Recent reviews by Tyrtul

Lovely little game. Adorable art and music. It feels good to support what is clearly a small development studio. This gradually ramps up in complexity, and has enough silliness and charm to keep you interested. I would wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone looking for a cozy game.

The Cupboard and Drawers DLC is fantastic, and I think those were some of my favourites. Seeing Stars, on the other hand, has a few good tidies but a lot of really obscure stuff. A couple times I would be literally staring at the solution and didn't understand why it was a valid solve. There is one puzzle that requires you do complete all three solutions in a single session, which I didn't like and which confused me when the puzzle seemed to "reset" after I solved it with no indication that I was supposed to continue.

I decided to go for all achievements -- don't be like me. The Daily Tidy mode, while initially a nice re-implementation of some puzzles from the base game, quickly gets old and there's not enough variety here. I feel like I got the "sort the buttons" puzzle way too many times, and sometimes two days in a row. The achievement for reaching a 30-day streak is fine, the achievement for completing 100 daily tidies is way too many.

Fun, stylish little tower defense. Filling out the upgrade tree is fun, and some of the late game "limited budget" challenges are tricky and enjoyable. The graphics are clean and cute and there are a lot of nice UX touches to make the game feel smooth. Not much to complain about here, especially for the price.

Bad but not in a "good bad" way. Just not that fun.

Picked this up after seeing some Insta ads and laughing at it. But it's just meh. The menus are clunky and I felt like after seeing three or four enemies I kind of got the gist. Having to restart an entire level after falling off a plank due to the wonky controls or a spinning platform didn't do it for me.

This would be funny for like three or four dollars but ten is a bit much.

A true masterpiece. This is such a good time. A huge world to explore with many secrets and upgrades everywhere. Super tight controls and fun combat. There is so much to like here.

This has a Dark Souls vibe in its boss encounters and healing system, as well as the temporary loss of currency on death. Like in Dark Souls, some boss encounters appear "impossible" at first but can truly be mastered with practice. It's such a satisfying feeling to go from feeling completely overwhelmed by a boss encounter to being able to easily complete it. There's tons of that in Hollow Knight.

Hearing that Silksong was coming out, I decided to revisit this. In the past I had played through right until the final boss and stopped. This time I did everything, including the DLCs and all achievements. Really happy I did.

Not much to say here that hasn't been said (aside from maybe play the remastered version). DS1 is an absolute classic. It's not perfect but the bones of the entire Souls franchise are right here. It's a tough game, but there's almost always a way to beat fights that at first seem impossible.

The first half is a masterclass in design and worldbuilding. The latter half falls off a bit, with some areas that were clearly rushed and others that are just annoying.

The core experience of Dark Souls is hitting a wall, feeling like something is impossible to beat, and then beating it with persistence. Becoming good at combat in these games is such a good feeling. Somehow they manage to recreate that experience over and over.

Play it!

A classic! I haven't played the others yet but this gets points for being the original "looter shooter". It's showing its age a little and doesn't really work properly as a solo player. Enemy AI is pretty primitive. Ranged enemies run around aimlessly and shoot at you, and melee enemies just mindlessly run towards you. There's also not much story here and most of the characters are pretty annoying.

But for all its faults, there is no feeling quite like cracking open a chest to reveal a game-changing weapon. Gunplay is pretty good for a game this old, and the power fantasy of finding some completely cracked drop is thrilling.

There are a bunch of DLCs but they're mostly more of the same. DO NOT go for 100% completion here as this has some of the stupidest achievements of all time. In the Claptrap DLC, you need to farm dozens of items with a minuscule drop rate from enemies that don't even appear that much. And the Underdome DLC is just a slog fest of wave after wave of the same boring enemies for literal hours.

Worth a look if you want to experience the origin of this series. But get the Enhanced edition, as this one doesn't have FOV options.

Great, but not as good as the first one. Still one of the best looter shooters available right now. Like the first game, there is tons to do. A competent story campaign which can easily be played single-player is supported by a nearly endless amount of endgame content and fun buildcrafting.

Building up the settlements is fun but ultimately pointless. And the story isn't quite as good as in the first. The stakes seem lower. In the first game, there is constant tension as people are trapped in a city during a pandemic. In this one, people are settling in, establishing communities, and the world is warm and green. The story has also kind of gone off the rails in recent years.

The game is very buggy. There are ongoing issues with player stashes appearing empty. There are difficulty modifiers called directives which are supposed to let you adjust the world to your preference, but they activate and deactivate randomly, sometimes toggling annoying features like limited ammo or extremely punishing health penalties. Adjustable difficulty is great, but having modifiers enabled that you specifically avoided is awful.

The campaign seems to have a nice difficulty curve but recent content drops seem to be more reliant on annoyance-based encounters. It's simply not fun to have to do some stupid task in a room while an invincible tank enemy who can two-shot you chases you around. Enemies frequently spawn behind or directly on top of you, which also feels terrible.

That said, there's a lot to like here. A million collectables, a fun gear game, and a decent amount of player expression and customisation. And the slow endgame progression systems of SHD levels and expertise are excellent. I feel like other looter shooters could learn a lot from this one.

If I had a nickel for every time I picked up a key and got locked in a room while annoying enemies spawned to unremarkable heavy metal music, I might not feel so bad about spending money on this game.

It's a passable boomer shooter with a neat art style, which is about the only thing going for it. The first perhaps two worlds are enjoyable, and then it overstays its welcome a bit. It's just too long and tedious without enough variety to keep things interesting. I got really bored by the latter half, lowered the difficulty, and started running past encounters whenever I could. The game is stingy on ammo which encourages you to switch weapons often, but none of them feel particularly good to use.

Semi-interesting level design devolves in the last acts to annoying mazes and key hunts, with some inexplicable awkward platforming thrown in. There's even an (awful) underwater level and a mine cart ride.

The whole thing also has a sort of uncanny valley feel to it, from awkwardly written lore notes (what is "fish cheduness"?) to weird voice acting. Both of the voiced protagonists sound like they just learned what "talking" was within the last week and are still getting used to it.

Not a terrible way to spend a few hours, but only if it's on deep sale and you like this genre.

Pro tip: One of the protagonists is a priest, and the other one can smoke weed in combat in order to slow time. There's really only one right choice.

The Division is a masterpiece. I got into it late but I much prefer it to the sequel.

The vibes in this game are off the charts. Exploring New York is fun and there is a ton of story content while you level your character. Gearing your character really evolves once you reach max level and there is a good variety of weapons and styles that are viable.

The graphics are fantastic. Take notice of reflections in puddles, of snow blowing across the street. They've captured the feeling of an abandoned city really well.

Not as many people play the game these days. Matchmaking for missions is tough and the Dark Zone can feel abandoned. But it's a solid enough solo experience.

I stayed for the Survival mode, which is a DLC that adds an incredible extraction style game mode with light survival mechanics. Scavenge new gear, food, and medicine as you make your way through the city in a blizzard. This game mode alone is worth the price of the entire game and I hope they bring something like it to the sequel.

"Generico 64"

This is a passable, kid-safe platformer heavily inspired by Mario 64. It's good for a few hours and, to its credit, has a ton of different activities and collectables to find. It's fun to complete the initial few worlds and then go back with more tools and find the last few things you missed. There is not really any story worth mentioning.

The biggest issue here is hit detection, and it's so bad that it's often best just to flat-out avoid all enemies because you never know if you'll take damage when jumping on them or rolling into them. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Sometimes a stunned enemy will kill you somehow. This is especially glaring in the New Game+ mode where you can only take a single hit. This goes for some flame traps as well, often they can hit you when it really seems like they shouldn't have.