Recent reviews by Tale

It's more Subnautica. But what they're doing different mostly doesn't work. Mostly.

The obvious new things are appreciated. All the new building items can't be argued. I even love the Seatruck. It's like the Cyclops and Seamoth had a modular baby. And the cramped early biomes with the air refill plants make exploring with just your seaglide tense and exciting.

But everything is smaller. And many things are underutilized. Finding a good spot to place your perfect base is difficult. The beautiful new areas at the end of the game barely have room for a larger vehicle, they have absolutely no room for bases to live in and admire the surroundings.

The arctic environs that are practically a selling point? Brief visits. The Snowfox is therefore wasted, given that it doesn't even work on water. Both above and below water, the ice is smaller and more cramped than most other places. Leaving few opportunities for convenient bases.

Let's not forget the Spy Pengling. Cut little thing. You'll probably toss it in storage halfway into the game and never touch it again. And that might not be a bad thing.

I enjoy Below Zero. It's a good game. But what it does most is remind me of how incredible the original is.

Fun and disturbing.

A fantastic little cosmic horror mystery. I'm dying to see what these devs do next.

It's not Subnautica in space. And as of release, I'm not quite sure it even knows what it is. But it is charming, sometimes funny, and fun at the end of the day.

The actual survival portion of it tends to the tedious, however. Enough so that when you hit the chapters where upgrading, scouring for the right items, and managing oxygen are absent, I kind of started to enjoy it more.

Every now and then I impulse buy some VN just because it has good art, good description, tons of recommendations, or just because it's kind of quirky. All of this is out of a desperate need to find the next Steins;Gate. This isn't that. But it gives it the college try and gets an A for effort.

I thought the opening of the story was a little slow. Too much buildup, not enough interesting things going on. But once they do, you're carried for the next 20 hours on a ride of laughs, edge of your seat suspense, and even a bit of heart.

I cared about these characters. And I hope you will too. If you'll excuse me, I have to dive into the extras.

It's like D&D with your friends if everyone's parents were watching. By which I mean PG. This isn't a bad thing. Epic campaigns, a robust personality system for the characters, and so many interactions and events I can hardly believe we're only at 0.33.

Only thing it's missing is backstabbing and trying to seduce the campaign's big bad. But maybe that's because the campaign villains are always monsters.

One of the greatest singleplayer stories of all time. And not half bad in the gameplay department. This is a game that just kept going when it could have quit and called it a day. Instead it kept building itself into something better than can be conveyed without just telling you everything.

Party character action game, part bullet hell, all passion to tell a story about struggle and life.

Never knew Pendulo had it in them. After finding their previous titles to be mixed or forgettable adventures, they come out with what can only be called a masterpiece of choice driven narrative adventure. It's rough around the edges at time, I swear Blacksad's VA sounds like he's whispering, but that's easy to forgive for the wonderful characters and plot.

A delightfully charming adventure featuring a pair of buffoons. Ben wants to be in adventure games and Dan wants to be in platformers. Now they manage to be in both at the same time.

Sometimes it's just pure idiot comedy as these two mess everything up. Other times its a metacommentary on games with a hint of criticism, or maybe just lighthearted ribbing, of tropes we've all come across in our time as people who play way too many video games.

The game falls ever so slightly shy of being an instant classic. But I find myself hoping you'll disagree and say it went all the way.

An above solid sci-fi mystery. If you like Wadjet titles, you'll like this. If you don't, it's a good place to start.