Recent reviews by Gamer Gaming

Anyone familiar with the Yakuza series knows about its tense, complex plots, punctuated by bursts of sheer lunacy yet remaining utterly engaging. It's no small feat to keep pulling out new surprises after 18 years and about as many games, but Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios have done just that. The new series protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, fancies himself a JRPG hero, providing the ideal conceit to make the series more ludicrous and fantastical than ever before.

Like a Dragon marks a shift in the mainline series from real-time to turn-based combat, but it feels like it's been this way for years. With a party of four gameplay becomes more strategic, but fights maintain the energy of classic Yakuza street brawls, with a wide variety of enemies and brutal attacks courtesy of Ichiban's imagination. There are still aspects of real-time; some more wonky than others. During an attack, QTEs can boost your damage or mitigate damage from enemies. You get a free critical hit if you decide to hit someone while they're down. Characters in battle constantly shift position, and you can attack when the positioning is right for major damage - if you can be bothered to wait for that. Bizarre special moves can be performed by your party members, or friends you've met, whom you can summon for a cash fee. Battles are polished overall, but imperfect pathing leads to a fair bit of running into walls and weird ragdolling, and the humour of this wears off quickly.

Each party member has access to several jobs (RPG classes), like chef, musician or fortune teller. As they level up, they gain character skills and current job skills. Characters retain a couple of skills from each previous job they've held; it's worth getting a few levels in every job for each character for basic versatility, and to discover a style you like. I didn't manage to max out a single job before beating the game; maybe in my post-game adventures. You smash your way through about 200 different Earthbound-like social caricatures covering many RPG combat archetypes; these are very amusing until you meet the high-HP tanks that are, like, a drag to get through.

Ichiban retains all Kiryu's best qualities, but with less restrained emotion, an endearing underdog story and a rough but nerdy charm that draws people to him. His lost-puppy devotion to his family drives him to take a hefty jail sentence, and when finally freed, he is a 42-year-old dragon-fish out of water in a world that doesn't remember him. His exploits in Yokohama awaken his supreme gift of the gab and talent for scrambling up from nothing, earning him respect and a name for himself in a few interesting circles. The game spoofs, and celebrates in the main story, the sides of city life that society looks down on when it suits it. Either side of that is a personal story about power, love and ambition. I would have appreciated deeper in-game plot summaries as things do get a little confusing. Despite the rather contrived last few chapters the resolution is very impactful, thanks to the solid characterisation built up in story and gameplay, and the strong direction of key scenes.

Like a Dragon meets the series' high standard of quality, with as much love as ever put into visuals and a cracking soundtrack I just had to stop and marvel at sometimes. Translation is brilliantly natural as usual and the fantastic English voice acting had me sticking with the dub. It was a nice surprise to see that mouth movements match the selected language, so unlike many other dubs, no odd verbal compromises are needed to make the writing fit.

Yokohama has 52 substories and some brand new minigames to discover. The less revealed the better but there is plenty of fun to be had, whether you're defending persimmons, distributing strange kimchi or just trying to stay awake in a comfy chair. The management game has you growing a portfolio of businesses, investing in R&D, funding ventures and hiring and firing. The scope is fairly deep and it's a nice simplification of real business decisions, but its complexity and emphasis on menus means it won't appeal to everyone. Unfortunately it's your best money maker, at a point where you happen to really need ¥3m. Making money over the business period is sadly a chore; you watch a redundant animation then read your balance sheet. The end-of-period shareholder-pleasing is a more interesting arcade game, but I think these two aspects should have had more going on, considering how many times you play them. Avoid the Management Mode DLC if you like the minigame; it provides "Ultra Rare" employees that not only trivialise this minigame but spoil the story too.

Kazuma Kiryu and his peers might be starting to bow out at last, but if anything the series is stepping up a gear. This isn't the best game for newcomers (that's still Yakuza 0) as you won't appreciate the rampant call-backs, but if you like, or think you will like, the world and the wackiness of Yakuza, this is easy to recommend.

Spoils the story as well as trivialising the management mode. I would disable this if I started the game again

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. Search this title online and you'll realise that somehow, no one has played it, but paradoxically, it's one of everyone's favourite games and you MUST play it. Capcom originally dropped a massive clanger marketing this game, so it attracted very few sales and wouldn't achieve its cult hit status for a good few years after release. I believe that the online clamour throwing this game in your face is really justified, and would recommend this to any gamer with the patience for visual-novel type games.

For one night only, Sissel is experiencing one of the most desirable power fantasies I've ever seen. His life has already ended, but he can still physically influence the world (press "Ghost" to warp between possessable objects within range, and "Trick" to make your object do something), and even commune with some of the living. On top of that, if he finds a dead body, he can head back to before the death and interact with the past world. With these powers, he merrily defies the fate of several characters, without fear of any consequences, and if things don't work out he shrugs it off and tries again. His ultimate goal, and the source of the game's tension, is to obtain full closure on the circumstances of his death, and truly rest in peace.

I thought the game encouraged patient, experiment-based gameplay but other reviews penalise a "trial-and-error" approach to puzzle solving. This description barely applies - in any situation, there are only a few Trick-able objects around, and object placement and optional character comments provide ample hints of what to do. Even if the solution isn't what you expected, you were still guided into making it happen. I got stuck and had to check a walkthrough twice - both times, I was already Tricking the right object; I just had to Trick it again. Enough room is given for your brain to do some work, while smoothly propelling the player forward so that even stupids like me can finish the game in about twelve hours. The exceptions are some rare occasions where you know the correct sequence of actions, but it's easy to flub the execution. These can prompt several restarts from a checkpoint, and cursing of the lack of a basic undo button.

Each level is a 2D side-view cutscene, the progression of which is influenced by your Tricks. You'll mostly find yourself in the kinds of mundane-made-kooky environments familiar to players of this game's Ace Attorney predecessors, starting in questionably-decorated apartments before graduating to luxury prisons, pollocentric restaurants, weirdo-attracting parks and so on. The opening levels might feel inconsequential but they all tie back into the story later. The nature of getting between levels causes Sissel to take on what feel like side missions, putting together the stories of apparent side characters, but the game's cast is so well interconnected that every level is a step forward and a new tidbit of information. The plot is almost more twists than straight parts, so the number of mysteries blossoms quickly and is almost too much, but for a useful summarising monologue at the start and end of each chapter. All your questions are resolved at the end, and I can't think of any loose ends or plot holes. The conclusion is jaw-dropping in a really life-affirming way; a long way from the dark, moody gut-punch twists which are so fashionable now. As with the best-written mysteries I was kicking myself for not getting it sooner. Almost everything was in plain sight, begging me to find it, but some blend of practised sleight-of-hand and my own incompetence kept me guessing the whole time. Even if I never forget this game's story, I'll look forward to playing it again and noticing every time the answers were staring me in the face.

I'll also look forward to revisiting the colourful pantomime of characters Ghost Trick treats you to, in which the Ace Attorney spirit is palpable. Most characters have a unique quirk to their writing, so given almost any text box, you can tell who said it. Just about everyone shares a friendly, optimistic nature, and whichever cast member reappears on screen, it's a little dopamine hit every time. Their distinctive designs are accompanied by charming, delightfully floppy CGI-rotoscoped animation. The background art is not so memorable but services the gameplay just fine. I would have preferred a clearer sense of depth, which would have helped me understand some puzzles more clearly. There's a cracking soundtrack with several very replayable pieces, though I thought it was a bit lightweight. There are ten minutes of sadly unused tracks in the game files, which are worth a listen online.

Capcom's other HD remasters of Shu Takumi's back catalogue look great and are functional, but technically in need of some patches that never arrive. Ghost Trick's remaster is no exception. It's a delight to see the perfectly updated sprites, and even better is to hear the full richness of the soundtrack from decent speakers, and then, to hear it elevated by a new arrangement of every track. You can switch between original and arranged music freely. As you earn achievements you unlock wallpaper-size bits of artwork from the game, and unlock "Ghost Puzzles" - simple slider puzzles which are not at all worthy of the puzzles the main game gives you. I would have happily traded Ghost Puzzles away for more attention to the graphics and UI, for example fixing the messed-up intro animation of Inspector Cabanela or the fact that the Options menu has two "Controls" tabs.

So yes, as the old saying goes, "Please play Ghost Trick". A consistent, exciting visual novel puzzler, working alongside original gameplay and beautiful characters, and one of the best narratives the DS era had to offer, now truly shining in a great HD remaster.

Dicey Dungeons sands down the "rogue-lite" genre into a friendly, approachable casual affair while having the cunning and creativity of the genre's best. Somewhere between Yahtzee and Hearthstone - but more fun than both - our plucky, cubic heroes must descend the six levels of the dungeons over and over, until the time finally comes to confront Lady Luck herself - in a cheerfully sadistic game show watched across the world.

The core gameplay is simple. In the first battle, each turn you have a number of dice; slot a die into your sword to deal the die's number of damage to your opponent. Your other ability, Combat Roll, lets you reroll a die, and can be used three times per turn. So what do you do? Use Combat Roll to reroll until you get a high value - but don't get too greedy! - and deal the most damage you can. As you progress you will find equipment with other effects, like status effects, or chopping your dice into smaller values. That equipment might have conditions, like only accepting dice lower than 4, or a matching pair of dice. You manipulate the dice you are given for the best result each turn. The game is more interested in strategy and dice puzzles than luck, so losing very rarely feels like the game's fault. That simple, solid gameplay foundation means you never feel lost, even as the game departs further and further from what you know.

The six playable classes all have wildly different gameplay, thanks to their unique equipment and abilities - the Warrior has his Combat Roll, but the Thief can use enemies' equipment, for example. There are six levels per class, lasting around 20 minutes each: level 1 is a simple class introduction; levels 2 and 3 impose a bizarre condition, and you typically win by discovering that level's gimmick equipment; level 4 is level 1 with stronger enemies. Level 5, amazingly, takes place in a parallel universe where all the equipment you are familiar with is thrown out of the window - oh, and all the status effects work differently. Level 6 is more like a typical rogue-lite; it plays like level 1 but each floor, a random new rule is imposed which generally makes the game tougher for you. Level 6 gives the game the most replay value, as it is influenced by the equipment set you choose at the start, including some "hard mode" equipment. The final boss is a new kind of strategising you have never had to do previously. Two DLCs of about six levels each were made; Halloween Special is a series of head-scratching puzzles and Reunion is... yet another equipment overhaul! Barring a horrible difficulty spike in Witch level 4, which I navigated by abusing the ability to quit on the game over screen, the game is exceedingly casual and you can expect to breeze through many levels first try. For more challenge, you can go for all achievements, and you'll notice a few things you can attempt just for bragging rights, like the mighty Omnislash. I've completed all main levels and am satisfied for now, but I know that the game is so easy to pick up and play that I'll have no problems coming back and relearning it when I want more.

If I haven't convinced you how much this game should appeal to casual players, simply look at the presentation. The game loads in seconds and starts almost as quickly. A minimal number of huge UI elements mean everything you need is right in your face when you need it. Bright colours and chunky sprites abound in an art style I think of as Charlie and Lola meets Dungeons and Dragons. Every animation is super-satisfying, from the way your equipment slams into the enemy's face, to the way the wizard magicks his socks off and back on again. Every piece of equipment is explained intuitively in just a few words. You go first and can even see your enemy's equipment and play around it. There's virtually no ambiguity over rules and no chance of making an input error, unless you're rushing. My only criticism is that sometimes you need a lot of dice on screen, and as more and more dice appear they obstruct your input, so how to display many dice could have been rethought. Creator Terry Cavanagh has again joined forces with the mighty Chipzel, who has provided an OST of wall-to-wall earworms bursting with vigour and attitude (even the low-health sound is a good listen). Dialogue is almost always friendly and positive, with a clearly British bent and some good laughs to be had. You might notice a somewhat small roster of enemies, but it's good to get familiar with them, their equipment can vary and the class you play changes how scary they are to play against.

You can always count on Cavanagh to produce something brilliant, and Dicey Dungeons is one of his best. Exemplary game design, great balancing for casual gaming with some room for challenge, and a vibrant personality. I strongly recommend Dicey Dungeons to anyone after a solid time-killer, especially on Steam Deck or smartphone and even more if you have headphones.

Yakuza 0 is the prequel to SEGA's beloved character action RPG series, releasing after 5 mainline games. To say it's a hyper-macho, twist-filled, often moving journey in and around the world of organised crime in 1980s Japan barely covers half the game. It tries to be several games at the same time, and it's surprisingly good at it.

Chapter 1 is a linear tutorial providing a surface-level introduction to the main mechanics (and karaoke), while initiating the plot. Don't worry if it feels like an info dump; helpful notes on any subject can be accessed whenever. It ends after about 45 minutes, with two excellent battles and our hero Kazuma Kiryu's expulsion from the yakuza, giving him free rein of the city. At this point, the established tone promptly collapsed as I found my next mission: image-coaching a timid yanki band before their first live show.

The plot is sort of overshadowed by the wealth of side activities here. The play space is tiny for a RPG but has something new wherever you look. The host of minigames on offer includes multiple versions of analogue games and sports, reproduced retro SEGA games, and two B-plots around running businesses. No one would have thought to ask, but some of these have online play too. There are 200 or so substories; short, simple, fun quests, some of which based around minigames. You oscillate at your own pace between the light-hearted free roaming and the pretty serious main story, and it sounds like a bad idea to put the two together, but really they are palate cleansers for each other. I quickly got used to flipping from getting catfished at a telephone dating club, to discovering the evil nature of a key ally, to buying pornography for a young boy, and stayed completely invested whatever I was doing.

Success at almost any part of the game contributes to official completion. I had dreams of 100%ing it, but at this stage of my life I'm not prepared to learn the rules of mahjong to do that. 100% also demands some very dull tasks such as buying every item at each restaurant, or bumping into every single unmarked building to find the ones that grow your business. I like being encouraged to explore, but this was too much.

Kiryu is a fiercely moral idealist, so I still don't see what draws him back to the yakuza. His sullen thug persona melts away when he dives into even the stupidest activities with infectious gusto. It's a little tragic to glimpse the success he could have if he chose any other path in life. In a parallel story is our other protagonist, Goro Majima. Majima is very similar, except for being miles more charming and significantly cooler on every major dimension. His side of the game feels like a SEGA PR campaign to add a human side to the irrepressible lunatic fans are familiar with. Playing as Kiryu is perfectly fine, but after a taste of Majima's world, it sometimes feels a bit disappointing to go back.

Each protagonist has three main fighting styles, plus a separate armed style and one hidden style. Land light attacks to gather Heat, which you can retain for higher speed or spend on impressively violent, deceptively non-lethal Heat moves. You spend money to fill out each style's skill tree; you're unlikely to get rich enough to complete them all before the end of the story, even if you dawdle for ages like me. Difficulty can be changed freely, and you can mash your way through the game on Normal with a few upgrades if you so wish. If you're all about combat, a filled tree gives you lots of potential for creative, surreal violence in your fights, if you can remember all the conditions and button combinations. There is so much to combat, especially with weapons, but seeing it all demanded more time than I felt like spending. Beyond the main game there are also several difficult bonus battles to unlock throughout.

I'm running low on space now. The art is nicely evocative of the setting and every set-piece's direction wouldn't be out of place on a cinema screen. Male main characters tend to be modelled on their voice actors and their faces are strikingly lifelike. Not so much for female characters, who tend to be modelled on any of a small army of adult video actresses. Their titillating live-action content can be perused by dedicated explorers, which might make up for it. The four-hour OST doesn't have a single bad track; I especially like the 80s homages in the disco minigame. Except for the short-range pop-in even on high quality and some occasional flickering and stuttering, performance is excellent. The English localisation is on the whole very funny and immersive; I just wish it had covered minor lines of dialogue too.

You can feel the dedication in pretty much every aspect of Yakuza 0. The non-combat activities tie into each other often, so I recommend this for action fans if they're up for anything. After this fantastic introduction, I am now a confirmed fan of this surreal yet sincere series and eager to see where it goes.

Super Monkey Ball is a deceptively friendly-looking physics-based arcade series, in which you tilt the entire stage to guide your monkey to the goal, in a long line of short platforming challenges. Its seemingly unrestricted level design allows the team to push out hundreds upon hundreds of fun, distinctive, memorable levels, 300 of which are included here. Its openness to innovation has produced lots of novelty and variation over the years, but this doesn't imply quality, and in fact the series' high-quality games are few and far between. Banana Mania compiles the levels of the first three games, widely considered to be the franchise's peak, as well as adding extra content.

Hailing originally from the arcade machines, the games are intended to be difficult, and if you approach Banana Mania the way it seems to want you to, you're in for a rough time. Story mode, the first item in the game menu, is all levels from the story mode of SMB2. These levels are very, very eccentric and challenging, even by Monkey Ball standards, and might have you reaching for the refund button quickly. It was a bad decision to make this look like the starting game mode; if you're brand new to the franchise, start with the SMB1 Challenge Runs. They're a much better introduction to the game, despite a spiky difficulty curve. Some courses can run for many levels, so a quicksave feature would have been nice, seeing as SEGA weren't aiming for a straight port of the originals.

It looks and sounds a lot like the originals, but there are undeniable differences - don't sell your old copies just yet. It's a fairly minor point unless you're some kind of challenge runner, but the game's physics are less immediately responsive than the original's, so your old strategies might be harder to pull off. More importantly, SEGA have managed to scoop out some of the most fun aspects of the original games. The games' signature playable credits are gone, and the 3D cutscenes and dialogue of SMB2's story mode have been flattened into incomprehensible, screaming cartoons. The iconic original voiceover artist is alive and willing to record more lines, not that they're needed, yet he's nowhere to be heard and for whatever reason, a new voice has taken his place. Much of the soundtrack is new, and you unlock the option to use the original music, but no original voiceover. I didn't play the minigames, but the updates to their gameplay have not been well received.

I'm disappointed at the missing content, but the new content softens the blow a lot. The slow but free-moving camera can be a blessing in the more disorienting levels. Lives are gone, and several welcome rebalances have been made to some infuriating original levels, as well as several useful helper functions - including a gameplay-"breaking" jump ability - if you struggle. There are online leaderboards, though you have no hope of dominating those at this point, and the ability to race other players' ghosts. Extras can be bought with Points, which you can earn by collecting bananas and completing missions on each level. In the Digital Deluxe edition, you get to play not just as monkeys from across the series, but a few other SEGA characters - and consoles, strangely. I recommend these other SEGA properties as they don't have any annoying sounds to make, as they tumble off the stage, yet again. You can also customise the ball and clothing of your monkeys, if you feel like it, and take photos, not that there's ever really any time for that. The best bits of new content are the unlockable "modes", though this name is inaccurate. They're more like short sets of levels with alternate rules, such as traversing the course backwards or avoiding all bananas, and banana placement has been hand-tweaked to make this a challenge. DX mode contains all the new levels from Super Monkey Ball Deluxe. You have to have played quite a bit to unlock this, but its gameplay is some of the friendliest for new players. There's also a mode that lets you play the original unbalanced levels, though not as part of the level sets they came from.

Banana Mania is a bright, shiny, accessible, competent presentation and celebration of the classic Monkey Ball games, with fun new content and thoughtful new features. However, some open goals are missed, especially when it comes to the story and minigames, and so twenty years on, the originals still don't have a true replacement. What with the franchise's history of dud games, I think it would have been fair to expect a bit more. This game came about because of fan feedback, but SEGA should involve fans in the development of their re-releases too. However, this is a decent way to relive the magic, and if you start in the right place, it's an excellent introduction to the franchise for new players. It happens to be the best handheld SMB release by far as well. This probably isn't the start of a new SMB golden age, but with this entry, it's rolling in the right direction.

[No spoilers, but going in blind is best. For what it's worth I consider this a perfect game]

There's nothing like an ultra-artistic mind-warping indie puzzler. Games like Braid, The Bridge, Manifold Garden and Monument Valley provide a therapeutic change of pace from the hundreds of hours of action many games provide today. They're a chance to cleanse your brain, slow down, meditate, get immersed - and then get your brain turned completely inside out, and be left wondering how on earth mere mortals created what you've just played. Gorogoa is right at home among the above games, and might be just two hours long but makes the absolute best of that time.

The central gameplay mechanic is fascinating and unique, and as such I'll say very little about it. It's a new way to transform reality by changing your perspective on it, and just about every time you do it it's a revelation. It's an ideal complement to the story, as you use it to bounce a man around the eras of his past, Slaughterhouse-Five-style, colliding memories via symbols from across his life, so he can pick up what he needs to face his future. We can only hope that we will be able to do a similar thing when we need to. Impressively, there are no words in the game to tell you what to do. You learn everything you need to via the pictures and some UI prompts. You start off clicking around just to see what's possible, and before you know it the game has let go of your hand and is giving you puzzles. You could give this game to anyone and they would be at ease playing it. I do admit that Gorogoa generally feels more like an exploration game than a puzzle game. There are moments that require a bit of thinking, combining "real-world" logic with the fantastical mechanic, but you can't use logic to see how to progress everytime. You often just have to play with things until you find something new.

The key skill is remembering symbols and patterns to spot possible connections, and Gorogoa is absolutely full of those. If you can think of an architectural, artistic or religious motif, it's probably in here somewhere, and somehow, none of it clashes. What you get is like a gorgeous hand-drawn animated comic with not a dud panel in sight, bathing you in aesthetic history without it taking over the screen. The soundtrack is in perfect harmony as well. At any point the music is a combination of up to four different ambient pieces. I didn't realize this at the time, but I took away the sense of a soundtrack that fit every moment of play. The game is seamless even on a technical level; I am still impressed that I didn't spot a single hiccup in what struck me as a very complex game to make. The icing on the cake is level design that didn't have me even consider using a walkthrough, and putting all this together got me wondering what I wondered in the first paragraph.

The game's over for me, but I'm still thinking about it. As mentioned, there are no words, so exposition is limited, and you'll need to draw your own conclusions. At just two hours long, maybe playing it all again is the best way to do that, and it's such a great experience that would be no problem at all for me. If you're looking for something new - or maybe want to try playing something perfect - Gorogoa certainly provides.

For about 8 years, The Stanley Parable has stood uncontested as champion of its admittedly specific field of comedic interactive exploration of game design via self-aware walking simulator. It's my favourite walking sim in general, too. If any game was going to surpass it, it probably could only be its successor. To be completely clear, the Ultra Deluxe edition is not a simple remaster; this game essentially contains the first Steam game plus an amount of new content at least as large as that. Playing this version after the previous game, I got the same feeling as when I played the previous game for the first time.

Stanley is Employee 427 at an unnamed office, with the comically simple job of pressing the buttons he is ordered to via his computer screen - not far off the job of a video game player. One day, Stanley realises he's stopped receiving orders. For a brief moment, the forces controlling his every move have disappeared. Suddenly, his choices are down to him - down to you. What will Stanley do next? The Narrator of the story, played by British actor Kevan Brighting on top form, holds the key to Stanley's freedom, if you're willing to play by his rules. The Narrator reacts to your behaviour by improvising the story into a variety of surreal conclusions, generally very funny, often philosphical, and with an unexpectedly wide emotional range.

Despite having played the original, the game had me go through some of the original content to start off. This is a great opportunity to revisit some of your favourite endings, but a few new ones have also been slipped into the original gameplay. The whole game has been ported from Source to Unity for multi-platform support but the gameplay is precisely the same as you remember. Unfortunately this means the removal of a couple of Steam-specific jokes, but their replacements are great. The fixes and improvements for various audio and visuals are very welcome too - I thought a few textures still needed some touching up, but this wasn't a problem for the new content. Another improvement for a modern edition is a modern accessibility menu with damn near every feature you could think of for this game - and naturally, even this is mined for comedy.

It's hard to talk about Ultra Deluxe without spoiling things; if you want to go in completely blind, which I recommend, I can just refer you to my review of the original game and say that all the relevant compliments apply here too. Having got the trials and tribulations of creating a game off his chest, our Narrator turns his loquacious disembodied tones to the aftermath - after eight years of relative silence, he's most interested in wallowing in the public reaction to the original, and how to appease the subset of the audience that he didn't manage to win over. In a few linear, longer sequences (the lack of quicksave cost me crucial sleep time on work nights), a celebratory yet self-deprecating post-mortem is delivered, and the Narrator considers the crutches that today's Gamer Audience demands. These ideas develop into a "remix" of the original gameplay, where familiar journeys have new destinations. It should go without saying that this is all very funny throughout, though there were several interactions where I was hoping to get a response from the Narrator, but didn't. Perhaps I'm just a baby who expects the adult to keep doing funny things all the time in response to me, but I'm yet to find an ending telling me so.

As well as the major content plenty of new Easter eggs and sort-of-endings are heaped on, some straightforward references to other media, others slightly combative responses to player feedback from the Steam-only game. It would be extremely difficult to discover all these little bits of content on your own, so when you feel "done" with the game, I highly recommend looking up this hidden content so you don't miss out. The gift doesn't stop giving there; there is plenty more goodness to be found in the amazing new content in the two-hour original soundtrack, the old and new trailers, the original Half-Life 2 mod, the website, the Steam-only game, its demo (which is a separate experience, and was customised for the various YouTubers who played it), the developers' social media, and beyond. The Stanley Parable is no mere game; it's a lifestyle at this point - dare I say, perhaps even a metaverse.

It's actually a very substantial game, but I couldn't help feeling sad at how short Ultra Deluxe felt by the time I'd seen all the main content. Of course, that's better than it outstaying its welcome, but I think at least for a new player, or anyone committing to the "Super Go Outside" achievement and coming back to this, this will feel like a full game. I recommend this to anyone looking for surprising gameplay, wide-ranging humour or artistic insight, anyone who cares even slightly about interactive storytelling, and anyone who saw and enjoyed any moment of it, because it's just so consistently good.

Memed, feared, worshipped, endlessly dissected and discussed, rich with content and utterly captivating, my reviews are deservedly a major influence in gaming culture. That's why it's about time I reviewed a game from the Souls series, which I admit that first sentence was actually about. As it was cheap at the time I thought I'd make this my first "Souls-like", and it consumed my imagination so completely while I played that I could almost hear all the others rushing towards the top of my backlog.

Your objective is to bring the legendary Lords of Cinder back to their thrones, that they may fuel a great flame that can restore the world. Your journey is an intense whistle-stop tour of the crumbling core of that world, slaying or fleeing impressively grisly foes as you hunt each Lord through gorgeous, warped Gothic vistas and desperately tense, claustrophobic labyrinths. A glorious, thrilling orchestral soundtrack complements the set pieces, but the only music you need otherwise is the screaming of your enemies and you. The sound here is a double-edged sword; audio cues are so useful I think hearing-impaired players are at a major disadvantage, yet certain sound effects are ear-splitting and can't be adjusted separately. The technical state is a bit disappointing too. Some surfaces look unrealistically shiny, enemies often get tangled up in their navmeshes, and sometimes they forget to move from their starting spots or even spawn. My least favourite issue was a tendency for the game to randomly "mini-hang", on a setup that should have had no problem running it.

Despite being the last game in the series, it's a perfectly fine entry point. Some amusingly terse messages in the tutorial area take you through the core actions. The next few areas then implicitly teach you big secrets of successful play, such as using your environment, choosing your battles, exploiting any opportunities handed to you, and playing with unwavering caution. Useful items, "hidden" everywhere, will dial up your power level quickly. Defeating enemies and selling items earns you souls, which you can use as experience or currency. Resting at bonfires restores you, as well as nearly everything else, to perfect health. Depressing as this sounds, it means you can use bonfires to practise on harder enemies until you can take them down cleanly - and by that time you can probably afford a new upgrade to accompany your increased skill.

The experience of the recommended starter build, a standard sword-and-shield knight, is reasonably difficult, mostly because of being punishing. Combat is very simple to execute; you can rely on your starting equipment and light attack for most of the game, and a reasonably well-timed roll dodges nearly anything. Take the time to explore and fight carefully, and you really won't struggle much, but if you let your guard down, expect to be pounced on with gleeful brutality. Other builds are trickier as there are more factors to think about, but seem just as fun to play. Two rare mechanics in the game can get you killed more or less instantly; playing safely around them grinds the pace to a halt. Luckily, it normally remembers to be fun as well as tense. There's a very, very healthy variety of items you can use, from commemorative weapons crafted from bosses' souls (lots of fun, but several could have used a splash more fanservice), to the horrendous Calamity Ring (if you're feeling too comfortable Dark Souls 3 can provide you plenty of rope). It might be infamously difficult, but a lot of that is up to you.

Online features are worked into the story and DS3 is very excited for you to use them. Covenants provide cooperative and competitive multiplayer objectives, though if someone wants to compete you don't get much of a say in it. You can find distracting ghostly recordings of other players' actions, and messages left by other players via a fridge magnet-style system (for better or worse). I'd have more to say had server security issues not kept me offline the whole time. Even offline, you can read a few built-in messages, fight hostile NPCs and summon friendly ones (this trivialised my boss fight when I tried it).

DS3's difficulty can be overstated but its obscurity cannot. Finding every detail on your own would take months, and even then, some things are simply unexplained. Some of the best content is found in difficult or unintuitive ways, and some questlines can be easily ended by accident. I don't know how much of that is part of the intention to inspire community discovery, or just the game being bad at conveying information. Either way, I don't see any shame in reading around online while playing.

In terms of pure adrenaline and fun, there's no harm in starting here, though if lore matters to you, or even just knowing why things that happen are significant, play DS1 first. I absolutely recommend DS3 to anyone looking for dark fantasy, epic, engrossing gameplay and exciting, rewarding challenge.

Stanley is an employee at an unnamed office, with the comically simple job of pressing the buttons he is ordered to via his computer screen. In that sense, his life isn't much different to that of a video game player, making you the perfect candidate to be him (and/or not be him, as the Steam description claims). One day, Stanley realises he's stopped receiving orders. For a brief moment, the forces controlling his every move have disappeared. What will Stanley do next?

Itching to find out is the story's Narrator, whose luxurious purring voice steps in to try and tell you which buttons to press now. He holds the key to Stanley's freedom; all you have to do is play out the story as he narrates it. I hope it's an open secret by now, though, that playing along is mostly optional, and silently discouraged. Spend too long admiring scenery and the Narrator will grumblingly assure you that there's nothing to see. Disobey any narration and you start down the road of any of 19 different branching paths, as the Narrator reacts to your behaviour by dramatically reshaping the story. He can play any part, from cold-hearted antagonist to well-intentioned supporter. He may even criticise the player directly (The Stanley Parable isn't interested in gaming trivia like inventory systems, the ability to jump, or the fourth wall). This is because, the way I see it, the Narrator is a game developer, and each interaction in the game has something to say about the cat-herding activity of game design, and possibly more deeply about culture, storytelling and personal agency in general. Where many developers would convey this through the medium of pretentious navel-gazing, here it's all couched in so much quality humour and spectacle that the game is simply entertaining on whatever level you want to engage with it.

This is easily one of the funniest games in my Steam library. I am essentially a captive audience for anything this team creates in the future. So much game humour leans on unoriginal references and puns, so it's very refreshing for a team to spin such consistently great comedy from its own premise. On rare occasions, the humorous presentation can work against the game a bit. Some more abrupt endings struck me as unpolished content on the developers' part more than jokes. For these to be the only jokes that don't land in the entire game is nevertheless a stunning achievement. The same comic voice can be found in Crows Crows Crows' newsletter, social media and hilariously meta promotional videos for the game, and will probably live on as straight forward quotes with no added comedic value in YouTube comment sections forever.

Unlike the rather controlling Narrator, the actual game's actual developers know that, as frustrating as it may be, the correct response to natural human curiosity is not to stifle it, but to indulge it. The explicit binary choices presented to you are the bulk of the interactivity but some of the best content is gated off to only the most determined players. When you think you've found every ending and Easter egg, you probably haven't, so be sure to look up the rest online at some point because they are not to be missed. That said, I don't think players should aim to see all the endings in one go and be done with it. This mindset commodifies the endings and makes them harder to appreciate - plus by the end of my time with it, 19 branches actually felt like a rather small number. It's best to savour this game; perhaps take the advice of its notorious "Go Outside" achievement and put off playing half the game for five years (which, it turns out, is not long enough to forget most of the events and experience the game like new).

The Stanley Parable retains some of the frugal spirit of the original 2011 mod for Half-Life 2, but thankfully uses brand new assets, stamping a unique visual identity onto the concept and turning that barren office into a gaming icon. The vacant setting softens the ground so that you're intrigued when you notice something out of place, or bowled over when something really surprising happens. Satirical corporate nonsense and extra dialogue scattered all over are very tempting to find and read, though you risk wrecking the pacing for yourself. The voice acting is addictive to listen to and I was happy to pay that price to fully hear every line I came across. The original soundtrack is flawless, despite the game sort of pretending to be low-budget.

I've described everything very vaguely in this review to avoid spoiling anything major. I have to admit that its style is bound to put some people off, but give it a go for one playthrough and you'll know if it's for you. I say this forensically self-aware meta-game is REQUIRED READING for anyone remotedly interested in interactive storytelling and an easy recommendation even if you just want a toy to make you laugh. Games have played with similar ideas before and since, but none hit all the notes like The Stanley Parable.