Did you ever play Resident Evil 4 and want to just organize that inventory? It’s kind of satisfying getting all your items in the right spot, so someone thought that should be its own puzzle game. In Save Room, you organize weapons, health, and other items ripped straight from the game it’s inspired by.
There are only 40 puzzles in total and you can blow through them in just about an hour. On the left is a cache with a grid and on the right are the items you need to fit in there. There are just enough squares to fit every item exactly. You begin with just fitting small pistols and then larger weapons like shotguns and rifles. Shortly after this, you need to organize health items and grenades. Things get more complicated when you start out with too many items.
Well, just like in RE4, you have a health meter and need to refill your guns. You need to do this in a certain order as this is also part of the puzzle. You may have three health items, but can only use two so you must figure out how to combine herbs and also hurt yourself with poisoned eggs and fish to be able to use more health items. Later on towards the last dozen puzzles you start crafting ammo in addition to stacking ammo and reloading weapons.
This all sounds complicated, but if you ever played RE4 you know exactly what to do already. A few puzzles will get your brain juices flowing. Mostly the ones that needed me to combine certain types of ammo and reload or stack ammo in a certain order. I only had to look up a few puzzles online, but most are quick trial and error levels and you will be breezing through them.
This sounds like a great concept, but in the end, it gets old really fast and it makes you just want to play RE4 instead. The visuals are pretty ugly, there’s a single track that loops in the background, and that’s all there is to this. For the low asking price, I can’t really complain. I had my hour of fun, but it’s totally forgettable. This isn’t on the same level as Portal or even something like The Room series. You won’t be talking about this 10 years from now. I honestly can only recommend this to RE4 fans who want some sort of weird spin-off. Anyone else who never played RE4 just won’t care about this or even get the idea.
Obsidian Entertainment lit the world on fire with Fallout: New Vegas. Many considered it superior to Bethesda’s own offering, Fallout 3. The Outer Worlds was considered a spiritual successor to New Vegas. The same type of play style. A first-person RPG with shooting elements, a large story, companions, quests, and worlds to explore Many were calling it New Vegas in space, but is it really that, and does it live up to New Vegas?
The short answer is no. It falls short in nearly every way. The game really does feel like it’s trying to be New Vegaswith the funny humor in the propaganda posters and the overseeing mega-corporation that’s trying to take over the Halcyon colony, and you’re trying to get factions to agree with each other or side with them. The overarching story is pretty much forgettable, and that goes for most of the game. The story, characters, and side quests are mostly boring. I hate to really say this, as this game has sat installed on my PC for a couple of years now, and I would do a mission or two and quit because of just how dull the game is. The characters aren’t memorable; there’s no personality that stands out, and the overall mega-corporation humor that overshadows the game just feels like it’s in the background.
The game is also incredibly short. I did several companion quests, dealt with all the factions, did multiple side quests, and still clocked in at around 12–13 hours. If you blow through the main story, you can finish it in 4-5 hours easily. I feel that contributes to the problem of the story and characters being uninteresting. There’s not enough time for them to develop. Your entire crew is all humans, and they all just feel like generic Bethesda faces that were run through a random generator, and nothing stands out. I wound up skipping through a lot of dialogue because I just didn’t care. I loved the characters and overall story of New Vegas. It was fresh and interesting, but this just feels like a generic space odyssey.
So what about the gameplay? It’s tighter and more refined than New Vegas, but not by much. I hated the upgrade and skill tree systems. They felt generic and half-baked. The game’s poorly balanced, where it’s either way too easy and you mow down enemies, or they swarm you and kill you on the spot. I felt like none of the items you can use helped at all; stats didn’t seem to matter, and the only thing that really did matter was your level in each respective category. You really want to get your speech levels high, including in engineering, as you can bypass a lot of battles with speech checks. Most of the weapons in the game felt pretty generic, and their weapon power didn’t seem to matter.
Weapons can be tinkered with and modded at workbenches. Mods can be picked up and attached to various parts of guns. They can add elemental damage, increase clip size, add scopes, and do damage to different types of enemies, but outside of this, you can just tinker with the weapon’s level, and future weapons don’t matter. There were no cool, unique weapons found on bosses or for getting into hard-to-hack safes. Looting, like in Fallout, feels pointless as there is so much given to you. By the end of the game, I had thousands of rounds of ammo for each weapon type. You can specialize in long, pistol, or heavy weapons, but I just wound up dumping points into all three. Add a few good mods and tinker with the weapon up to your level, and you will stick with the same weapons through most of the game, rarely trading them out. You can equip up to four weapons, and I rarely ever used healing items until the final showdown, where you are swarmed by enemies in every room you go into.
Another balancing issue is with the factions. You can gain and lose reputation, and this will make guards attack you on-site in certain towns, locking out quests and not being able to finish any in this case. I wound up pissing off a couple of factions, had to abandon the quests there, and couldn’t go to the shops either. This is really frustrating, and there’s usually no way to get the reputation back. This can lock off companion quests and many side missions. Throughout the entire game, I mostly just mowed down every enemy in my way and used my companion’s abilities when I was swarmed on occasion. You get a single ability to slow down time, which is useless because it slows down time too much.
The only thing I really enjoyed were the visuals. The game looks like a last-generation title, but the worlds are unique and look really good. I was interested in discovering new towns and new enemies, but that was really it. Everything else was either ignored, forgotten, or skipped because of how uninteresting most of the game is. I don’t feel like this is Obsidian’s best work or their love letter to New Vegas. The game is horribly optimized, looks dated, and feels dated because it is too safe. The game lacks any depth, and most may not even enjoy the shooting. The story and characters are boring and unoriginal, and the game’s length doesn’t justify this type of game in general. Who wants to play a 4-player RPG with supposed vast worlds to explore? You might enjoy blowing through the main story, but that’s about it.
You can’t really call this a walking simulator or a platformer. It’s a bit of both. A Short Hike doesn’t have the touching story that tugs on your heartstrings that a lot of short indie “walking simulators” have, nor is it a skill-based platformer that requires precision timing. It reminded me of something familiar from the 32/64-bit era, such as Super Mario 64, Donkey Kong 64, or Kingsley’s Adventure. This is an isometric “retro pixel” style 3D platformer with tons of charm and a fun island to explore. The entire game can be completed 100% in less than four hours, and the main story can be finished in one hour, but if you just race to the top of Hawk Peak to get the cell phone reception you need to hear back from your mother, then you are robbing yourself of an entire game.
There are dozens of characters dotted throughout the island offering challenges, golden feathers, hints, and just plain silliness. The writing for the characters is very similar to that of 16-bit games of yesteryear. Your main goal for progress is golden feathers. These are single jumps or stamina for climbing. I found 11 on my journey, but there were a few more I missed. You can do more than a single hop without the first golden feather. You really should glide around the island and explore. Some characters want seashells; one runner is missing a headband; and there are treasure maps, chests with coins, digging spots, fishing spots, and a few other activities like stickball and parkour races. You won’t discover these without talking to creatures and exploring. I love the exploration in this game. It’s not overly difficult, and you can always figure out how to get to a seemingly hidden spot. Just upgrade your feathers.
Coins are used to buy feathers from a couple of characters, and you can sell caught fish to get more coins. This all sounds like a lot of fun, but it’s packed into a single hour and somehow doesn’t feel overwhelming. The island seems big at first, but you will easily remember the landmarks, and there are signs everywhere pointing to the different trails and landmarks. You eventually unlock shortcuts by watering spring flowers and using a pickaxe to knock through a tunnel. It’s incredibly satisfying to find all the objects for a creature and then run back knowing exactly where they are and get your reward, and it’s always one step further to progress. No matter what you do in the game, it will always push you closer to your goal.
Even after reaching the peak, you get an opportunity before finishing the game to complete everything. By the first full hour, I had almost all the feathers, and I could go anywhere I wanted. I didn’t 100% play the game, but I got close to it. The platforming itself is wonderful, with great physics and tight controls. I never felt slippery, and gliding never felt off or wrong. You do eventually get a sprint ability, and this helps you get around the island even faster on foot. Thanks to the short length, there’s a constant sense of progression with every action you take. The visuals are bright, colorful, and charming, and the music is fantastic. There’s not much to hate about this game other than its length and lack of an overall story.
A Short Hike is one of the highest-rated games on Steam for a reason. It’s a bite-sized chunk of gaming goodness that merges the exploration and fantasy of adventure from the early days with the better controls and tighter designs of today. It may only take an afternoon to complete, but it’s incredibly satisfying and isn’t something you will quickly forget.
Harry Potter is one of the biggest media phenomena of the 21st century. When the novels came out they were all over the news and I read them right from the beginning. While the novels were big the movies were even bigger and I don’t think Harry Potter would be where it is today without the success of the movies. I remember my family going to see every movie up until the first part of the 7th movie on Thanksgiving every single year. By the time the 7th movies were out, I was an adult and saw those with my now wife. I did get burned out on the series though so thankfully it’s great to know Hogwarts Legacy is 100% original content with all new characters and story.
The only thing the game follows from the books or movies is the lore, aesthetics, and visual representation of various architecture, creatures, and overall visuals. You play as a nobody 5th-year student who gets caught up in a giant plot of goblins finding a way to wield dark wizard magic. You must fast-track your education at Hogwarts while also fighting off this powerful new foe. The story drags you along on a breadcrumb trail where you slowly unveil the plot, the intricacies of the characters, and the mysteries. Portkey Games did a phenomenal job of making the story feel like one of the books. The slow unfolding of the story gives a sense of mystery and constant guessing. It’s a pretty good story and one of the best so far this year.
There are of course side quests and larger side stories involving various students at Hogwarts. One involves a Slytherin student, Sabastian, and the Dark Arts. Another is a girl named Poppy who just wants to stop poachers and save creatures, and then there’s Noa who wants to avenge her father’s death. The entire game has a massive open world consisting of Hogwarts itself, Hogsmeade which is the only major town in the game, and then the rest of the world itself consisting of various regions, secrets, and activities. The game can seem overwhelming, but the entire game is strung out to you very slowly as you play. It allows you to get the ropes on all the various systems in the place game with one of the biggest being combat.
Combat is probably the weakest and coolest part of the game. It plays similarly to an MMO with shortcut keys and hot bars. Each hot bar has four slots and you can have up to four hot bars. You learn spells through the story as you attend various classes. These are all the spells you know from the book and movies. Wingardium Levioso, Avada Kadavra, Repulso, Accio, and many others. There is only magic combat in the game so don’t expect to find swords and shields. Defense is dependent on a halo around your head that flashes red or orange. Orange means you can deflect attacks while red means you must dodge.
You can whip out spells at a lightning pace, but of course, they have cooldown timers so this means you need a balanced loadout and need to switch between hot bars constantly. This is something I didn’t like in the game. I can understand with a controller you can only have four hotkeys, but do what Dragon Age did and give PC players the ability to use maybe eight hotkeys and combine hot bars. I found myself always fumbling with the controls trying to quickly dodge, deflect, keep an eye on my timers, swap between hot bars, and keep an eye on the enemies, and then my health and magic meter. It’s too cumbersome and needs some balancing in the next game. The combat looks cool with fast and smooth animation, great sound effects, and tons of on-screen info being blasted into your eyeholes. There are plenty of boss fights, mini-bosses, world bosses, and all sorts of enemy types to shake a wand at. Goblins, beasts, and humans alike.
The next part of the game is exploration. This game is very similar to Skyrim in that manner. You will always find something no matter where you go. Once you unlock the ability to fly on a broom you can use Revelio in the air and it will mark stuff on your map. There are a lot of activities to do from filing out your field guide by finding flying books, interesting spots, and objects, there are secrets inside Hogwarts itself like hidden chests under bridges that require puzzles, but you also need the spells to complete certain puzzles and get to certain areas. You can pick locks (which has an absolutely awful lockpicking mini-game that can’t be skipped), but one of the major problems with all of this exploration is the lame loot. If you get ahead of the story you will mostly end up finding armor that’s behind you in levels. Exploring dungeons is fruitless as you will solve a puzzle and get a lame piece of armor or just 50 coins. I wound up ignoring side paths in dungeons because it just wasn’t worth it. Finding the best armor in the game will come to you eventually.
The third biggest part of the game is the Room of Requirement. Here you can decorate, expand, and craft. You can add traits to clothing/armor, and breed beasts that you can capture in the wild for more unique traits that can be woven into clothes. You can also plant seeds for using the three combat plants or creating potions. While this all sounds neat and fits into the world of Harry Potter it’s very tedious. I wound up not bothering to add traits to clothing as the loot you find it pretty awful anyways and you end up selling 90% of what you find. I would add traits closer to the end game when you stop finding a lot of armor that is at a higher level. I also didn’t bother brewing potions much as you must wait in real time for plants to grow or potions to brew. It’s pretty dumb and tedious.
You can fast travel between dozens of Floo Flames as you discover them and this makes traveling quickly essential. The various activities you can do are Merlin Trials, a combat arena, various puzzles, and of course side quests for people around the world. It really is a well-created open-world game and feels different from the dredge of crap we’ve been getting the last ten years. I always had fun exploring the world, doing tasks and puzzles, and seeing what secrets the game had. It really is this generation’s Skyrim or will be as close as we get to it.
The visuals, voice acting, and overall atmosphere of the game captured what we loved in the movies perfectly. The visuals are gorgeous with great lighting and tons of love and detail in every part of the world. Sadly, it’s so poorly optimized. Ray tracing is unplayable, and there’s stuttering in Hogwarts no matter how powerful your system is. Some patches have ironed most of the problems out, but they will never be perfect. The game still looks fantastic and I loved flying over new areas for the first time or seeing the seasons change. Portkey Games did a stupendous job making this game feel like a living breathing world.
Overall, Hogwarts Legacy is a wonderful open-world RPG with some flaws. The combat can be unwieldy sometimes and cumbersome, crafting is a chore, and the game is horribly optimized, but the characters are wonderful, the graphics are fantastic, and it feels like a living and breathing world of Harry Potter that captures all of the magic and love that we grew up with. You will spend dozens of hours having fun exploring the nooks and crannies that the world has to offer, the powerful beasts you can fight, and the creatures to capture.
Resident Evil 4 changed the entire gaming industry. It was one of the most influential games of all time. It actually still kind of is. It showed how drastically you can reboot a game and honestly started the whole reboot craze and is the gold standard to live up to. Take a game that has tank controls and pre-rendered backgrounds and throw it into a third-person shooter with unique control and a well-balanced gameplay loop. It was talked about for years and inspired other games like Gears of War. Resident Evil 4 (2023) is a reboot of a game that mastered reboots. It has the highest standards to live up to. Thankfully the last two Resident Evilreboots were fantastic and took pages from RE4. So, what we get is just a better-remade RE4.
The story itself is supposed to have taken place after RE2. Leon is sent to save the US President’s daughter, Ashley Graham, and that’s about it. There is a new virus that got loose from Umbrella and the Los Plagas will come out of enemies every so often and it happens more as the game goes on. Their heads will pop off and a new tendril-like creature will come out in various forms. You can stop this before it happens when they are on the ground twitching. The characters in the game are pretty simple and have no time to become interesting. Outside of Leon and Ashley the other characters show up for just a few minutes in the game, so the story itself takes a back seat. It’s the weakest part of the whole game.
Right off the bat, you will notice an immediate change. Not only are the environments more detailed, but the opening scene has changed as well. We get an all-new voice cast (that’s much better), new music, and updated sound effects, and the overall feeling is more modern and less stiff. You can actually shoot and walk this time around which is a huge change in balance for the game. The knife has also changed as it can be broken but also upgraded. Crates can be stomped on rather than sliced so gameplay flows better. You can acquire boot knives that can be used to ward off enemy attacks up close. You will also notice that quick-time events are pretty much gone. These scenes are now fully playable with you in complete control rather than an actual cut scene.
All of these changes are for the better and add a whole new dynamic to the game. Combat mostly remains the same with enemies slowly lumbering towards you with various weapons. Enemies can throw axes, molotovs, and shoot you with crossbows. Some will shock you with sticks, others will carry shields, and then there are the bigger enemies. Rarely occurring, chainsaw-wielding enemies will appear that require explosives or heavy damage to kill. You need to constantly run and turn back to shoot. Using your surroundings is key. Lure them towards explosive barrels, or funnel them everywhere down a corridor so you can line up headshots. The level design is fantastic as you get little arenas that you can immediately scan and strategize with.
Every time an enemy dies they will drop something. Unlike the original game, this time around a whole new mechanic of crafting has been added. Enemies will always drop something whether it’s resources, gunpowder, health, ammo, or money. You need resources and gunpowder to craft various ammo types. Recipes can be bought from the merchant. You can also buy weapons, armor, resources, health, and various other items. Another new system is the side missions. These can be found posted on walls and convert the older challenges into missions. The blue medallions, tough enemies, shooting rats, or finding certain objects. These are traded for spinels which can be traded for rare items such as exclusive new weapons, treasures, and more. Cases are not just expanded now, but different case types will drop certain items more frequently and new charms can be attached to help lower the cost of sales, increase sell value, drop rates, and so on. These charms are won by completing target practice missions in one of five locations in the game.
That’s a ton of new things already and it’s so well-balanced. It’s a way to take the older systems and tweak them into something new and more fun. You can move around and technically kill enemies easier so with an added crafting system you always get rewarded. There are still treasure maps to buy and valuables to look for which are key to racking up coins. Certain valuables can have jewels inserted into them to increase their sell value so hang onto those gems! On to something much bigger is Ashley herself. Many felt she dragged the experience down. You have to always catch her when you hopped off ledges and she always got captured easily. Now you can send her away, hide her in lockers, and she does most actions on her own now. She’s much less of a burden.
Speaking of Ashely there are stealth elements in the game now by sneaking around and offing zombies, but this is easily ignored. It doesn’t work outside of a couple of zombies and then everyone sees you. The AI walking patterns are too random to sneak through areas, and this wasn’t intended in the original game anyway. While sneaking around zombies is possible sometimes there are new enemies in the game, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Original enemies are updated and look even more grotesque. That’s another theme of the remake. Horror is much more prominent in this game. Like in previous RE remakes the flashlight is added so Leon will whip it out in dark caves and there is a constant sense of tension and dread no matter where you go. The game relies less on jump scares this time around.
There are three acts in the game. The village, the castle, and the island which is split between a mine and a military base. My favorite part is act one which is the most iconic. The castle is okay, but the game gets insanely tough during the second act. Ammo is incredibly scarce. You must be very cautious about what ammo you use and when. Save more powerful ammo like grenades and magnum rounds for the mini-bosses and bosses themselves. Save your sub-machine gun ammo for large crowds and your rifle ammo for enemies are off. The pistol is going to be your main weapon throughout the entire game so always keep a stock of it.
The visuals are a nice upgrade over the previous remakes. Ray tracing has been added, but it’s not great. The RE engine is still insanely well-optimized for lower-end PCs and runs really well. However, there is still no DLSS support so it needs to be manually added through a mod, but even on the Steam Deck, the game runs fairly well. The visuals are top-notch and the art direction captures the vibe of RE4 in a more visceral and raw way. I love it. When you’re all finished with the game you can run through on a New Game+ which is a must as that’s the more fun way to play. Overall, RE4 (2023) is a massive update to an already iconic game and changes nearly everything wrong with it. I just wish the game was a little better balanced and it does get repetitive after so long. You are just walking around shooting zombies with a couple of simple puzzles thrown in. At least the exploration is fun and there’s always something new to look at.
I never thought that I would have so much fun with a chore. There are various curated threads online about watching power washing. It’s satisfying to see someone turn an incredibly dirty surface into a sparkling clean one like wiping a window with a squeegee. There are many jokes about missing a spot and everyone in the comments losing their minds. r/powerwashingporn is a popular subreddit dedicated to these videos. FuturLab has done an incredible job of making this chore feel fun and satisfying. There’s even a silly story that’s evolved over the course of the Early Access phase involving gnomes.
Every surface is covered in dirt, rust, mud, or some type of grime. You get a power washing nozzle and you spray things down until they turn clean. You can decide what to spray, what direction, and in what order. That’s part of the fun. Tackling each area in a certain way is satisfying and fun for you. Your tools include various spray nozzles that have different widths as well as spray liquid for getting tough areas, but this stuff is expensive and limited. You also have a spray gun that shoots various distances. These can be bought and unlocked with money by completing levels. You are paid at the end of a level and you can see a sped-up replay of your work. There are also cosmetic items such as your suit and gloves.
Some levels are multi-storied so you get step stools, ladders, and scaffolding that can be moved around and put wherever you need it. There are a few levels that have some frustrating buildings to clean such as the giant shoe level. There is a meter on each surface that shows how complete it is and sometimes it can be hard to find that one dirt spot that’s keeping the surface from dinging. Thankfully there is an illuminate dirt button that turns all dirt a golden yellow for a few seconds so you can see what you’re missing. Getting down the last percent in each level can get annoying as you’re just hunting down that last dirt spot. There is also a list of each surface and the percentage that they’re cleaned, so you can at least eventually narrow it down.
There isn’t any background music. You just get ambient noises like birds chirping or cars driving in the background. It’s a very silent game. You’re best just playing your own music in the background as this is a very zen game where you can veg out and not think about much. I also appreciate the control scheme on a controller too. It’s easy to control and you don’t have to move your aim camera back and forth like you used to in Early Access. You can now press a button to move your sprayer within the frame of the camera. This can reduce motion sickness and overall irritation. It wasn’t a big problem on a PC with a mouse, but it was unbearable with an analog stick. Most levels can take you 1-3 hours to complete depending on how big they are. There are smaller challenges that involve just cleaning a vehicle like an RV, alien spaceship, Mars rover, or bicycle. Levels get more complex as you go on with more small objects and more complicated surfaces. Things like planes, boats, helicopters, and the previously mentioned shoe house can get really busy. I would end up doing some levels in multiple sessions. The longest level I spent time on was nearly five hours.
Again, you have to like this kind of thing to see an appeal to it. The visuals are bright and colorful, but rather basic and simple. There is no raytracing, AI anti-aliasing, or anything complex rendering-wise. The game can technically get very repetitive, but that’s actually the point of this game. I feel many may mistake this game for a business simulator when you only do the power washing and buy upgrades and cosmetics. I had a blast (no pun intended) with this game and FuturLab is still putting out content that I need to catch up on. Overall, PowerWash Simulator is one of the most relaxing and satisfying games I’ve ever played.
What would it be like if humans were invaded by aliens, but they weren’t killed or captured for the usual reasons. What if we were awesome drugs? That’s what High On Life is all about. It’s written like a Rick & Morty episode which would be expected. Justin Roiland heads the writing and voice acting for the game just like in the shows. If you don’t like Rick & Morty then you won’t like this game either. I thought it was insanely funny and had a lot of witty humor not just in general, but also poking fun at gaming tropes. Walk away from a character mid-sentence and they will comment on it, sprint for too long, stand in one place for too long, and many other things.
The opening sequence sees your planet being invaded by aliens while you and your sister are in your house with your parents away. A series of events follow and you acquire your first talking weapon, Kenny, and then you are introduced to the game mechanics. There are five talking guns in total, and I found this very original and more interesting than just making a standard shooter. Each weapon is organic and shoots organic ammo. Kenny is a standard pistol, but using his Trickhole sees him shooting a green bouncing blob. This can be used to solve a few puzzles in the game as well. The second weapon is Gus. He’s your standard shotgun, but his Trick is a bouncing saw blade that can be volleyed with your knife. He can also suck enemies toward you. The third gun is Sweezy who is clearly a mock of Halo‘s Needler gun. She can be used as a sniper pistol and uses a bubble that slows down time. Shoot the bubble to have it expand and explode to do damage. The fourth standard gun is Creature. He is kind of like a grenade launcher, but he shoots babies that attack enemies. His trick is a mind control baby that can help you out. He wound up becoming my favorite weapon just because the babies are fast and can kill enemies quickly and keep them off of you.
The final gun is Lezduit, but he is only used in the final level as a very powerful ultimate weapon. These guns will talk to you through the whole game and the humor is injected even into their animations. They stare at you and make faces, comment on everything you do, and just have this gross wet, and squishy biological thing about them. The game’s humor is full of vulgar humor from the sexual, potty, and overall just stuff that everyone usually laughs about. These weapons kind of remind me of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. Weapons that are living and interact with you. The entire game is very organic and everything just looks and feels wet and goopy. It’s pretty hilarious.
Sadly, the story isn’t anything to write home about. It’s pretty much just like a TV show episode. You run around from level to level shooting the same bad guys in waves, jump around a bit, and kill a boss at the end of each level. These are bounties that you can turn in for Pesos to purchase suit and weapon upgrades at the pawn shop. Upgrades can give you bigger clip sizes, faster reloads, and enhance your Trick. Each boss fight is mostly different. A couple of them are pretty funny, but not everyone requires you to face the actual boss itself. I don’t want to spoil anything, but these are well done. You do eventually acquire a grappling hook to swing across larger gaps, a jetpack, and mag boots to walk on certain surfaces, but overall the combat beat is pretty repetitive. Sadly, despite how cool the weapons are, none of them feel very powerful and I always felt like I couldn’t kill as efficiently as I could in other shooters. Enemies are sponges and take a lot of damage and this can get frustrating with a lot of them coming after you. No matter what weapon I switched to I just felt like the balancing was off. Up close, Gus doesn’t do enough damage, and far away Sweezy’s charge shot can’t do enough damage. I just didn’t understand it.
Most of the cut-scenes are just characters talking in front of you and there are very few scripted events. You are mostly just going planet to planet, killing wave after wave, and killing a boss at the end. It’s very repetitive and I wanted to lose interest in the game pretty early on. The characters and writing are really fun, but it’s those long stretches of endless shooting that can really bore you. The shooting is bad, just unbalanced and there’s no variety. My favorite parts of the game were just the dialog and seeing new planets and character interactions. The shooting kind of came second. I really wanted to like the shooting more, but something just always feels off.
In the 8 hours it takes to finish the game it sadly has a really bad ending. It just quickly ends, and this goes to show there really aren’t any characters you can get attached to. They are all written like the small characters on the TV show rather than larger characters who should be memorable and defined. Kenny was probably the most interesting character of them all. This is one of those games that would be a good rental, and then you would quickly forget about it. There’s so much potential here for this to be a better game, but just not enough to put into it for it to be as refined as the games it makes fun of. Even the visuals, as bright and colorful as they are, kind of all blend together and the game is a technical mess. A poorly optimized Unreal 5 engine causes the game to run pretty badly even on really powerful PCs.
Overall, High On Life is a riot of a game with witty and fun dialog, funny characters, and some interesting weapon ideas, but the game’s moment-to-moment beat is repetitive and dull. You never feel like your weapons are powerful enough to do what they should thanks to bullet sponge enemies, but at least the boss fights are clever and funny. There are very few scripted events so there’s nothing to break up the mundane gameplay outside of standing still and listening to characters talk. The game is also poorly optimized despite how pretty the visuals are. Playing this once and forgetting is sadly what most people will do.
Dead Space was one of the last original IPs to really push the horror genre forward. I felt it was the only horror game to take Resident Evil 4′s torch and carry it along. The Callisto Protocol received a ton of hype because Dead Space’s co-creator Glen Schofield was leading the charge. The game was another third-person horror shooter with sick monster designs, a desolate Callisto moon, and a great story. I was honestly shocked by how below average this adventure is and was quite saddened the longer I played.
The game actually starts out quite well. You are Jabob Lee. A space courier delivering medicine to the prison colony on Callisto when suddenly everything goes wrong. Your ship crashes and you are wrongfully charged for a crime you did not commit. The game takes you on a pretty long cinematic journey for the first 30-45 minutes before the action starts. This is when things immediately started falling apart. The game’s main mechanic is melee combat. That would be fine and all, but it just doesn’t work as intended. You are expected to go one-on-one with each enemy and whack at them like Whack-A-Mole and then dodge attacks. It’s a dodge-and-then-attack type combat system. You can’t parry without unlocking it as an upgrade and animations can’t be quickly interrupted. It’s hard to judge the enemy’s attacks and how long their combo will go on. These animations just aren’t well done. It lead to many cheap deaths that came from the animations being too long and not interruptable.
This makes the first couple of chapters a chore, and most people might quit here. You do get weapons, but ammo is scarce until later on in the game. There are five weapons you can acquire, but don’t think these are as unique or interesting as Dead Space’s weapons. You really only get three weapons with two being nearly identical. Two pistols and two shotguns. One is a “Skunk” gun and the other is a riot gun. The only difference was their spread, to be honest. Your first weapon is the Hand Cannon which can pack a punch, but the Tactical Pistol is nearly useless. All of these weapons feel handicapped until you start upgrading them. Just like Dead Space, you get a limited inventory with healing items, valuables, and ammo. It’s literally a 1:1 ratio of how Dead Space plays.
Weapons are acquired by finding schematics (yeah that’s a direct copy too). You can find 3D printing stations throughout the game that will print add-ons, health, and ammo, but you won’t be able to buy everything in one play-through. No matter how thorough you are. It’s best to just upgrade the Hand Cannon and either Skunkworks or Riot Gun and do the rest on the next play-through. That is if you even want to. This hand-to-hand combat with these monsters just isn’t fun. Once I was able to get more ammo more often by stomping enemies (seeing a pattern here?) I tried to avoid melee combat. That’s not a good thing when the core combat mechanic is so bad that you don’t want to ever use it. Sadly, it’s forced upon you during the same two repetitive boss fights, but there were a couple of patches later on that made it more tolerable, but still not good.
Sadly, despite how great the visuals are the level design is insanely linear and boring. You just run down the corridor after corridor fighting randomly popping-up monsters until you get to the next fuse, switch, or generator. It’s pretty mundane and has already been done in many games before it. Unlike Dead Space, there are no puzzles here. In fact, the overall level design is just elementary and basic at best. There is one area where you must sneak around monsters that are sensitive to sounds. You can stab them in the back and do takedowns, but this was for an entire chapter. It became dull really fast. The only advantage was killing them all silently and then stomping on them to rack up tons of ammo. You do get a grappling glove that allows you to pull and push objects away, but this just seemed like an excuse to use death traps in certain arenas. It was poorly implemented.
The story itself doesn’t get interesting until the final chapter. There isn’t much story here at all. I wanted to know what this thing was that killed off the entire planet’s population, but you just move from scene to scene falling around trying to escape each section. It’s a poorly paced-story that seemed more like an afterthought. Jacob himself is well-acted, but we know nothing about him nor did I care one bit about his character. Dani is the other main character and I cared about her just as much. The game isn’t long enough or has enough story to tell us anything worthwhile. There’s no care in world-building through visuals like Dead Space did. You just move through corridor after corridor killing enemies that pop up and that’s it.
The visuals might be really good, but the performance is awful. Even after half a dozen patches, AMD FSR2 is broken, ray-tracing cuts the frame rate in half even on a 3xxx series card. There are tons of stuttering from poor shader optimization as well even months after release. Despite the nice visuals, they aren’t taken advantage of due to 90% of the game just being in cramped corridors. Overall, The Callisto Protocol is a colossal disappointment trying to copyDead Space to a tee and failing to capture anything that made that game stand out or become the icon it is today. The monster designs are neat, the visuals are good, and the story’s premise is good. That’s about it.
Microsoft isn’t someone to mess with when it comes to controllers. Sure, the original Duke is lauded as one of the worst controllers ever made, and it has its fans, but the Xbox S controller really changed things up. Not to mention their analog stick orientation which is copied to this day by even Nintendo. The Xbox controller made built-in headset plugs a thing too. The Xbox 360 controller was considered the best controller ever made at the time. The ergonomics were fantastic and the later improved rotating D-Pad was a huge plus. The Xbox One controller only made things better with bumper button rumble, and just overall improved ergonomics and build quality. Microsoft messes the least amount with their controllers. They just like making it feel good and work. They also have a battery fetish that a lot of people don’t care for.
Fast forward to today and we have Microsoft’s next-generation controller. It’s probably the least changed compared to other companies, but it continues its design DNA. The ergonomics are slightly tweaked still, the built quality feels even better, and they took the idea of the rotating D-pad and the D-pad from their Elite controllers and made it standard. Xbox has the best D-pad out of all three companies. The bowl-shaped D-pad works so well with fighting games as it feels almost like an arcade stick. It’s very clicky and detents in the right spots. You can roll your thumb around for those quarter-circle moves with ease.
The trigger texture is also improved and feels very bumpy and gritty. The haptic feedback hasn’t changed either, but I guess that’s okay. It’s a stark contrast to Sony’s fantastic DuelSense controller. There isn’t much tech packed into this controller either. It’s probably the most basic controller available right now, but many gamers prefer that. You still get a headset input at the bottom and that’s about it. This feels like the Xbox One 1.5 update rather than a next-gen controller. There is an added share button in the center with Microsoft taking notes from Sony from the DualShock 4 controller. This makes sense with streaming and social media has blown up since the Xbox One debuted. The controller does have a USB-C port just like the DualSense so I applaud Microsoft for not making me get out the USB micro.
You still get your Bluetooth functionality, and they are still using AA batteries. Some praise this as that means this controller will always work and you won’t need to get a battery in a few years and tear it apart. Some hate it saying it’s not very modern of them to do. You can get rechargeable AA which I have been doing since the Xbox 360 era so there’s no need to whine.
Overall, the Xbox Series X|S controller is the least changed, but it still works. Microsoft is the poster child for “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” USB-C is nice with the added texture to the bumpers and triggers, but the biggest change is the D-pad. It just feels great. If you liked the Xbox controller up until now then you won’t be disappointed.
The 8-bit era of Atari was before my time. I started the next generation with the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo as a young toddler. I still respect and have enjoyed iterations and ports of Atari 8-bit games over the years. What hasn’t been done well is anything outside of bundles of seemingly random collections. They’re nearly countless at this point and have spanned nearly every console imaginable. Atari anniversary collections, various Atari-themed packs, and various retro packages with fancy UIs or presentations However, no single retro package has been as cohesive or beautifully created as the Atari 50. Even Sega’s recent Genesis Collection, with its retro 90s bedroom and bookshelf display, can’t beat this.
The entire game is presented like an interactive history lesson. You go through four timelines. Atari’s origin story and their arcade routes You get to see photos, printouts, commercials, and interviews with various Atari developers and industry veterans such as Tim Schafer (Psychonauts) and Cliff Bleszinski (Gears of War). These are presented in chronological order. A game is presented when its release comes up in the timeline. Some games have cover art, photos, and even comics underneath them to view. As you advance in the timeline, you get the feeling that you’re playing an interactive museum tour. There are no fancy 3D menus or anything, but the clean and simple UI works well. There are a few surprises peppered in, like unreleased prototypes and Digital Eclipse’s own recreations of iconic games like Yar’s Revenge and Haunted House.
As you advance to the home console and PC timelines, things get more interesting. You will eventually get to the Atari 5200 and 7800 games, which are a bit more advanced. You will also get to play a few PC games for the Atari home computers. Then you will finish up in the 1990s with the Atari Lynx and Jaguar. Sadly, there aren’t many games in this timeline, and the biggest issue with this entire game is the lack of third-party titles. You only get to play Atari-published and owned games. That’s very limiting, and while I understand this is Atari’s own history, there are many games that helped make their systems great outside of internal developers. The few Jaguar games range from Cybermorph to Tempest 2000 and Missle Command 3D. They aren’t great, but they are interesting to dive into. That’s another thing about this whole collection. Very few games are fun to play for longer than five minutes. Some are pretty clunky and bad. This isn’t a “greatest of” collection, which I really appreciate. You will most likely go back to the more fun games like Missle Command, Centipede, Millepede, Tempest, or their latest versions in this game. You get special bezels, backgrounds, overlays, and control options for every game as well. You can also select various modes, and some games support save states, which is cool. You also get a digital view of every manual for the game, including the arcade operator’s manuals. They didn’t leave anything out.
By the time I spent around 5 hours in the game, I got to the end of the timelines. You can go back and play any game in the library view and pick your favorites. These games run really well and look great, but many gamers who didn’t grow up in the 80s will probably find this nothing more than a history lesson. Even more, will find pretty much every game boring or uninteresting. However, that’s not a knock to the games, but just a warning to younger audiences. Anyone younger than 30-35 will most likely not find this game interesting or fun. If you have a curiosity about Atari’s history or games then this is the best place to get that. If you have an itch for trying out 8-bit games or want to go back without emulating anything then this will give you nearly 100 games. I also appreciate how few ports and copies of the same game are in here. Each game was hand-picked and placed with relevancy.
Overall, the Atari 50 is one of the best retro packages you can ever play. Telling an entire developer’s history with games placed in their correct time slots and even including unreleased games and reimaginings of some is just fantastic. The videos are entertaining and interesting, and you will learn a lot. There are so many details added from commercials, print ads, posters, manuals, customizable controls, save states, and more. It’s a complete and cohesive package for Atari lovers out there. Just be warned that there are no third-party games and less of the 90s stuff.
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.