Recent reviews by Erik Cheetah

A heavily atmospheric and dream-like game from the unusual perspective of a toddler. The elements of saturated colors, artistically created environments, and lush soundtrack are well harmonized for a unique experience. If you're tired of stereotypical horror games, this is something fresh.

PROS
* The visual design is striking. The bright colors and dark shadows play over strangely distorted landscapes. The child's perspective makes even common objects like swings or coats huge and menacing. This is a visual experience that will not soon be forgotten.
* The atmosphere is enhanced by the soundscape. There are bumps in the night, rumbling drones, and a haunting melody being hummed far off.
* Without spoiling anything, the subject matter is interesting and well paced.
* The voice acting of the teddy bear is another high point, being playful and surreal without becoming corny.
* This is a very imaginative experience. It felt like reading a storybook, in a similar vein as the movie The Babadook.

CONS
* The game is extremely linear. It almost felt like a straight line going through each area.
* When the monsters are introduced, it detracts greatly from the experience for me. The nightmarish environment lets your imagination run wild, so when the game becomes a hide-and-seek horror trope, the experience suffers.
* The monsters become constant by the end. Less really would have been more, both for scares and for letting the environment keep the spotlight.
* There's no story. There is a *situation* which you come to understand throughout the game. I feel that if the game developers were going to tackle this subject, there really should have been more depth given to both the "villain" and to the situation. Instead, the treatment feels shallow and even insensitive.

The Solus Project feels like five hours of an excellent game stretched into 10-15 hours of a mediocre one. The planet feels alive with plants, water, day-night cycles, and a gorgeous weather system. But nearly every strength that this game has is mitigated by an equivalent weakness. I would still buy it again for the truly unique setting it offers... there are some memorable moments to be found here which are worth the purchase price, but I won't be returning to Gliese.

THE LONG VERSION
Graphics: They are stunning, with beautiful landscapes, days that waver in the hot sun, nights full of stars, awe-inspiring thunder storms... But after a while, every area, every part of the game, starts to become pretty much identical in content, style, even visual color. Day and night are very different, but since the majority of the game takes place in underground caves and ruins that all look the same too, you won't get to appreciate it.
The magic gets lost as each island looks like the last one, every cave is blue and gray. There are plenty of areas and secrets to explore, but I stopped bothering.

Gameplay: This is a good introduction to the mechanics of survival games, and my first in the genre. The information is clearly displayed in a handheld device which you can easily look down at without ruining the immersion. This game makes it easy to manage food and water needs, body temperature, and sleep. It presents clever immersive clues to your condition, such as frost on your HUD when you're getting cold, or slowed speed when you need rest. The downside: It doesn't feel like it adds much to the game. Water and food are scattered along the very linear course you have to take for the story, so there's no real need to be resourceful. You end up sleeping just to make the awake-hours meter go back up. The mechanic doesn't stay very interesting. I ultimately didn't feel like I was surviving on this planet, just managing numbers while I ran from point A to point B.

Story: A really interesting and unique sci-fi story is marred by a maddening delivery system. It's mostly delivered through tablets, monuments, and papers you find. But you have to scan and read them onto the small hand-held translator. It displays the text slowly and in pieces. When you have six long monuments to read all in one room, this becomes annoying in a hurry. The crew logs are given one page at a time, often out of order. You'll find sheet 9 of 22, then sheet 5... by this point, you're going "come on, COME ON" at the snail's pace text as a tornado closes in.
And the ending is a huge letdown as well. It's generally not a good move to have the player toil towards a goal, then make it completely pointless with two lines of dialogue... especially with the weird '50s sci-fi turn it takes.

Exploration: This is where the game really could have risen above being a linear sci-fi game. Each area will alert you to the number of "secrets" remaining, and when you start on this strange world, the islands feel huge and ripe for discovery. But after you brave your first cave with resources at the ready, your reward is nearly always an artifact which grants a minimal stat boost. After finding my third or fourth "secret" which was just a 1% resistance to starvation boost, I stopped exploring much. And again, when you know the back of the island will look exactly like the side you're on, why bother going over there?
I should also mention what I affectionately dubbed A-hole Island. Ever wanted to experience a tornado, a meteor storm, a lightning storm, ANOTHER tornado, then ANOTHER lightning storm in the course of five minutes? Me either.
Of note also, this game suffers from extensive backtracking. Get the running boots at the start of the game. You'll need them.

This game takes the concept of the first The Room further by expanding the puzzle boxes into puzzle rooms. Now you interact with several puzzles spread out in each room, seeing what happens when you flip this lever, rotate this device, and so on. It sounds deceptively simple, but there's a pure enjoyment found in seeing what each puzzle device will do as you solve its stages. A subtle hints system ensures you won't get stuck on any one puzzle for long.
Like the first game, the experience is beautifully rendered and animated. And this time as well, the story isn't very deep, but the game nonetheless draws you into its dark and occult world. The puzzles didn't feel as ornate or intricate as those of the first game, and this is definitely the weaker of the two titles. That said, if you enjoyed the first game, you'll find more of the same to enjoy here. And if you like this game, go get the first The Room!

A unique experience interacting with beautifully designed and rendered puzzle boxes. As little doors flip open, crystals shimmer, and strange lights appear through each step of the puzzle, the experience is strangely rewarding. There's barely any story here, but the game doesn't suffer for it. Puzzles are not very difficult, but a system with well-balanced hints makes sure you don't get stuck endlessly. A really enjoyable two hours or so of gameplay.

Very atmospheric game with beautiful, vivid visuals and subtle music. Well-written, acted, and paced. This is an experience that pulls you in like a good movie. Firewatch on its surface is about the mystery that develops over your summer in the watchtower. Dig a little deeper and it's a serious look at loneliness and escaping life's problems, whether through the nature of the relationship you and your lookout partner develop through the dialogue choices, how far you let the mystery take your imagination, or even the subtle themes of alcoholism and second-hand impacts of dementia.
The game stays interesting throughout, carefully building tension as the wildfire outside gets closer and closer, and the characters become more complex.

It took me 3.5 hours to complete. Given the high quality of those hours though, it was worth the $20. The ending perfectly sums up the message of the game. If you're left feeling disappointed, consider why. Firewatch is now in my top 10 games list.

If you like the Myst games, you'll like this game as well. The worlds in the game are stunning visually, with distinctive environments, interesting puzzles, and a story that is weird in the way only Cyan can do. Some optimization problems and the puzzles in one particular area of the game can cause big headaches, but the experience offered by Obduction is worth the trouble.

PROS:
* Beautiful graphics, technically and artistically. Some areas are jaw-dropping, including the very first time you emerge on Hunrath, the desert world. This really feels like a game made with great attention to detail.
* The story is interesting. Cyan has come up with an original idea. The story is delivered through holograms, journals, hints in the environment, and of course a mayor who doesn't seem quite right. Don't be put off by the superficial similarity to the Ages from Myst games. Obduction is something quite unique.
* The worlds themselves are distinctive. They look and feel like they come from different worlds.
* The sounds and music complement the visuals and are almost never intrusive.
* There is a numbering system, which is a plus for me :) I found it a lot of fun to crack. It features prominently later in the game, so take some time to wrestle with what Cyan has come up with.

CONS:
* Obduction's biggest problem is its optimization, specifically in how it loads assets. That means that even on high-end systems, players may experience "hitching", where the game abruptly drops to 1 fps for a few moments. For me, this happened about once every five seconds. The only solution was to turn the "draw distance" setting down to almost its lowest setting. No other graphical setting helped, so keep this in mind if your game hitches also.
* While the story is fascinating, the game delivers it unevenly. It comes in big globs spaced throughout the 10-15 hours it takes to beat this game. For the endings to make any sense at all, you'll need to do some detective work.
* One major puzzle mechanic is teleporting part of a room with you between two locations. This is really cleverly done... up until the jungle age, Maray. There, the player must teleport different spheres back and forth many, many times, trying to see what sphere goes where.
Why is this a problem? Because every time you teleport, the game has to load the world. Even with the other world cached, this means a wait of 15-30 seconds each time. It starts to get very tedious when you're not 100% sure on what to do. Bring some patience.
* There's a strange loading zone in some of the trees. Suddenly, you stop dead in your tracks and might think something's broken. If you see a small spinning circle in the top right, just wait a while.

A very beautiful and very sad journey through the lives of average people in a small English village. This game is a study in tragedy. It is pure story, with the player having no impact on the world or its events. The atmosphere of mystery is expertly built up through incredible voice acting and an intriguing plot. The ending is rather disappointing, but this is still a worthwhile purchase for everything until the last chapter. Make sure to turn on subtitles so you can tell who's talking and better follow the story.

PROS:
* The voice acting is the highlight of the game, completely believable, to the point that some dialogue is difficult to hear. Through "memories" of conversations the player triggers, you'll learn about the people in the valley and what their lives were like.
* Visually dazzling and atmospheric. Walking around the village and forests alone is an experience worth the purchase price.
* The sense of place is very well done. The village is a place frozen in time. Laundry blows gently in the wind, doors are left ajar, picnics abandoned, a book and cup of tea left on a table outdoors. It all underscores the fact that no one is here, spurring the player on to uncover more of the story.
* Lush sound design.
* The background music is haunting and adds to the atmosphere.
* The story is intriguing. Tension and mystery are built slowly. The first chapters of the game are stronger in this regard than later, and especially the ending, which is touched on (without spoilers) in "cons".

CONS:
* This game is tragedy heaped upon tragedy. The tone does not change from start to finish, and the characters do not evolve or experience any resolution from their predicaments. The story is mostly centered around a few days or weeks (it isn't clear) so this isn't too surprising, but without any break in how miserable everyone is, it begins to lose some of its impact. Almost every conversation is an argument.
* The otherwise atmospheric music becomes very loud and intrusive at peak moments in the story. It's as though the game is saying "now it's time to have an emotional response." The voice acting alone would have carried these parts, but instead, we have a choir rushing in while the orchestra swells. It makes the sadness of the game veer into the melodramatic.
* This game is a story, pure and simple. Aside from opening/closing barriers and activating some appliances like radios or phones to get more of the story, 99% of this game is walking around, triggering conversations. Whether this is a con or not depends on the player. Just understand what you're in for as far as an experience.
* As mentioned by others, your character walks INCREDIBLY slowly. Bring plenty of patience.
* There is little to no replay value. The story is delivered on rails, where you activate conversations and scenes, albeit in whatever order you want per chapter.
* The ending. The game has two layers: the daily lives of the people involved, and the mystery of what the Pattern is, what its effects are, and how different people handle it. The ending takes the ingredients of the game and tries to make them into something that felt unrelated, becoming vague and philosophical. The result is a confusing ending that does not tell us much more about the Pattern, or the most mysterious person in the story, Kate. I didn't personally find it "new age" or "insulting", but after so much sadness in this game, the ending did not really speak to the story it was telling. The characters and the player get no release.

Too complex to be an art piece you explore, yet too repetitive and shallow to be an adventure game. I put 21 hours into this game because the island is a visual feast, and the way the game presents new puzzles types is very stimulating. You just feel so smart for finally "getting it". But after the 100th puzzle figuring out how to draw a line from point A to B, the island's beauty (and my time on it) feel wasted. You won't be seeing much of the pretty trees and water in the screenshots because your hours will be spent staring at variations of a panel grid.

PROS:
* The visuals in the game are beautiful, full of color. Wandering the island is a treat.
* The atmosphere is very peculiar and intriguing. The statues and locales invite interpretation.
* The sound design is excellent. Water sloshes against the beach, bamboo whistles softly, machines clunk and whir, and even the little sounds the puzzles make are pleasant and not at all intrusive.
* The puzzle design can be very satisfying, teaching you without showing, inviting you to ponder and experiment until that "ah-ha" moment so characteristic of this game.

CONS:
* This game feels like a single concept taken too far. The gameplay is almost entirely solving maze puzzles with different rules. Sometimes, the rules are creative, such as paths that interact with light/shadow or the environment. But too often, the rules simply serve to make puzzles harder, larger, and therefore more time-consuming. Rules are combined not in ways that expand the player's understanding of the world or add interest to the puzzles, but only that make them take longer to solve.
* Tedium is too often a gameplay mechanic. In several areas, there are many, many puzzles in a row with the same set of rules, whereas a small handful would have sufficed. An example is the treehouse area. The walkway is made up entirely of puzzle panels. You must solve dozens of them, building up the path square by square, including several in multiple ways to turn the walkway. There is also a room involving raising and lowering water levels over and over and over, hoping to catch different clues in time.
* There are puzzles based on perspective, where you can draw a shape formed by buildings or the landscape. This should have been a fascinating gameplay innovation, but it winds up being another joyless experience.
Although there are monoliths that show which way these shapes can be found, they often require very precise positioning to activate, with no other clue about where to go beyond "thattaway". Some are even solved while the player is in motion on a boat. If the line you start drawing is at all broken, the player must stop, turn the boat around, go back, turn around again, then start over. It's tedious, pure and simple.
* Several puzzles punish the player for mistakes by deactivating the panel, requiring you to go back to the previous panel in the series and retrace the solution. This is another instance of tedium as a gameplay mechanic.
* On a personal note, I found many of the audio recordings pedantic and condescending. There is no subtlety in the selection of quotes. If you are the type of player who likes to think about philosophy and the questions of life, you may find them equally tiring. After the fourth one or so, I stopped bothering to look for them.

Haunting best describes this atmospheric mystery. The music, sounds, and visuals all work together to make the world of Ethan Carter feel very big and very lonely. The story is intriguing and poignant.

PROS: The way the plot is revealed is very well done, through reconstructing crime scenes and reliving short stories written by Ethan. There are many surprises, and the parallels between Ethan's stories, the events involving the adults in his life, and the revelation at the end are all intertwined extremely well. There's a lot more going on in this game than meets the eye.
The music shivers and surges at just the right times and was never intrusive.
The visuals, even on mid-low on my system, are stunning.

CONS: A down side to this is what the game warns about at the very start: it does not "hold your hand." While it's nice not to be force-fed tutorials, it's too easy to miss vital story components simply because you don't know they're there.
Case in point, I nearly reached the end of the game before quickly checking online for things I had overlooked. I found I'd managed to skip almost HALF of the story. What I wrote off as a "weird house I'll understand later" I was supposed to actually patiently pick apart right then and there. Some clues are even spaced so far apart they don't seem important or related. Compounding this problem, the game makes no indication when you've moved on too soon.

To avoid this problem, I recommend finding a list of game areas but NOT using an actual walkthrough. Merely knowing you're supposed to do something of importance in an area will solve the problem of the game's absence of player guidance. This information is actually given to you near the end of the game in the form of a map, but save yourself the backtracking. A simple cue like "I'm not finished here yet" or "I should take a look around" might have helped.

Despite that small issue, this was a very worthwhile experience. There are plenty of surprises and just a heavy aura of mystery that kept me playing. The game is short, taking me about 4 1/2 hours, but I finished feeling like I'd just read a good book.