Recent reviews by Immersturm

This is absolutely a must-play for anyone who likes point-and-click adventure/puzzle games. The writing is stellar, the voice acting is spot-on, and the puzzles are, for the most part, extremely satisfying. There were one or two occasions where I found myself grinding my teeth in frustration, as the game loves giving out red herring solutions, but otherwise I had an absolute blast, and I certainly have no qualms recommending it.

I genuinely don't know what to do or say right now. Finishing the game left me in a daze. My heart hurts. The writing, the voice acting, the soundtrack, it's all perfect, but the game is over now. I can never experience it for the first time ever again. It's an awful feeling, knowing that. Still, I don't think I would've done anything differently, and I wouldn't trade my time with the game away for anything else. My experience with the game was mine, and that's important.

Get this game, go in blind, have your own experience.

Let's talk about In Sound Mind.

This is an Indie game, and, to a certain extent, it shows. In some cases, the voice acting can be a little bit off, there are places where the story can feel just a tad corny, and the gameplay, while solid, isn't anything particularly revolutionary and has a few spots where it could use a bit of polish. It's difficult to shake the feeling that what you're playing isn't a professional video game, but instead the end result of a game design doctorate student's master thesis project... but not just any student, either. This student is the one who's the most driven and talented one in the class, the one who, after presenting their work, you feel bad for whoever's coming up next.

Eventually, I got past that feeling. It's a game that knows not to take itself seriously at some points - interacting with a guitar in-game will play a cover of one of The Living Tombstone's songs, after all. Even so, it's very sensitive to mental health topics, and it offers a story that might not win any Oscars, but builds to a raw, vulnerable, heartfelt crescendo that would scare away many triple-A studios. I almost cried at the ending, and I can't say that about a lot of games.

I don't know what the developers are planning next. Whatever it is, I'm hoping they at least take a day or two to pat themselves on the back. Whatever problems this game might have, they're ultimately inconsequential. This is a game I can recommend wholeheartedly, a roughly ten-hour action-psychological-horror-thriller with metroidvania elements thrown in for good measure. The fact that this small indie team created something that I'd consider on-par with a big-budget creation like Resident Evil Village is no small accomplishment, and I hope the developers are proud of themselves. I know I am, and I look forward to seeing whatever they make next.

There are two things to dislike about Journey.

1. It's short.

2. The hammers you'll need to "modify" your memory so you can forget and replay it are both expensive and imperfect in their application.

That's it. That's literally it. This isn't some run-of-the-mill good video game. This is an artistic triumph on every conceivable level. This game is important, and everyone should have the opportunity to play it at least once.

Rather than bore you with a single meme review, I'll go ahead and dump them all.

ahem

1. I feel bad for Sonic the Hedgehog fans. For the first time in a good long while, they've got a great game, and it isn't even in their franchise.

2. Pizza Tower was created by a cadre of elite NASA scientists, with one goal in mind: to create the most pizza game ever. They succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

3. Unlike Netflix's Arcane, you can actually enjoy the game the future animated series (which will come soon, guaranteed) is based on.

4. The studio is called Tour De Pizza. That's a meme all on its own.

5. Spotify doesn't have the Pizza Tower soundtrack yet. I would say that it's because they have no taste, but they're probably too busy scraping the pizzas off of their headquarters. I'd take the time to complain about this more and come up with more memes, but I am too busy launching pizzas at Spotify's headquarters.

Do I enjoy Darktide? Yes.

Am I going to continue to play Darktide? Probably.

Do I recommend you pick up Darktide? No.

Darktide was supposed to be a natural evolution of Fatshark's previously-established formulas, where they learned from their mistakes in Vermintide 1 and 2. What we received is a game that learned from some of those mistakes, but is in many ways less progressive or technically sound than Vermintide 1.

You now have the ability to mantle over certain platforms - good! ...but your mobility is still crummy, and you take fall damage for anything higher than a thick rug. Boo.

You can create your own character to play as - good! ...but the number of background options you have mean little, and every character comes out feeling a little bland, as opposed to the Ubersreik 5 (or 4, it doesn't matter) which had distinct personalities to bounce off of each other. Oh, and you have 4 classes to choose from, a major step down from Vermintide 2 (15 classes at launch) or Vermintide 1 (5 classes at launch). Boo.

You get a ton of cool weapons from the 40K universe, and ranged combat plays more of a role in this game than in Vermintide 1 and 2 - good! ...but there is no crafting system to speak of. That means that in order for you to receive a new weapon, you need to go to the shop and hope that they have the weapon you're looking for in stock - which rotates every hour or so. Translation: you level up and unlock a weapon, and you can't use it because the shop doesn't have it. Boo.

The missions have new modifiers and rotate around to keep things from getting stale - good! ...but there's only 5-6 of them, with the same recycled objectives. The lack of scripted events also means that none of them are as distinct or epic as anything from Vermintide 1 or 2. Boo.

I could go on about how the hub area is bland and underutilized, how so many features remain listed as "coming soon," how you need to level up to unlock targets in the training room, or how the game launched with a fully-functioning microtransaction store. Instead, I'll just sum up with this: when you're in a mission (and don't randomly disconnect due to random server errors), the game is genuinely fun. The combat feels great, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the scenery is absolutely gorgeous to behold. The problem is that all the systems surrounding and supporting the missions are either half-baked or missing entirely.

Given Fatshark's past performance and development cycle (which I would generously describe as "glacial"), it'll be a long while before we see substantial, genuine improvements. Whenever that happens, I'll probably change this to a positive review. Until then, I guess I'll just wish that this game had a few months more of development time.

What is Creaks? Well, it's a puzzle game. It isn't revolutionary. It isn't infinitely replayable. It isn't particularly difficult. But here's the thing: it isn't pretending like it is any of those things. What you have here is exactly what's on the box... namely a charming, 5-6 hour adventure to a world hidden behind your wallpaper. It's the perfect example of a 7-8/10 game, so if you have some cash burning a hole in your pocket, this might be worth a look.

Let's make one thing clear: I have no problem recommending Elden Ring. It's a gorgeous, beautifully-designed game, with a world chock-full of secrets that begs to be explored in-depth. However, I can't just recommend it flatly. I need to provide forewarning, or at least an explanation as to why it might not be the game for you.

In short: it's a matter of balancing and replayability.

Enemies in Elden Ring are tough - VERY tough. Even standard foes can potentially burn through your health bar fairly easily. Bosses will kill you outright in 2-3 hits, and their combos start at 3 attacks minimum, and the first hit will probably stun you so the second one is a near-guarantee hit. This is compounded by the fact that the AI is reading your inputs. You're not just getting randomly attacked while you're trying to heal, the enemies are waiting for you to try to heal before smacking you down. Add in the fact that most bosses (and more than a few standard enemies) both are extremely quick and possess arena-wide area-of-effect attacks, and you've got a recipe for a game that very much erodes the idea of FromSoftware's formula of "tough but fair" gameplay.

The end result is a game that's at odds with itself. With dozens of weapons, weapon skills, spells, armor sets, talismans, and spirit ashes, Elden Ring should be a veritable wonderland of experimentation, with no two characters sharing the exact same build. And yet, because the bosses are so difficult, and the weapons that are effective against them are so good, everyone winds up getting pigeonholed into using roughly the same items and having the same stats. Yes, the bleeding katana with the mimic tear and the kamehameha laser are all well and good, but not if it means that there isn't any place for my bladed pizza wheel to feel useful, let alone effective. Also, remember that anything less than 60 Vigor will ensure that bosses can (and will) kill you outright in a single blow.

Then there's the added issue of going back for another run. New Game + mode is nothing new, but the game takes away a LOT of your resources in the process. Your vendor unlocks - the ones you tracked down in the wilderness and delved into dungeons to acquire - are lost when you start again. Moreover, so much of the game's joy is derived from exploring/unlocking the map and taking the plunge into the unknown, but the map stays unlocked, along with all its landmarks. Sure, it's fun to visit the spots that once gave you so much trouble as a higher level so you can steamroll that standard knight who killed you twenty times before you finally got him, but that only stays fun for so long. Not to mention the part where the damage scaling on enemies and bosses feels off (see above).

In closing, yes, Elden Ring is a great game. It's in a league all its own and it absolutely earns its place as one of the greatest open-world games of all time (at least in my opinion). It just suffers from some balancing issues that I don't see being reconciled anytime soon - the problems are too interwoven with the game's core. I recommend checking it out, but I definitely wouldn't blame anyone for choosing to put it down out of frustration.

It's funny, you know? It's been years and years since I've last played Our Darker Purpose. I don't know why I'm only just posting this review now of all times. Maybe it's nostalgia. I just started thinking about it again, trawled through the soundtrack, combed through the wiki, and just like that I was back in the Edgewood Home for Lost Children.

This game is difficult. In some cases, I would even say it's unfair. But it's also worth your time. The art style is gorgeous, the writing is top-notch, and the gameplay is a loop that had me always saying "I can make it - just one more run." It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I would still argue that this is an overlooked and underappreciated gem in the roguelike genre.

I wish I knew what became of the developers - this is the first and only game created by Avidly Wild Games, and they're otherwise completely untraceable. Are they still out there, creating unsung gems? Are they well? Are they happy? I hope so, because this game they've made is very near and very dear to my heart.

I don't think it's possible to understate just how much "game" there is to Divinity: Original Sin 2. It's almost overwhelming at times. What we're dealing with is a game with about as much depth as an extremely well-written and very fleshed-out novel. Virtually every character you meet has a story, a side quest, something to say, something to do. The world is so full of secrets and mysteries you won't ever uncover them all in a single campaign, or even three. Storylines begin, intersect, and end in a manner less like a tree and more like a spider's web. It isn't perfect and can be understandably frustrating at times, but this game is absolutely worth it.