Recent reviews by Eufuu

After slogging through endless virtual gaming worlds, each offering an endless amount of content with no end of sight, in a landscape where hours played seems to be an important metric of value, I stopped and wondered what would have happened if a game studio decided to put in all of their efforts in delivering a focused experience telling a cohesive story regardless of its intended length - the answer is The Last of Us.

Don't get me wrong, with an ever inflating cost of goods and games, it is important that a player feels justified in their purchasing decision, and it is a tall order to ask someone to shell out 60 € for a 9 year old game, but I hope my review convinces you that this game can provide such value if you know what to expect. Besides the main campaign, the game also features a ton of customisation options, challenge modes, and NG+ which might be enough for some players who want a little bit more than just the main story, but I invite you to try and set your prejudice aside and allow a 15 hour game to impress you on the merit of its quality, not quantity.

A lot of people might have found out about this game by hearing about the television show, and while that might be the perfect way to consume the story for you, if you're an experienced gamer, I believe that playing the game and choosing the Survivor difficulty is the definitive way to immerse yourself into the cruel world of The Last of Us. If you are a little scared to press that button, I believe that is a good sign that you are about to have an unforgettable experience.

From the first scene, you will be treated to a visual and aural feast. Each step, bullet sound, or a clicker's groan is delivered in the highest fidelity. Combined with some of the best facial animations, it is easy to forget that you're just playing a game and not watching a show, with transitions smoothly going from cutscene to gameplay. The most jarring tell that I was playing a game was whenever I'd experience any kind of glitch, as it would momentarily remind me that we are playing a simulated world, not a real one. Sadly, I have to report, that the game, in its current state, presented a lot of such moments, and despite a powerful PC, there were many times where it struggled to run it, which felt particularly damning here as the game favours realism over many of its other aspects. There's a certain smoothness that permeates the game, and once the illusion of it is lacerated, a very unpleasant dissonance is introduced.

The realism is also a bit dampened by the game's gratuitous nature, bordering on comical and even superhero-like at times. While there's some gameplay and narrative build-up behind this decision, it felt odd to engage with the more brutal nature of surviving in a zombie apocalypse. Even on Survivor, I still felt too powerful at times, and the times I didn't were an exercise in frustration as I kept replaying the same deterministic challenging scene over and over again until I eventually got lucky or I had figured out a way to take advantage of the game's mechanics. Despite them being fun to engage with, the most miserable time I had with the game was in those moments, when the illusion of reality is shattered and the game becomes more gamefied and reliant on its mechanical difficulty. Since the game oscillates between tense set-pieces and periods of relaxation, it feels hard to empathise with its most tender moments after you've just tried to pass the same obstacle of guards for the 14th time.

Despite these shortcomings, Naughty Dog excels in all other important areas. The world is meticulously detailed with each location feeling distinct. Every setting feels like stepping into a tangible place, marked by a passage of time that is consistent with the game's post-apocalyptic premise. The scattered posters and notes you stumble upon during your journey add character to the meta-narrative, particularly when Joel and Ellie both respond to them from their unique perspectives. Every footprint in the snow and each ray of meticulously placed light is an imprint of the soul that the game's developers poured into these amazing sceneries.

This is further bolstered by allowing the player to interact with the world in many different, logical ways. Often times, I've felt like games unnecessarily limited me to the option it wanted me to take. By a stroke of luck or because of how it was designed, I never felt this way here outside of a few occurrences. Choosing to fight, sneak, or run away all felt like legitimate options that I took advantage of depending on how the situation unfolded in front of me. Deliberating and picking the best one felt rational to me and I never felt like I should have handled it differently than how it played out. I simply did the best I could in any given situation and often, that was enough.

The goal of The Last of Us is to survive, to gather focus and make small steps forward. Each hardship was a reminder of our character's fates. To find the beauty and meaning in an otherwise ruined world. To me, The Last of Us is a game of hope, that no matter how fast the world may turn, there'll always be a moment to slow down and experience bliss. All we have to do is fight for it.

How do we escape our past? The passage of time makes sure that with each subsequent moment, a tick blurs the edge between now and what was. But the mass remains, a vague dulled out shape looms over our ability to peer beyond it. The incessant marching proves itself a rhythmic kind of opium, and then we stop. We realise that more distance can not be created and that the only thing bonding us back are superstitions and anxiety.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a personal story of a girl trying to sever and understand the fetters that hold her captive. It transcends these goals and manages to portray several perspectives and switch moods so effectively that you will, in its meager 2 hour runtime, feel like you've spent a lifetime with a family you've never met.

Their stories are filled with genuine affection and spirit, voiced masterfully and presented with a pensive flair. A sheer amount of creative ideas on display exist only as highlights of beautiful memories, moments in time, shown through the perspective of many of its characters. The willingness to spend so much time on developing something that most will only experience for minutes, if not seconds, is a testament to how developers want you to feel about what you will experience.

After finishing I looked in the mirror of the past, grateful that the sheer silly stupidity of humanity exists and that we are able to portray it so delicately. A game dies not when players stop interacting with it, but once its emotional effects cease its hold over humans left alive. In my humble opinion, What Remains of Edith Finch will live on as long as computers beat, a testament to the human ability to hold on, to relive our memories and remain prisoners of their beautiful cage. Living is remembering.

So remember.

You wake up in a world different to your own and the first thing you notice is a blister of light far above you in the celestial skies. As you continue to gaze you see stars upon stars, giant planets and a Sun far above you. You get up, find your way to a derelict, yet cozy, ship and signal to your thrusters that an adventure is about to begin. You are in the Outer Wilds, a solar system hand-crafted by a passionate team who has tailored this giant playground to specifically emphasise exploration and discovery.

The game is reminiscent of a giant escape room on a galactic scale. Not only are the clues and the story bits scattered throughout the planets, but it is all connected by an overarching narrative told through writings of an advanced ancient civilisation called the Nomai. And it is awe-inspiring. Each first visit to a planet will leave you stunned as you wonder what is next; while fantastical in its design, the world doesn't feel too different from our own, almost like it would be possible that we could explore these planets if we were in an alternate dimension where our evolution decided to venture off into a different branch (.. and if we were governed by physics where you can fly around a galaxy in a wooden ship or get sucked into a black hole without major repercussions).

But as awe-inspiring it is, space is perilous and there are a myriad of ways of how the players can fatally injure themselves. Some ways are sillier than others, such as forgetting to put on your space suit before you venture off into the vacuum of space and your lungs crumple upon themselves. Others, much more cinematic, I convince myself as I locate the Sun and launch myself straight into the center of the Hydrogen giant.

The Sun provides a nice center which you can use to orient yourself as even though Outer Wilds is not a giant solar system, it is big enough to sometimes feel overwhelming. After about a dozen hours is where some of the magic may begin to fade, as it did for me. As you become acclimated and familiar with the systems in place, the story began to take over my attention and motivation to continue exploring. But nebulous puzzles with only one intended solution don't go hand-in-hand when you're trying to just progress in the narrative which did lead me to become impatient. It felt like the game was trying to withhold something from me, as if it was trying to stop me from experiencing what I deemed most interesting at the time. This felt frustrating and I did look up some puzzle answers just for the sake of expediting the process. There's a lesson to be learned here and Outer Wilds provides enough self-reflection for each individual to find their own introspective takeaway. For me it was definitely patience as I've stepped into a terrible habit of looking up things before I had the chance to explore and experience them myself. Sometimes, it is better to be lost with your compass turning than to have it point you in the wrong direction.

The DLC, Echoes of the Eye, functions as a stand-alone expansion which can largely be enjoyed even without the base game (even though I do suggest you play through it first just to get used to how the game wants you to approach its puzzles and story). It's a fresh twist and it's not just more of the same, but it takes concepts and ideas from the base game, evolves on them, and manages to present a completely different story with its own set of themes, motives and experiences. I think the DLC is comparable to quality to the base game, but I find them impossible to compar due to how different their goals are.

Overall, Outer Wilds is a fresh experience in the gaming landscape and is a firm representative of interactive gameified systems. In my opinion, it is a great step in the direction of creating accessible art, merging worlds of gaming leisure as well as themes that are otherwise not presented this well in the current gaming landscape. If you are humbled by the beauty of space, if you like puzzles and exploration or if you just want to see how a game can utilise this interactive medium to deliver a unique experience, you should play Outer Wilds. If you do and you manage to wrangle the vastness of space, a star will shine in your memory, one that will follow you wherever you go.

"In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration." - Ansel Adams

When I checked how long it takes the average gamer to complete Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake I saw a number pop up in the realms of four hours and a half. A nice afternoon delight, I thought to myself, as I ventured into the mind of this teenage detective once again.

The game opened up to an abrupt start, I am in this cabin in the woods and there was a mention of a Sally? Who just abandoned me here because there are GHOST dogs loitering everywhere? Oh, this is a mystery I MUST solve uttered Nancy once again, against her better judgment. Next to the cozy cottage, a maze, that you will end up familiarising yourself with to the extent where moving through it will become a muscle memory. This maze, I kid you not, contains enough resources to stabilise the Earth's economy - planks, protein, wildlife. It WILL become your new home, a hunting ground for Nancy to satiate her curiosity.

When you take short breaks from exploring all the maze's nooks and crannies (and try clicking on a shoe or the Rosetta stone -- that serve absolutely no purpose besides being landmarks on a path that leads to nowhere, or hell), you will be talking to the great denizens of Moon Lake. They're all very strange and unsocialised from what I can tell, and they're very eager to offload their duties to the teenage girl who's just poking her nose accusing everyone she sees of being the conspirator behind the GHOST DOG mystery.

No Nancy Drew is complete without its puzzles and this is where this game stumped me. Completing a master's degree in programming (art of problem solving) was not enough for me to deduce some of these brain crinklers on senior difficulty. The puzzle design choices here absolutely baffle me in their clarity and execution, it is almost as the game is adamant to set a stage of general rules only to pull the rug under your feet as soon as you begin to understand it. I mentioned a figure of 4.5 hours and if you managed to complete this game, with no help, under 5 hours, you should look into space engineering or an equally intellectually stimulating job because you're wasting your talents playing terrible games for teenage girls.

The biggest crime, by far, is the fact that we don't get to really see the dogs except a lazy one that just lies on the same pillow every single time we look (except that one time where he's running in the backyard of the park ranger house, a fellow that is sold on selling you a fairy tale on just how productive he is in a town of 3 people with his best method of organisation involving labelling envelopes with roman numerals even though he probably couldn't even finish a Dr. Seuss book due to functional illiteracy).

The game, simply put, is flabbergasting. I don't even know if I enjoyed it because it went against every convention I had ever learned. It doesn't matter what I write because if your curiosity and reckless abandon equals Nancy's, you will play this game even if I tell you exploding bees will infest your stomach lining. So, in that case, good luck, and I hope you have as much fun as I did.

They say that brilliance is always one step away from madness and no game exhibitions that better than NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... with its grotesque title and arguably even more grotesque game mechanics. Through 60 hours of gameplay, I continuously teetered on the brink of a steep cliff that would send me plummeting down a proverbial rocky ravine. I absolutely despised 80% of my time playing this game and while I would like to say that positives outweigh the negatives, I think they did not for me.

Let us begin with the good. This is a one-of-a-kind experience. Yoko Taro is a designer that is unparalleled when it comes to implementing wacky game ideas. He's the kind of guy who thinks it's a fun idea to put a quest in that rewards you with absolutely nothing, just to demonstrate how banal his game is. This predilection to not taking his work too seriously allows him to explore facets that not many game designers do - at this point I would say he's famous for playing with UI elements (the MENU META game?) and when those moments come, they're nothing short of delightful because they're always executed with a ton of flair and taste. When this is complimented with a relatively satisfying gameplay loop, an interesting world and well-executed climaxes, it's not hard to see why this game is so widely loved.

However, Yoko Taro apparently also believes that in order to enjoy things in life, first, one must suffer, and while using grind to deliver a more climactic ending is a common practice, this game executes it with absolutely zero respect for the player. For the majority of the game, you will be running up and down the same 3 central locations, fighting the same 3 types of enemies while replaying several hour long sections of the game on REPEAT, multiple times. The game also does nothing to make these sections enjoyable on your repeat playthroughs as the combat system is not particularly inspired, and even if it was, foes you encounter do not really utilise it to its full potential. Hard mode is a fabricated mess, hiding its difficulty behind inflated enemy health and reducing your stagger effectiveness. Interesting set pieces and bosses turn into vapid button mashing as you play the game again, and again, just to see what else it can offer. The biggest insult is that the game, for whatever reason, requires you to collect all of its weapons in order to see the true final ending(s) and while you could opt to stop at the first go-through, you will be missing crucial details that you can only get on subsequent playthroughs which will reduce its emotional impact significantly.

The writing also suffers and while I commended the game's lore, the characters and the way they express themselves is one-dimensional. With the game finished, I do not feel like I have managed to bond, or really care about, any of its cast, and for a game that seems to drive a point about empathy, this feels like a glaring misstep on the side of the creators. The information is not presented well and after some deliberate research outside of the game, it seems like most of the issues could have been resolved with a simple conversation. As a result, the story feels more like a pretentious snob withholding information instead of an interesting narrative piece, which is a shame, because as I've said, I think the world is genuinely interesting, but the game does little to support that.

All in all, if you're a Nier fan and if you want to see how it all started, Replicant is probably the definitive version to play. My recommendation is to play on easy, put on your favourite podcast for the grindy bits, and search for a guide to see which side quests are worth completing. Do not go with an expectation that this game is as polished as Automata (or any game of its caliber, frankly), because you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you can temper your expectations, there's some value to be extracted here. But it's not a lot, and it's certainly not worth the 60 hours I decided to put in. Still, I don't regret it.

Inexplicably, all of us, seek answers. While inquiring about divine revelations is indeed interesting, Persona tackles something much more interesting and asks of you to find your own personal truth. In your 365-day journey you'll meet a colourful cast of characters, each portrayed with their darkest side first. Only after conjuring the strength to deal with your other self, will you be able to truly appreciate the humanity that resides within your animated friends. With time, Inaba will encompass your soul and permeate your being and every character will turn into more than just a few lines of dialogue. When the game ends, you will feel a nostalgic longing for a town you never lived in.

All of this is encompassed within a satisfying gameplay loop with a harrowing likeness to real life. Each day, you'll be faced with a choice to solve an underlying mystery, better yourself, or dedicate your time on growing your attachment to the people you have met along the way. The pressure of having limited time to do any of these things and the importance the game places upon them will truly make it feel like your choices matter. In your endeavor for perfection, you WILL run out of time to accomplish everything you wanted, but when you finish you should ask yourself whether you are satisfied with your journey. Do not give up.

As any other great experience, this is a full story with multiple interweaving themes to tackle. If you're interested in just having a good time, there's plenty of that, but the game brilliantly introduces strong concepts concerning psychology, self-betterment, religion and often questions you to be judge whether your actions are justified. The game never forces any of this on the player and while I believe it's important to delve deeper into these themes for the full experience, it is not necessary, and there's plenty of fun to be had even without it.

It is not without its shortcomings though. The biggest issue for me was the repetitive combat which got tiring after about 2/3 of the game, but for the sake of the story and all of the other components present in the game, it was not a huge detriment to my overall enjoyment. Even though the limitations of the PS2 are clearly visible, the dungeons are intriguing and provide an interesting introspective into the characters' psyche. The developers have created something beyond any imaginable scope of the era and the amount of content within this game is truly staggering, even if it sometimes reuses similar assets or concepts to tell it story.

From start to finish, this is a wonderful experience with an intriguing story and meaningful characters. If at any point you had enough of real life, even for just a bit, give this game a try and I suspect you might find something very few games can offer, a temporary, yet beautiful, new home.

I don't really drink often, but I just woke up and it feels like I have an inordinate amount of alcohol in my bloodstream. It also appears that I've left my room in a mess, the window is broken, even though I'm usually a tidy individual. Did someone break in or is this a result of the madness residing within me?

What I do *know* is that I am a cop and my name is Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, ready to kick some ass, apologise to whoever I might have wronged, even if only by accident, and try to impress the youth with my outlandish attitude. I even thought of sharing speed with a child I have previously resisted punching in the face for his brazen deliquent smarmy attitude. It's not his fault though, so I try to be understanding. I also really hated that burly racist guy standing on top of the bridge, especially because he seemed rather intelligent which does not agree with my prejudiced view of the world.

Disco, this game, and life itself is HARDCORE TO THE MEGA and not in the way you might initially think. It's an eloquent, sometimes loquacious, piece of introspective work which lets you unravel the narrative at your own pace and paint your own version of the story of this legendary detective trying to crack a murder case. Don't get me wrong though, the underlying plot seems to be the same no matter how you approach it, but your perception and the consequences of those actions will differ vastly depending on your intrinsic political and moral values.

A lot of people praise its RPG, DnD-esque system and while of course such mechanics are present in the game and are the main mode of interaction, do not expect to be the arbitrer of all events which might take place. This is a deeply personal story, for the main character, the player, and everyone you will eventually meet in this grim, beautiful world. I would recommend approaching the first playthrough in the more linear sense, where you try to reflect on the actions from the detective's point of view, and leave role-playing for subsequent attempts. I believe this to be a much richer experience as you will be faced with the basic task of reconstructing a man's broken life in your own vision, resulting in an an impactful reflection of what you believe he deserves.

I would be remiss if I did not explicitly emphasise the excellent characterisation of the denizens residing in this sullen world. A poor, broken old town where everyone seems to have a moral conviction of a seasoned army veteran is the perfect playground for a diverse cast of characters you can interact with. You will learn about their lives and woes with less than clear reasons why they act the way they do. If you choose to accept those reasons is entirely up to you and you might even prefer to enact the hand of the law as opposed to offering pity to those you deem less fortunate than you, however, such decisions will be thoughtful and the game will provide ample justification for whatever you decide is *right*.

If you are the kind of person who plays games or enjoys art for the purpose of attaining different perspectives and prefers to really think about the content you consume, both on a larger as well as a personal level, you should not miss out on playing Disco Elysium. After 28 hours and a swathe of diverse topics presented to me it has left me wondering what it truly means to be a person, how people perceive me and how I perceive the world. Such a deeply humanising experience is hard to come by and while you should not expect anything incredibly bombastic, the story and its characters contained within will stay with you for a long time, beguiling you to consider what even is this nonsense we call life.

Perhaps one day I will understand, but as of now, I do not, and I remain blessed with the opportunity to change and learn.

Sincerely, Raphaël,
a superstar cop with a penchant for apologising.

After being engrossed by Katana Zero for the entire past week I've found myself begging for more with each decapitated enemy. This game is nothing but the finest combination of artful story-telling, great stylish graphics, fast-paced fair action and just seriously one of the best games to sink your teeth into over the weekend. The only complaint I'd have is that the story is left a bit open (with free DLC coming soon which will hopefully wrap it up), but don't let that detract you from purchasing this experience and robbing yourself from the chance to finally feel like John Wick - if only he was wielding a sword instead of a gun.

At first I had some reservations about the overall playtime with story being only about 4 hours long, but after realising that hard mode is not just the same levels with inflated hit points I've found another 4 hours of enjoyment from that part as well. While hard mode is satisfying by itself, the best feeling is coming back to the normal game and feeling like a proper Katana-wielding god of death slashing fools like there is no tomorrow, the game presents yet another challenge to you via the form of a speed run. I've always found speedrunning interesting, but never really had the time or dedication needed to truly devote myself to a particular game, but Katana Zero has successfully lulled me into completing the Gold Medal achievement which requires you to beat the game under 30 minutes. After some Googling and about 6 more hours, I've managed to do it - all thanks to the masterful difficulty progression that was so meticulously put together by the developers.

Truly, if you have any love for action platformers and want an experience that keeps offering more in new and inventive ways, look no further. This is a diffcult, yet rewarding, game, which definitely gives back all that the player is willing to invest. It is easily one of the top games to have come out this year and I can't keep my mittens to myself asking for more!

10/10 proper masterpiece

A really heartfelt and poignant experience that everybody should experience to see how games can function as art and learn a bit about the world around them.

This is a peculiar game and at clocking in 17 hours I feel like I've seen enough to warrant a review. On a more general level, this is a solitaire-like game where you try to clear the whole board before the enemy you are facing kills you. Every time you can't combo a card, you are forced to draw and at this time the opponent takes their turn, which can simply mean they dealing damage to you, inflict a status effect or change the landscape of play.

The first thing to praise here is the variety and charming personality of each monster, while most monsters do have some similar attacks, almost every one of them introduces a new mechanic. At the start you're just focusing on searching for the consecutive numbers, but later on this is offset by various effects a card can have, some cards tick down and you have to clear them off before they hit zero, others are frozen which means you have to click them twice to make them disappear, some cards are poisoned and deal damage directly to you and many more. This combined with mana you can use for spells makes for a very engaging experience in trying to clear the board while simultaneously trying to avoid death.

The game has 18 monsters arranged in a lane, ranging from easy to hard and features six classes. Whenever you beat a monster, you get some gold which you can in turn spend to buy new spells or items. Spells work dynamically and allow you to use them, while items are mostly passive, giving bonus armor, healing or something similar. It is important for the player to strategize, save enough money to buy good spells and make sure to switch out their loadout for certain enemies. While there are strategies where you don't have to min-max as much, you'll be much better off if you do that, however, this can still constitute as a more of a casual game if you're not too bent up about losing.

Whenever you lose, you gain gems which you can spend to upgrade a class. They certainly help, but these upgrades aren't very "fun", so they might not feel as rewarding as the journey itself. For example, if you do two to three runs, you'll gather enough gems to gain one upgrade which will heal you whenever an Ace is drawn.

The biggest negative of the game is definitely the progression, my first battle against the final boss was very exhilirating and enjoyable, but as soon as you realize that the other classes are basically the same class with some spells switched out, combined with the fact that you'll always be facing the same 18 enemies, will eventually resort to you garnering similar strategies just to power through some of the earlier monsters you face.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable and rewarding experience for all of those that aren't afraid to lose and while randomness might play a bigger chance in you losing than in most games, this is garnered off by the fact that the core concept is solid and if you've ever played Solitaire, love rpgs, min-maxing or are just looking for something similar, this is the game for you.