Recent reviews by Gana

This game is really interesting. It's sort of a 3-d platformer (a lot of jumping is involved), an exploration game, a puzzle game, and a hack and slash -- pretty much in that order.

The art style is really cool. You play as a tiny modeling clay (?) figure in a kid's back yard...there are giant tools here and there and when you look up at the sky the kid's house is blurrily looming above everything in the far distance which reminds you how small you are in the game.

The puzzles are mostly of the "how do I get the door open", "how do I get into that room", "how do I get from here to there" variety, at least so far. It's been a mix of logic and exploration to solve most of them. Some of the puzzles take patience till you have better skills or the tools to go back and complete them.

Thoroughly exploring each new area is important. You're on the lookout for hidden chests, switches, and gold coins. The chests usually hold permanent skill or health bonuses, and the switches get you where you want to go. But the exploring is interesting. Lots to look at and many directions to go. Sometimes you pick up mini quests along the way.

I'm not super thrilled with the fighting because so far I've just been whacking at every enemy as fast as I possibly can, which is pretty fast. It's actually kind of humorous, but not really the style I'm used to. I'm probably not fighting the way the dev intended. (I'll have to work on that)

If the demo is still up, try it out. When I got to the end of the demo I decided I really wanted to see what else was there. So far so good!

After months of being in a mental gaming slump where nothing I tried to play held my attention for more than 30 minutes -- along came Stardew Valley. I've been playing it (offline*) for a week straight. It's completely addictive.

People have called it a farming game, but farming is just where you start out making money and getting resources. It's also a foraging, fishing*, monster fighting, relationship, questing, collecting, searching, crafting, cooking, time-management game. I'm to the point in the game where I am thinking about dropping farming (mostly).

There aren't enough hours in the game day to do everything you want to. Each second is a game minute and the game forces you to get home and be in bed by 2:00 am or else you slump down on the ground and lose a significant wad of cash paying the doctor for 'saving you'. Movement controls are WSAD, and when you're tired because you've been playing for 6 hours straight, you start getting stuck on every rock and bush which is 5 minutes lost each time. You need to constantly plan ahead. Come to think of it, the game could use a jetpack. ;)

Even though you can't shape the world or design your home, the game reminds me of Terraria in a lot of ways. A lot of the activities are the same and you end up with dozens of chests to hold all your stuff. Much of your time is spent compulsively gathering hundreds of objects and organizing them. Also like Terraria, the game is almost impossible to play well without constantly referring to the Wiki. There is simply too much to remember without it.

The thing Stardew Valley has that Terraria doesn't are relationships. Through 'talking' and gift giving you build up relationships with the town people, 10 of which are single. You can marry one of them and have kids if you want. Building up relationships with the rest of the town people have them giving you useful gifts in return.

*My one big complaint is fishing. Fishing has a mini-game component I simply can not do (nor can many others). Even if I could, it would make fishing an unbearable chore. It's supposed to simulate reeling in a fish, but I wouldn't even be able to manage a goldfish in this game. So I went on the Chucklefish forums and found a mod that does away with the mini-game completely. The problem is you have to start the game offline with the mod so none of your achievements (or time played) show on Steam. The dev needs to make the mini-game optional. The game becomes unplayable without fishing, and fishing can be impossible for some.

Altogether though the game is wonderful. It's full of thought and detail and easily over 50 hours of gameplay. (I've gone past 100).

This game will never be any better than it is now (which is pretty bad) and development has been abandoned, if it was ever actually planned in the first place. The 'developer' hasn't made an update since April. He added an achievement that's broken (unattainable). The only effort he has put into the game is making a LOT of promises that big changes will happen "soon", then doing nothing at all. He's also said he has fixed many things that he hasn't. Look at the game's announcements if you want to learn how to string players along.

There are plenty of videos about how horrible the game is to play. Most of my time was idling for cards, I only played it a few minutes myself because my graphics card started overheating. My computer fan became louder than the game. That shocked me -- no other game I own does that. Whatever the problem is, it certainly isn't the quality of the graphics.

Buy and play at your own risk.

This game isn't "difficult", it's unfair. Hints are vague to the point of useless. One intro screen even says "Clues are worthless..." There's no indication if you do something right or wrong, or are even on the right track. As far as anyone can tell, the game is actually broken. (The achievements are likely broken as well.)

If the game isn't broken, then the puzzle is something that only makes sense to the dev.

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Postscript:
By now it has been made clear the game wasn't "broken". Most of it was missing. The other 6 levels were likely never there in the first place -- seeing as the 'game' is just the demo map from an asset pack and the 'dev' doesn't seem to be able to do any actual scripting. (No wonder it looked so nice though.)

The moral to the story is that it takes a lot to get a game pulled from sale, so don't hope for it to happen again any time soon. It wasn't until 4 subreddits and Jim Sterling told tens of thousands of Steam users what was happening that Steam quit selling the game. It takes an angry mob to make something happen.

The main story and visuals are really interesting, the game-play is really infuriating.

The protagonist moves slow as molasses, stops before and/or after every scene change (and there are a LOT of scene changes...the devs also put in a lot of scenery that is only there to pass through to make the world seem bigger, I suppose), she stops to consider any door you send her to before she finally opens it or says "I don't need to go down there" (99% of doors do nothing), she stops before taking stairs (which are also everywhere) and then goes up or down them as if they are ice covered. Being an adventure, you have to go back and forth over these same spots multiple times. It's torturous. I finally managed to figure out how to make her run (sometimes) after I lost my temper and repeatedly clicked where I wanted her to go while yelling "move it, for gawd's sake!!". (double clicking makes her speed up if she has a flat stretch)

Don't get me wrong, it's all really cool the first time you see new scenery in the game, but after the first time it's nothing but irritating speed-bumps. There is no map, so definitely no fast travel. If there were, I would probably enjoy the game instead of only being able to play for an hour at a stretch...by which time anyone tries to talk to me and I explode.

Though I am enjoying the main story, a strange kinda mystical story about a female lawyer on the trail of a guy who builds automatons and went in search of mammoths...I would like to see where they go with that bizarre premise...I don't like the side story of the lawyer's life played out in calls she gets on her mobile phone. [*spoiler*] The people in her life are selfish, shallow, demanding and uncaring...and she's a complete doormat. I cringe when her phone rings. I am sure in the end she tells everyone to take a flying leap because otherwise she is the worst female protagonist ever, but she isn't likeable enough to care. It's hard to root for someone who takes abuse cheerfully. [*end spoiler*].

From what I have seen so far, I estimate the game only has 3 hours of worthwhile game-play but the devs have made it so you can't possibly complete the game in less than 10 hours. That's a helluva lot of filler. I don't know if I can bring myself to ever finish it...I think I'd rather pull weeds.

I really liked Risen 2. When it was over, I wished there was more. I really liked the story, I liked the characters, and I loved the locations. Risen 1, on the other hand, was an ok time waster, but by the time it was over, I was really ready for it to be over (because I had gotten bored). Get both if you can, but if I had to chose I would definitely recommend this game.

Risen 2 is set in gorgeous island jungles that feel a lot more open they actually are, and there are a good number of islands you get to visit. Early on you are allowed to fast travel so you don't have to keep running the same paths over and over - and OVER - again (like in Risen 1).

The pirate aspect of the game is only to get a ship for transport between locations and to hold your crew (you can chose between most of them for traveling/fighting companions when you leave the ship)...there are no sea battles. It would have been great if there were, but they had no part of the story.

There's a crafting system is based on the skills you decide to acquire and the recipes you find/pay for...you gather the materials as you play. Money is really hard to come by in the beginning, frustratingly so...and every skill has to be bought. I am not really thrilled with the skill system, most of the skills aren't as useful as they should be. A number of them are really useful once or twice, but then you never need them again. Others you want to max out as soon as possible...but you don't know which till the end of the game. (or unless you look at a game guide)

I am also not thrilled with the fighting system. I ended up hack and slashing despite the fact I was also supposed to be able to parry and riposte...I don't know for sure that I ever managed to...I can't swear that they actually work. I had the same problem in Risen 1 though. I was never sure if I was doing it right, so quit trying after a while. Have lots potions and grog on hand. I lived and my opponents died though, so in the end it worked out.

The game has faults but none that ever made me yell at the screen. It was quite an enjoyable ride while it lasted.

I rarely play adventure games but I got the Sinister Stories Bundle at an amazing discount. The games sat there for a few months until I got in an adventure game mood and played all of them in a week.

Oddly, my 'adventure game mood' means I don't feel like paying constant attention. If you really can't concentrate, Sinister Stories are generally great with their hints, maps letting you know where to go, and letting you skip puzzles you simply can not be bothered with. Perfect for my need to be distracted but catering to my bouts of mental laziness. (if you are a hard core adventurist, never fear, you can set the games to difficult)

Anyway, Castle was part of the bundle and was the only one related to a TV show. Almost from the very beginning of the game I started saying "What?!" and ended up constantly swearing at the absurdity.

The game plays fine, but what you have to do and collect is ridiculous as part of a Castle storyline. It isn't a matter of suspending disbeliefe, it is a matter of completely disconnecting.

:Possible Spoilers: For instance, you get a long plank of wood out of a locker in a church basement so you can take it to a *huge construction site* across town, to cross a gap. You are a fabulously wealthy writer who has go through hoops to pick up loose change in one part of the city, to buy a soda in another part of the city, to pour on a bar-b-q in yet another part of the city. It's all like that. That's all well and good if you are trapped in a gigantic mansion and brought nothing with you. It is a bunch of "no" when you have a hefty bank account, freedom to move around a city and a police department backing you up. I was constantly thinking 'he should just go to the store or have the police bring him this junk'. Then for extra eye-rolling, Castle has to do all the forensic tests. I am assuming the case against the murderer is eventually dismissed because the police let a writer test for DNA and run fingerprints. If this was an episode of Castle, the writers would tested for substance abuse and fired.

If you like adventure games and don't care at all about its premise, it has all the adventure elements you'd expect. Otherwise it's unbelievable twaddle -- quickly cobbled together to grab merchandising money. Unless you get the Sinister Stories Bundle, I recommend giving this game a wide miss.

Bastion is really really pretty to look at, but it's not fun to play -- not with a mouse and keyboard at any rate. It's isometric and everything is on the diagonal, to top it off it's all done on floating platforms. Going everywhere diagonally using WSAD is a total pain, especially since one wrong step and you fall off the edge into the ether.

The mobs tend to be overpowered, fighting is repetitive. You end up with an impressive array of varied weapons to choose from, and they are all upgradable, but you can only chose two before you enter a (floating) dungeon with no idea what you will be fighting. You can also buy permanent buffs, but you can only have a few active at any time.

You have an inventory, but it is minimal and based purely on furthering the game. There is a story, but in the time I played it never grabbed me. I was too concerned with getting from point A to point B without falling (while wondering what was off the screen shooting at me) to ever really *care* what the protagonists problem was or what NPC's wanted me to do for them and why. For me, it ended up all about getting to the end of the dungeon with little joy getting there. I did not finish the game.

Pros:
Truly gorgeous to look at
Varied upgradable weapons
A choice of upgradable buffs
The narrator

Cons:
Being forced to walk diagonally on floating platforms, or fall off
Choosing weapons blindly
Mobs and gauntlet running (on the diagonal)
This game is playable on a PC, but definitely wasn't made for PC

Jazzpunk is quite unique. It's really fun to look at, it's odd and absurd, which is great, but for me it goes nowhere with it.

I am going to give it a thumbs down because: 1) It takes no effort or thought to play. I have clicked everything, played all the mini games, searched every corner, gotten all the achievements and feel like I didn't do anything worthwhile when all is said and done. 2) The humor was not my kind of humor and it's unrelenting. That's a problem since humor seems to be half the game content (the other half are the visuals). For the most part, it is a continuous stream of computer-geek puns. IE: You go into a restaurant and the waitress says "I will be your dedicated server." Lots and LOTS of that. There is almost no dialogue per se, just a lot of word play. 3) The game made me feel ill which really surprised me. If you play for more than 30 minutes in a go, especially after the first chapter, most likely you will end up with a degree of motion sickness no matter how rarely you get it in real life. This game could probably be weaponized for that ability. 4) The game is very very short, though given everything else, that is sort of a plus.

I kept expecting something in the game to wow me, to grab me mentally at least once, but nothing ever did. It's colorful fluff. If you like computer puns and pure silliness -- you'll probably have a great time. If you want more from a game than just being taken on a ride, or if puns make you roll your eyes and sigh in annoyance -- then you probably want to give the game a miss.

Morrowind is the best Elder Scroll game, you learn the history and become a god...(if you do it right) but Skyrim, you ride a dragon...seriously, ride a dragon that isn't thrilled with you riding it....but what fun!

Definitely buy Skyrim. Only a boring person would say no.