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I wasn't expecting this puzzle game to be kind of diabolical at times despite how chill it was. Would definitely play more levels or a sequel if one was ever made - But even if that didn't happen, I'm content with this game. Really lovely time.

I will start this with a disclaimer: I got this game as part of a Humble Bundle, and as such, did not pay full price for it. However, I will follow that by saying that I would not have a single regret if I paid for it at the non-sale asking price.

Satisfactory somehow feels like the game was tailor made for me. Even in its currently incomplete state, I have got more out of it than most other games I own, because it just appeals to me in a very specific way. I love a lot of games that center on Automation, and the closest one this feels like is the Tekkit modpack for Minecraft. However, it goes far beyond that and becomes something truly wonderful. Almost every choice the game makes is something I love.

For instance, the outright inexhaustibility of almost every resource in the game. With a few minor exceptions, resources are endless, letting you truly automate things without having to up sticks and move around every so often, and make a perpetual engine. This makes it into a very chill experience on that side. This flies in direct contract with the exploration, because the movement has an almost Doom 2016/Eternal hyperkineticism to it, especially when you gain access to the mobility-boosting Blade Runners and the Zipline. There's a real joy to the very act of moving around the world.

Something major to note is that the gameworld is NOT randomly generated, instead being manually constructed. This may seem antithetical to people who are used to games like this, but it allows them to make a world that's very rewarding to explore. For example - If something looks strange or very hard to get to, try and make your way there - Because more often than not, there's new unlocks, strange artifacts (which will probably be important in a later patch), or the overclock-enabling Power Slugs (just go with it) there, which gives the same sort of joyous feeling as locating a Piece of Heart in Zelda or an Energy Tank in Metroid. This is something a randomly generated world can't do organically, and it makes the exploration more of a matter of luck in those, whereas here, it always feels great.

The only nitpick I have with the game is the way that alternative recipes are unlocked - You have to locate crashed ships which have a Hard Drive in them, which give one of three randomly chosen recipes based on what you have unlocked. While I understand this was a deliberate choice to make things more dynamic, it can be quite frustrating if you're looking for something specific, and not all of the recipes are of equal usefulness.

Still, it's a tiny issue in what is otherwise a new favorite game of mine. Fully worth it, even at maximum price.

(DISCLAIMER: Patreon backer, extensive amount of time spent in outside-of-steam Beta builds)

Tribal Hunter is a game that just oozes talent and effort. I'm quite a fan of Metroidvania-style games, and while this is far more simplistic and laid back than something akin to Bloodstained or Axiom Verge, it's still an extremely fun time. The visual style is extremely nice and cohesive, and the characters are genuinely adorable.

The gameplay is very entertaining, and can get quite difficult at times even on the Normal difficulty. The combat flows well, and leads into something that seperates it from other games like this: There is no escaping the fact that some people see this game as a fetish game due to the extensive amount of expansion that the main character and others are exposed to. However, a lot of these sorts of games (Changed, for instance) tend to put that sort of material in as a consequence for losing at it, which makes it feels somewhat disjointed compared to the rest of the game. Tribal Hunter, however, works it into the game rather well, making the main character's bigness into a genuine game mechanic, turning the expansion into a secondary "Mana" source that can actually massively backfire if you overinvest into it.

Lastly, the music is genuinely incredible. Again, you can tell that a lot of effort went into making it, and the tracks very much fit the individual areas but don't feel too disparate from each other.

All in all, fantastic game.

As a sequel to a critically beloved game from 16 years ago, this had the potential to become another Duke Nukem Forever. Indeed, when it got picked up by Microsoft and got delayed multiple times, many people thought this was its inevitable fate. However, what this title became was undeniable proof that "High budget" and "Made with love" are not mutually exclusive.

Pyschonauts 2 really feels like not a single compromise was made during the making of it. It takes the original game's concept, removes most of the jank, refines all of the things that made it great... It's basically perfected it.

The combat is far, far better than the clunky punch button mash / Leap Slam spam from before - If you try the same tactics as you did in in Psychonauts 1, even early-game enemies can genuinely knock you on your ass. The game also looks utterly astonishing - Some of the little details that show up later in the game had me just stopping to take them in.

Lastly, the story is so much better than the original game. It flows significantly better, the characters are very well defined, and it has a far more satisfying resolution than the original. I have pretty much done nothing but play this since it game out, so hooked I was in the storyline. Speaking of the story - Minor spoilers I guess, but: NO POINT OF NO RETURN THIS TIME. So you can take things at your own pace this time.

I know it's a tawdry term to use, but in this case it's warranted: Believe the hype. This game was 110% worth the wait, and it deserves every single bit of praise it's getting.

This game should be used as one of the posterchildren for the argument that prebought assets don't make a game inherently bad - You can tell that they were used responsibly and respectably as a framework to make one of the most unique and engaging games of the last few years. Massive reccs if you want a challenging FPS with something truly memorable.My only issue is that sometimes the flashing can be a little obnoxious - An option to turn those down would be appreciated.

Allow me to make a very quick summary of this - Forager is, in everything but name, an early access game, masquerading as a full release. It's a humble starting point where it's going to be built upon.
But that is not a bad thing. Early Access has a lot of bad connotations these days due to chancers that basically slap together a few unity packages and use that whole Early Access thing as shield engraved with the words "Caveat Emptor". But this game is very much a case of the good sort of "Good foundation, which will only be built on".
I have to get that whole distinction out of the way first, as this game is quite short and there's not really much to do when you get all the achievements, and some people may feel ripped off. £15 for 28 hours of gameplay (Some of which was me idling) is a bit of a hard sell to some people these days.

But I can say that this game, for the short ride it was, was probably one of the most truly engaging and engrossing experiences that I've been on in years.

It starts off as your standard "Build up from nothing" game, but there's an odd focus on multitasking, which... I'm a very avid player of modded Minecraft, so all of this - Optimising everything, making speedy decisions on efficient plans of action, and so on...It all works out really well. At every single minute, I was doing something.

However, as time goes on, and you get more and more abilities, things go off the rails in the most spectacularly fun way possible. At about the 5-10 hour mark (depending on how you play), your power begins to rapidly outpace the game's challenge. Things that used to be long-winded can be breezed past. For instance, cutting down trees can be tedious at first, but later on, you get a pickaxe upgrade which applies DOTs to whatever you hit, to a pickaxe that can let you find precious gems in anything you break, until eventually getting an upgrade that makes anything you break explode, destroying everything around it. You keep getting faster, and stronger, until you eventually reach the endgame where you're screaming your way across the landscape, spewing fireballs from a heavily modified magic staff, obliterating everything and watching as a swirling vortex of items flow into you. It's great.

However, right now, there's unfortunately not much of a end-goal to it. Again, yeah, there's achievements, but after a while you're just getting resources for the sake of getting resources. If I can go back to that comparison to Modded Minecraft again, when I get to this sort of ludicrous point of power, I then start to use that to look towards building huge bases, or focussing on some immensely powerful and expensive items that take days, if not weeks, of effort to get if you don't know how to optimise.
But as it stands right now, I've got about 4-5 million gold with nothing to use it on, factories spewing out electronics and so on, but not much to really DO with it.

However, given the fact that there's a lot of upcoming updates, I get the feeling that this will not be a permanent problem. And well...This was very much a "Forget about the end-goal, and enjoy the journey" sort of experience.

Speaking of future updates, some of the biggest bugbears of the game are being addressed. A lot of people are complaining heavily about the flashing from certain items, and screenshake that puts the likes of Torchlight 2 to shame. There is a hidden option to switch this off (To any players who are reading this and are curious - Type %localappdata% into your pc's search bar, hit up the Forager folder, and there's a Secret Options file in there - it can be switched off there.), but this is being made into a proper option later. I'm glad this is being changed, but given the amount of reviews that cite this? I'm a little concerned it's going to leave a bad first impression.

My only other complaint is that there's something that conflicts with how the Endgame pans out. Remember how I mentioned that a lot of your tools etc cause explosions and such? Well...There's two entities in the game that cause a rather major problem.
The first are the Beets. You know the ones. The ones from the trailer. You're heavily guilt-tripped if you happen to destroy them, through both in-game dialogue. This would be fine if you had to make an active choice to do so, but later on when you're causing huge explosions with everything you do, it is very possible for them to be destroyed through collateral damage. This is a pretty meanspirited move.
What's even worse though, is the Magic Deer. There's two special deer in the far north of the map that frequently give gems as produce. And they're even more flimsy than the beets and have a horrible habit of unpredictable movements. Such as moving over to you when you break a tree, the tree explodes and instantly immolates the deer, which I should probably mention, DO NOT RESPAWN. Again, this feels to be in direct conflict with the game's mechanics, and just feels awful.

Anyway. Those are just minor gripes over what is shaping up to be a fantastic game. A truly exceptional start, by a developer who you can see has both raw talent and utter dedication to what he does. If you ever read this, Hop, I hope that it doesn't come off as harsh.

...I still want my deer back though.

Path of Exile is a game that you can sink 700+ hours into and only scratch the surface of. This is how you make a truly spectacular FTP game. I've sunk a fair bit of money into this, and I'm not ashamed of doing so. It's earned it.

Okay, I bought this at full price with two reasons in mind. 1: Supporting the developers, and 2: Proving that pay-up-front payment models should be encouraged against endless microtransaction ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Whether this is worth it to you depends entirely on how much $30 is worth to you. For my personal consideration, I'd say it's not quite worth it but not far off, either. It may be a clicker game but it's easily got the potential to be one of the most polished ones out there. The sheer amount of effort and care that's gone in even at this early state is extremely admirable.

Basically if you like clicker games, this is probably the best of its kind, because it feels awesome to play. Very punchy and powerful-feeling design and aesthetics and enough complexity to theorycraft for quite a fair bit of time.

This is an immensely underrated soundtrack. The whole game is a moody, atmospheric experience, and the music just brings it home so utterly perfectly. It's a mark of an amazing game soundtrack when just hearing it can bring back some of the experiences you had with playing it...and this delivers. My favorite - Anger Gameplay 2 - still instills the feeling of creeping claustrophobia I felt while playing...It's awesome.

Wholly reccomended.

I won't spoil the game. All I will say is the following.

If you are looking for a happy, light game, this isn't it. This game is a heavy one.

However, if you're looking for a short-ish but very satisfying game along the lines of VVVVVV, this is definately worth a peek.

Just, yeah. Expect to feel a bit existential by the end.