Recent reviews by BillyLjm

Shop Titans is a very polished and addictive time-management game, with a surprisingly large variety of things to do. However, being a F2P game, it pushes a lot of in-game convenience purchases. If you don't like that, then look elsewhere; otherwise, I'd recommend giving this game a shot.

The basis of the game is a very well-executed version of the standard fare: start a timer for an item, wait, collect, sell it to a customer. There are new items being introduced at a very nice pace at the beginning, and the distinctive art style serves as an incentive for you the unlock the next item sprite. As the game progresses, the timers do inevitably get longer and the crafting/selling starts to slow down. But the game then deepens with layers built on top of this solid basis.

One of these layers is assembling your heroes. You spend the money earned from crafting/selling to hire from a selection of classes, and send the hired heroes on quests to level them up while collecting loot. And while leveling, your heroes will be able to unlock random skills. Some skills are better than others, and some can even have unusual synergies among them. Thus, figuring out what is a good combination of skills and rehiring your heroes until you get the desired combination is a whole gameplay loop in itself.

Additionally, the game also has a very social guild system. Here, you can pool together your money to invest in the town to boost crafting productivity. You can also participate in the constant rotation of guild events, and help each other out to hit some milestone that grants everyone more loot. You can also discuss anything you want in guild chat or world chat to pass the time.

As for the in-game purchases, there are a lot of them but no content is completely locked behind a paywall. This is because of the community marketplace where you can buy items from other players who purchased the recipe and now can craft infinitely many copies of the item you want. Of course you can also pay to skip timers, levels, rerolling skills, gearing heroes, etc, but these are inconsequential.

The Walking Dead Season Two is a masterpiece of interactive story writing. It grips you right from the start, and pulls you down violently as you struggle, deeper into the darkness as you watch the world plunge along with you. It is an truly emotional trip which everyone should experience.

Season Two continues the story of the last remaining original cast: Clementine. However, this time she is older, wiser, and has much more of a nuanced personality. Additionally, the world has devolved much further into the zombie apocalypse, leading to much more distressing situations and polarising characters. This polarisability and the increased agency you have in this season, compels you to constantly fight to protect the characters that you've grown attached to. However, the world keeps beating you down as you keep jumping out of the frying pan and into fire, over and over again. This genuinely takes a toll on you, but you can't help but push on to protect your favourite characters. In the end, you're feel emotionally drained and almost lost, but you still can't stop; the zombie apocalypse is still out there after all.

As compared to the first season, the second one offers a much greater sense of player agency, and is almost a masterclass in the use of the interactivity of video game story telling. Additionally, the game starts off much faster since the foundations have already been laid, and sustains the frantic pace throughout. Thus, although it is shorter than the first season, the story does overall feel more substantial and satisfying nonetheless.

The Walking Dead: 400 Days is an okay DLC. You'd mainly pick it up just to complete the series, and maybe pad out the lore that surrounds the main game a little more. However, they stories themselves are honestly pretty forgettable.

This DLC which contains 5 short stories loosely related to the main game. These stories are decently written, but are far too short to really get invested into. Some secondary characters from the main game do make cameos here, but they are mostly inconsequential. At most, you get a prologue for one minor character, which is never referenced again in the main game, but I guess is nice to know.

The Walking Dead is masterfully executed movie disguised as a video game, which everyone owes to themselves to experience.

You start off in a world where the zombie disease is just breaking out. And like any other character in game, you have to reorient yourself to the unique challenges posed by this new apocalyptic reality. As the world strays further from civility and deeper into the zombie apocalypse, the story forces you to witness and respond to increasingly shocking behaviours and situations. All this while, you are accompanied by a rotating cast of characters which have distinct personalities and some of whom you can't help but gradually grow attached to, immersing you deeper into the game. This build-up eventually culminates in the last episode, which combines the your experiences and relationships to motivate an incredibly compelling story arc, and leads to a very emotional close to the game.

The only qualm I have with it is the lack of player agency; most of the big choices you make end up leading to the same outcome anyway, and are only useful as a personality test. Thus, the game plays out more like a very well-executed movie: on rails, but completely worth the time and money to experience.

Warframe not only exceeds many AAA games, but also has an truly expansive endgame loop/tangle slapped on the back for the good measure. Everybody needs to at least try it out!

The game starts off really strong, with amazing graphics and exhilarating combat flow. You are constantly bounding across vast rooms with several crevices to explore, soaring through the imaginative environments in pseudo-slow motion, and popping amazingly designed aliens in the head. Along the way, you are likely to also be following along a "main questline" involving incredibly-written interactive cutscenes, which slowly reveals the vastness of the world that Warframe has built and plunges you deep into its very centre. This experience left me awed, and was comparable to the very best AAA games I have played. This "main questline" is also continually being added to at a leisurely pace, and it alone makes Warframe a very strong recommendation from me.

Past this point, the game reverts to a typical but very expansive MMORPG. The primary draw will be to learn about the game, optimising your gear and essentially 100% the game. Some would drop off at this point, and it honestly requires quite a bit of intrinsic motivation to continue past here. The details of the game mechanics are not always intuitive nor explained very well in game, and the wide variety of things you can choose to do can make it pretty disorientating. The best angle of attack is to just choose one aspect to focus on, look to the internet and Warframe community for advice, and gradually build from there. This loop of learning and farming would then repeat indefinitely as new features are constantly being added,

STOP! Don't look at the screenshots.
Just give it a shot and you'll fall in love
~~for those who played, see what I did there ;)~~

"Emily is Away" is a short but surprisingly well-made game, contrary to what the screenshots might suggest. The ingenious use of the IM window coupled with a very relatable script encourages you to become completely immersed in the game. The game then exploits your immersion to evoke and manipulate emotions with extraordinary finesse, taking you on an emotional rollercoaster which actually leaves you feeling slightly drained at the end. It is amazing how emotionally involved you can get with such a short and simple game, and I recommend that everyone experience it for yourself.

However, it must be noted that the game is targeted rather specifically at gamers who were teenager-ish during the good old days of instant messaging. Thus if you weren't born in that era, your mileage may vary.

Clicker Heroes is an okay idle, run-in-the-background game which is worth checking out if you are really bored.

The game starts off slow, with a lot of clicking. Thus, I recommend using an autoclicker to speed things up and to not break your mouse. After you get over the beginning hump, it gets more interesting as there are many things to unlock such as "ancients" and new unique bosses. However, as the game goes on, it gets more repetitive and less enjoyable which I guess is unavoidable due to its endless-ness.

Another thing to be noted is that this game makes it very easy to share saves. As such, you could load up a save which instantly gives you almost all of the achievements. Similarly, you could get a save with a lot of rubies, which is their micro-transaction currency. I like this because it empowers you to play the game however you want, although it does diminish the sense of accomplishment you get from building up your save from scratch.

"Papers, Please" is a very simple, minimalistic and quaint indie game.

Throughout the game, you'll mainly be checking papers as per the game's name. Some might find this gameplay therapeutic, but some might find it boring especially if you play too much in a single sitting. New rules are constantly being introduced throughout the entire game, but they do little to break the monotony. Between checking papers, there is a minimalistic storyline being delivered through a stop-motion, powerpoint-like method. I find that the delivery method itself severely restricts the immersion, and there were also several side-characters which I feel were underdeveloped.

However, the main storyline is relatively well done and it is actually really innovative if you consider its minimalistic delivery method. Additionally, the game has an quaint overall feeling, probably due to its unusual art style and storyline delivery method.

As such, I don't find this game especially ground-breaking and I wouldn't pay much for this. However, if you can get it on the cheap, it is a pretty cool indie game to check out.

Bioshock has an absolutley riveting storyline. The backstory of the protagonist, the city and its inhabitants were very well developed. The soundtrack and voice-acting was also spot on, lending a industrial american dystopia atmosphere to the city. This combined with the fact that the protagonist discovers the secrets of the city alongside you, results in a very immersive gaming experience which further accentuate the plots and back stories. However, the most brilliant part of the entire story and the entire game, was the plot twist (or twists). When all is revealed, you will finally witness the full glory that is this masterpiece of a storyline. The only let-down was at the very end, when all has been divulged and you just had to go through the motions to a cliche happy ending.

As for actual gameplay, it was pretty scary and fun in the beggining when you still don't know what to do. During this time, I truly felt that I was fighting for my life, perpetually being on the verge of death with limited ammo, money and health kits. Choices also had to be made, like should I fight that big daddy to buy more upgrades, or should I enter that room where I may be ambushed or there might be more ammo. New types of guns and "spells" are also slowly introduced throughout the game, keeping gameplay relatively fresh. However, in the later parts of the game, you can become virtually invincible with the right upgrades, and gameplay starts to get stale. As a result, the final boss fight was a little anti-climatic with it being just hard instead of epicly hard.

Arkham Asylum is an incredible game which is definitely worth the money.

The combat is the highlight of the game for me. It feels visceral, allowing Batman to jump from enemy to enemy, landing a myraid of different blows to the enemy, all in a continous flowing movement. The combat also requires you to time you attacks to allow you to inject counters whenever needed. The skill needed in such a combat system makes fighting all the more rewarding and satisfying.

The difficulty levels of the game is also very well-implemented. I played on the highest difficulty and the combat at this difficulty requires skill but is not impossibly hard. I've fallen uncountable times throughout the game, but every time I fall, I feel like trying again and correcting my mistake, never have I thought of giving up.

The weakest link in the game is the storyline for me. It's respectable, but feels slightly flimsy, like it's one of Joker's minor misadventures instead of a pertinent chapter of Batman's story which I would have prefered.