping to carefully pick apart my surroundings.

Ghostrunner is a fun game when playing to its strengths, but there are just too many moments that pull the experience away from those strengths for me to recommend the overall package.

ECHO's opening gambit is its title menu, a blue-lit view of the protagonist En's eye, with which one "looks" at the various edges of the screen to reveal the menu options and "blinks" to select them. It's super captivating, but a cynical part of me also figured it was just an untethered hook, unrelated to anything else in the game -- correctly, as it turned out, but that doesn't detract from how cool that isolated piece is.

The game proper is kind of B tier, but that's more a commentary on its scope than its quality. The futuristic, clean whites of the environment reminded me of P.N.03 on the GameCube, though ECHO's vibe is less arcadey. Its five chapters' levels follow a pattern of objectives, but the level design escalates well enough to keep it from feeling rote. The light cycles are an interesting mechanic. The player's actions (Dash, Open Door, Vault, Use Elevator, etc) are recorded while the environment is lit and those actions are used to inform the capabilities of the enemy Echoes in the next cycle following a brief blackout. The game is at its easiest when avoiding notice (particularly by more than one Echo at a time), and the biggest liability in that department is fast-moving Echoes, so this mechanic mostly just made me avoid dashing enough to be recorded while the lights were on; but there were occasions that it had me thinking carefully about other actions.

The dialogue initially felt kind of empty at first. En and her ship-based AI companion London have plenty of high-minded things to say, but it felt like context was being withheld purely to use manufactured mystery as a stand-in for philosophical grandeur. As that context was gradually filled in, though, the writing genuinely started to hit different. I would actually be interested in learning more about the world of this game, particularly En's Gramps and his Resourcefuls.

I was surprised to find myself motivated to get all the achievements. Finding all of the collectibles came with moments of frustration, but was broadly very satisfying. I didn't think I would enjoy going through again in Ultra Hard, but 1. it wasn't that much harder, and 2. it actually felt like a victory lap to apply my improved handle on the gameplay from start to finish.

I sincerely enjoyed ECHO and think it's worth playing. Just go in with tempered expectations.

I gave this game a brief go initially and wasn't overly excited to continue. Years later, after finishing and adoring Remedy's next game, Control, I decided to give it another chance. Having finished the first episode, I'm now even less inclined to see it through.

The gameplay is fine. Maybe it's the inevitable cost of playing it after its time and having unflattering points of comparison like Control, but the time powers feel really underwhelming, which ultimately makes it little more than a boiler plate third-person shooter.

The real kicker for me is the live-action stuff. Based on my experience of the first episode, it's clear that every episode of gameplay will be followed by an episode of the "TV show". It's also fine, like a hackneyed 24 with a low CGI budget. It might actually be a somewhat enjoyable watch on its own merits, but the whole time I was watching it, it just felt like I was doing the wrong thing. I've played plenty of games with monumentally lengthy cutscenes (lookin' at you, Kojima), but something about this being live-action -- an actual show like I might sit down to watch on Netflix -- filled me with the sense that this wasn't what I'd signed up for when I picked up a controller.

Quantum Break was sold on cool time powers and a cool multimedia storytelling approach. Your mileage may vary, but I didn't particularly enjoy either of these aspects, so I feel like this game doesn't offer me anything.

There's a lot to like here -- the visual and audio design are genuinely great -- but the game just fundamentally doesn't respect the player's time.

The lack of a map is a senseless omission. There are subtler ways to evoke a sense of being lost than to frustrate the player with actually getting lost. As someone who dips in and out of games quite a bit, I know that returning after enough time for my mental map to fade would make for a needlessly tedious time.

The confluence of the save point system and the combat also hurt enjoyment. Dying returns the player to not just the position of their last interacted save point, but also the world state of that interaction. Not so unusual, but when the enemies, environment, and resource restrictions come together in such a way to at times make damage avoidance impossible, the run back from collecting a key item can be an inevitable death march. It isn't just a matter of having to repeat (REDO, one might say) a section afterward -- that's par for the course in many games -- but the knowledge in advance that the circumstances between you and the nearest save point are going to kill you no matter how gud you git, erasing (UNDO-ing) the milestone.

I think this game is going to lay the foundation for something great from the developer, but in and of itself, it didn't hit right for me.

This game is an incredible exercise in the subversion of expectations. It continually sets the player up to be delightfully surprised by how it plays with its mechanics. The fact that it manages this without ever (well, only once) straying from a consistently simplistic visual style is a monumental achievement.

The game's main gimmick is the option to resolve every conflict peacefully. The narrative means by which peaceful resolutions are achieved will rarely fail to bring a smile to one's face. It is absolutely worth exploring both violent and nonviolent extremes through multiple playthroughs, as each leads to some phenomenal character moments.

The whole experience is punctuated by a wonderful soundtrack. I'm rarely particularly conscious of the music in a videogame as I'm playing, but the sheer variety and quality here just screams to be heard. It always serves to draw out the tone of the moment, be it melancholy, hopeful, or just plain whacky.

I have nothing negative to say about Undertale. It's a ruddy masterpiece and you should play it.

Dragon Age: Origins is one of those rare games which profess to offer a deep, meaningful degree of choice and then truly deliver on that claim. Here you will create your protagonist and forge a clearer picture of just who they are with every decision they/you make.

But they won't be going it alone. A handful of diverse companions will become available as you progress, each with their own agendas and intricacies. The campfire conversations had with this bunch are among the most memorable in the game.

The gameplay is also worth noting. The selection of abilities available as characters level up means that two of the same class can be made to suit very different roles, allowing multiple playthroughs to feel genuinely unique. Combat against large numbers of powerful enemies can result in some very satisfying use of the tactical options to achieve victory, particularly in the higher difficulty settings.

The story's central conceit -- a shattered kingdom under siege by a great and powerful darkness -- is incredibly well written, and sets up countless opportunities for the protagonist to make defining moral choices. It may not sound particularly imaginative, but BioWare have done a stellar job at making this trite fantasy framework their own.

To summarise: Dragon Age: Origins is absolutely not one to miss.

While not quite (in my opinion) the satirical gem it is oft made out to be, DLC Quest is filled with humorous little allusions, which serve well enough to carry its two-to-three hours of somewhat lacklustre gameplay.

A decent, genuinely amusing game to blitz in a single session, but not a lot to be getting one's teeth into beyond that.

As you will likely have read elsewhere, Dear Esther really stretches the notion of what is traditionally called "a game." This is a very good thing. This work is a real boon to the argument that video games can and should be considered a form of art. It is anything but pedestrian, and that is what makes it so special and so well loved.

Dear Esther is visually astounding; journey deep into the island's caves and you will be utterly in awe of the beauty you find. The music is also noteworthy, always appropriate in intensity for the situation, and never overwhelming it. The semi-randomised narration contributes significantly to the player's emotional state while traversing the island: his rantings, musings, rage, and despair all help lend colour to the landscape, and keep the player firmly rooted in the world before them.

Whether you would define Dear Esther as a game or not, it is without a doubt an experience you will not regret.

The digital interactive novel is still a medium in its infancy, piggybacking on the video game as its nearest cousin in the entertainment industry. The 39 Steps shows that there is great potential for this medium to spread its wings and achieve legitimacy as a distinct form of entertainment.

The presentation of the events in this work is simply stunning; everything from the artwork to the music to the way the text appears on-screen is always true to the tone of the moment.

The story itself is rather good, too. Many of the characters are absolute delights to see interacting, and the voice work for them is really top notch.

As long as you go into this expecting not a game, but a dynamic and mildly interactive retelling of a classic story, I am sure you will be pleased to play/read/watch it. (Incidentally, we really need a new verb for this.)

This game made me confront the fact that I was slowly destroying my relationship with my partner through neglect. That it was able to speak to me on such a human level is probably the greatest accolade I could give it.