Craft Beetle

20 Minutes Till Dawn

Let me start off by saying that I did in fact play this game for more than 20 minutes, but I did not beat it. It's a Vampire Survivor like with pretty good gameplay but not anything I expect to be replaying any time soon. It's good at what it set out to do but seeing as I have not played Vampire Survivor, I've got no idea if it's as good at what seems like the gold standard.

BPM: Bullets Per Minute

BPM is really odd in that I understood it to be a rhythm game like Hi-Fi Rush so I started out trying to get all my actions to line up to the rhythm and I struggled. Then I gave up on that and just played it as a regular FPS, shooting and jumping and dashing whenever I want and I did much better. I had a fun time with it, but with it's main gimmick so weak I'm not hooked.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Playing...

HITMAN: World of Assassination

Playing...

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

The aesthetic and presentation are on point but the gameplay is lacking. It may just be that I am not into boomer shooters but I often find myself either lost or bored of the repetitive gameplay. It may be accurate for a boomer shooter to have generic enemy AI and a simplistic world design but it doesn't excuse the lack of fun. If it weren't for the presentation and general polish, I would say this is a mediocre game getting propped up by the 40K IP.

Axiom Verge

I think this game may be too retro for me. I wasn't playing games when the first Metro games were popular so I don't have any nostalgia for this. Unfortunately, it did not click for me.

Cyberpunk 2077

I have to admit I was a huge hater when this game came out. I had absolutely no hype for it, didn't watch any trailers and new very little about it. So to me, all I saw was a game struggling and floundering, and developer promises broken and a poor product sold at full price. I wrote the game off and moved on. Fast forward to the 2.1 patch. On a whim I broke my promise of never playing this game and bought it and the DLC on sale. Little did I know the game would become one of my favorites of all time. I think it really helped that I didn't have any expectation for the game, I know a lot of people expected an RPG with dialogue and decisions and character progression, and of course were disappointed with a mostly linear game. Meanwhile I came in expecting to shoot a bunch of goons for about 10 hours and was happily surprised with 100 hrs of beautiful realistic and well acted characters, a compelling story, and very fun gameplay. Johnny Silverhand lives rent free in my head.

Monument Valley

A cute little game kill a few hours. None of the puzzles were stumpers but the vibes were clean and it didn't overstay its welcome. I also played the bonus levels and found them to be about the same. I first learned about this game from House of Cards. That did not age well, but the game was good enough to survive that hit.

Downwell

I played a bit of Downwell on Play Pass. I found it to be okay, nothing compelling. Obviously it's only meant to be a little mini game but it didn't have the draw found in Flappy Bird or 2048.

Slay The Spire

I played this game in short bursts on my phone over the course of a week. I think that is really what it was designed for, I can't image sitting down at a computer and focusing on it. The mechanics have enough depth to be engrossing until the end of the game. I slew the spire and unlocked all 4 characters, though The Silent was my favorite and was the one I used to beat the game. Overall a very enjoyable experience.

Final Fantasy Tactics

A foundational game with absolutely beautiful artwork and animations. I would watch an un-narrated long-play of this game just to follow the story. Though I do not have much patience for the difficulty mainly due to the clunky interface and slow time to get back in the fight. I have played hours of this game and enjoyed them but I have to put it down.

Sifu

I had a passing interest in the game and finally decided to pick it up after Jacob Geller made a video about it. It has such an amazing progression, from the episodic aging to the true ending. I started out as I assume most do, running around getting hit, dying, barely making it through levels. But as I got better at the game I slowly mastered the flow of bait and punish, as well as the rush and strike. I easily made it through large portions of the game untouched and finally finished the game first in the bad ending and then the good. The bonus stages were also a blast. In a strange turn of events, this game caused me to want to play Sekiro. I needed more of that beautiful parrying gameplay.
Side note: I played on Linux and experienced a GPU memory leak. The game would get progressively slower until it became a slide show and I had to reboot it. I finally found the cause in one of the graphics settings and it was fixed.

Baldur's Gate III

Thinking...

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

Thinking...

Elden Ring

Thinking...

ABZÛ

Beautiful and accurate sea life. I enjoy a good aquarium and I've been to one of the world's largest as can be seen in my critters page. But it always feels wrong to observe an animal in captivity, clearly they are not meant to be where we have put them, and so they will never behave how they truly would in their natural environment. ABZÛ attempted, and I would argue succeeded, in letting you unobtrusively observe aquatic environments up close and personal. It will never be at good as deep sea diving, but I don't intend on ever doing that so this is more than good enough. Highly recommend to all.

Hollow Knight

When I first played hollow knight it didn't click at all. I don't think I even made it past False Knight. Then I didn't play the game for years until I stumbled upon it once more in my Steam library and decided to give it another shot. That was the beginning of what became an over %100 completion run and some speed runs. I really love this game, it just sounds and looks and plays so right. You may have noticed that I liked the game so much that I themed the whole website around it. Wild.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Thinking...

Going Under

Thinking...

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator

Thinking...

SUPERHOT

Thinking...

Shadow Tactics - Blades of the Shogun

Thinking...

Warhammer 40,000 - Space Marine

Thinking...

Disco Elysium

Hands down one of my favorite games of all time. My first playthrough was absolutely blind and I found the game completely enchanting. The voices, the painterly aesthetic, the characters and choices that affect them. I loved every bit. Then I played it again and found even more to love. This game and it's amazing writing has concretely changed me as a person.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Thinking...

XCOM 2

Thinking...

Metal Slug 3

Thinking...

Fallout 3

Thinking...

Batman: Arkham City

Thinking...

The Stanley Parable

Thinking...

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Thinking...

Fallout: New Vegas

Thinking...

The Darkness II

Thinking...

Goat Simulator

Thinking...

Kingdom Rush

Thinking...

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Thinking...

Deadly 30

Thinking...

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Thinking...

Hotline Miami

Thinking...

Borderlands 2

Thinking...

Carrion

Thinking...

Frostpunk

Thinking...

Ghost of Tsushima

Thinking...

Metro 2033

I never play horror games but this one is something different. Maybe it's more horror themed action? Whatever the category, it is one of my favorite games, especially having played it the first time on the hardest difficulty. I got into a flow where I knew exactly how many bullets each one of my guns had and how much time I had on my air filters. No UI, extreme difficulty, amazing game.