Palworld

Palworld is the craze of today. Everyone is talking about this new addictive game and what I heard about it made me rather perplex. Some people claim it is a Pokemon game mixed with Breath of the Wild while others say it is a mix of Minecraft and Fortnite with Pokemon. Since the only game I played out of these is Breath of the Wild I could only wonder what the game was about and wanted to know for myself. If I were to compare it to something I'd say it is Ark: Survival Evolved with Pokemon.

The game starts with you waking up seeing several lovely creatures. They can be small and resemble a cat or huge and resemble a dinosaur. You will soon find out, after talking to another human, that you are on Palpagos Islands where Pals, the lovely creatures, live. The game tutorial will then lead you through different aspects of the game. You will learn that your character needs to eat or it will die, you will learn that you can capture these Pals and you will also be tasked with building a base. Gathering materials and crafting items is big part of the game and this can be automated by using the Pals to do the work while keeping their sanity.

Gameplay
One of the main aspects of the game is catching Pals. There are 111 different kinds of them and some of them have more variants than 1 making the total number even higher thus. Catching Pals is done by damaging the Pal, making it easier to catch, and then throwing a Sphere at it. The catch rate can be made higher by using a better Sphere, collecting Effigies or incapacitating the Pal in certain way (poison, knock them out, freeze them). Depending on the catch rate the Pal either escapes or gets caught. Caught Pal either shows in your party if there is a vacant slot or your Palbox accessible from your Base. Catching a Pal gives the player experience points. For the first 10 caught Pals of one kind, the player gets a bonus experience points that are not related to the player's level. After that the experience points are fairly low and depend on both the Pal's and player's level.

If one wants to collect all the Pals in the game, they need to explore the vast islands of Palpagos. There are different biomes - lush forests, snowy mountains, desolate desert - in which different kinds of Pals live. Desert is the home of electric Pals, snowy mountains are home to Ice Pals and fiery Volcano is where Fire Pals thrive. Apart from Pals, a player can find entrances to Dungeons that are suitable for different kind of levels. For example in the beginner areas they are for players of level 13, in the most dangerous areas, level 45 is recommended. In dungeons one can find Pals not living anywhere else and a boss Pal which is an Alpha version of Pal that we can find in the wild. Alpha versions are bigger and stronger versions of the Pals. After clearing a dungeon there is a period during which one cannot enter, but then it is available once again for clearing. Dungeons are good for grinding XP as the enemies will respawn after leaving each room - walking in circles thus gives endless Pals to kill or catch. They also contain treasure chests with fairly rare loot.

Pal drops and treasure chest contents are often materials or schematics that can be used for crafting. In order for one to craft, they need to setup a base and build different kind of machines. With each player level, you can unlock and build different kind of structures that allow you to craft items, produce materials or build a lovely home. At the beginning you will just need to get some wood and stones and special Paldium stone to build your first structure. There's plenty of stones and wood around to be collected but very soon you will need way bigger amounts than those you can collect and you will either have to do some logging and mining yourself or put your Pals to work to automate it. Each Pal is capable of different kind of work. There are Pals good for logging or mining. Then there are those that can cool, water or heat. Others can craft or they can even produce materials themselves - mostly food but it can also be wool, cloth or even gold coins! The more you level up the more advanced technology will be available to you. That includes Spheres for catching Pals - the higher the level of a Pal the better Sphere is needed to catch it. Crafting those requires more refined materials that themselves have to be crafted from even more rare materials. This way a need for more bases arises and those may have a sole purpose - mining. Apart from Spheres one will also need better weapons to deal more damage and armor to stay alive when fighting.

Combat is one of the main aspects of the game as well but is fairly limited. It is a real time 3d action combat that involves both melee and ranged weapons. You can attack and you can dodge and that is pretty much it. There is a roll move that can be used to dodge attacks but that drains a lot of stamina so I mostly just ran or walked away. One Pal, from your party of max 5 Pals, can also join the fight. You can throw a Sphere to the place where you want the Pal to spawn at will by pressing E (and recall it back at any time). Some Pals can be used as a mount. When mounted the player can use three of their abilities at will (they have a cooldown). Certain weapons and Pal abilities can take advantage of Pal's weak points and can deal more damage when a weak point is hit. Pals learn abilities when they level up. They level up when you do any activity, but gain most experience when Pal is being captured or killed. Abilities can also be learned by using an ability fruit that can be found somewhere on Palpagos Island. Apart from learning new abilities Pal's stats - Health, Attack, Defense, Work speed - can be augmented. For that player needs to collect lots of Pal souls. The player's abilities can be augmented by stat points gained (except defense) at each level up or with equipment (armor provides additional defense points). The range of weapons is not that big and some are different in fire power, what makes a weapon better is the time it takes to reload. I spent most of the time running around with a Crossbow as crafting any handgun or shotgun was not worth the damage output and resources. Letting Pal fight for you is often better as they can deal more damage and only resource they spent is food. Since you will mostly fight other Pals you can also pick a Pal of an element being more hurtful to that specific Pal. Fire Pals will make it hard for Grass Pals and Electric Pals won't be happy when they will get hit by Rock Pals. Pals can also be commanded even though the commands are very limited - they can be commanded to not attack, focus on a single enemy or attack aggressively. The last option doesn't make them attack nonhostile pals as one would suspect.

Verdict: 3.5/5
Palworld is a mixture of survival crafting game and monster catching. The game offers a big open world, over 100 different creatures and 50 level technology tree. This alone makes it worth tens of hours of gameplay.

Talos Principle 2

When I came across Talos Principle I had no idea what the game would turn out to be. I bought it as a puzzle game, hearing many people compare it to Portal, but as I played I discovered it was about way more than just the puzzles. The game posed philosophical questions, ones that are very hard to answer, ones we might never find an answer to. Introspection about one's existence was the theme of the game and for a good reason. As we would find out sooner or later, we were solving puzzles in a simulation which was created by humans to create a self-conscious AI with human values. Those who managed to leave would wake up as the first robotic human in the real world - post apocalyptic Earth.

Talos Principle 2 takes us thousand years in the future after the first human's awakening. The player wakes up as the 1000th human robot and becomes a witness to a strange projection, calling himself Prometheus, making a speech to the robots. You can then embark on an expedition to where the source of the projection was found. That is where you will discover a mysterious pyramid and 12 areas with puzzles similar to those from the simulation you all went through.

Talos Principle 2 is still a puzzle game in its core with philosophical questions but this time there is a fully voiced narrative. From the moment you wake up you will be welcomed by another human robot. You will be able to explore the city the robots built and also talk to them if you choose to (the dialogues are of philosophical nature). Even after leaving on the expedition, you won't be truly alone, as you will be able to talk to the members of the expedition who have different opinions on what their civilization should strive for. That is also about what the story is and your actions will decide in which direction the civilization will go. The questions you will get to ponder about are about morality of a civilization, technological progress, evolution of species and their extinction. Apart from talking to the expedition members directly, you also have access to the city's social media platform. You can join the discussions there and voice your own opinion on the topics.

The puzzles are the main focus of the game. They will feel familiar if you played the first game. The basis is simple, you will be connecting specific color beams with the same color targets, overcoming obstacles to do so can range from easy to difficult. This time around there are no bombs (or turrets) which makes it a calmer experience for those that do not like timing in games. Each area has 8 numbered puzzles, two lost puzzles and a golden gate puzzle which are all very well marked. In order to progress in the story you will have to solve 8 puzzles from an area. Unlike in the first game where the puzzles were getting more and more difficult since the beginning of the game, here the difficulty gets only harder within each area which gives the game a steady pace of progression. Puzzle marked as 1 is the easiest, it is more of a tutorial for a new contraption you can use. There are various contraptions, some fairly easy to use, some that can give you a bit of a headache. For example there is a beam shifter that allows to combine red and blue beam into a green one. You will encounter a quantum tunneler which you can use to create a hole in a specific material walls and use it for light beams to go through. Another contraption can create anti-gravity beam allowing you to move items or your body in the direction of a new gravity. All these contraptions will aid you in connecting the beams and unlocking door where you can find a mysterious blue fire.

Talos Principle 2 also has star puzzles - outside of puzzle area puzzles. In the first game, you could encounter a star somewhere in the area outside of the closed puzzle areas. In order to get to it, you had to come up with a way how to reach it. This usually required certain contraptions you could find in puzzle areas. Getting these out was quite a head scratching task. In general, they were very difficult to solve. In Talos Principle 2, getting a star is much simpler, there are three different kinds of 'puzzles' and once you figure out the first of each type you won't have that much of a hard time to solve them.

Each area out of the 12 has different scenery. I'd buy this game even as a walking simulator as it would be worth the money for the scenery only. It is truly beautiful no matter where you find yourself - be it mountaintops covered in snow, an endless desert, or a forested area. When you find even more beautiful spot you can take a picture using the game's photo mode. While enjoying the environment you can encounter secret labs and different collectibles, be it memories from the founders of the first human-robot civilization, ancient human artifacts, statues or other items. You can also encounter a fire of Prometheus. These once collected can be then used to skip puzzles.

If you played the first game, you might ask, are there tetrimino blocks still in the game? The answer is yes. Once a player collects 8 of the mysterious blue lights in an area a gate will open. To reach the other side a player will have to build a bridge out of the tetrimino blocks - that means finding correct order and correctly rotating the blocks. If the bridge building was limited to those 12 areas it would have been a pleasant experience. Unfortunately you will be forced to build way many more bridges, even ones that go up or down. For some this may be rather tiresome.

Verdict:
Talos Principle 2 is a masterpiece of a game, it is a thought provoking and well made mind-bending puzzle game with beautiful scenery that is well balanced and suitable for all players.

vivd/stasis

vivid/stasis is a rhythm game with a story and fairly difficult puzzles. The rhythm game part is a vertical scrolling 4 key rhythm game with one gimmick - bumper notes. These notes take two lanes and you can just press a key within those two lanes to confirm it. This spices up the game play and makes the reading a bit harder.

The bumper notes are probably what rhythm gamers will get stuck on the most, since you can choose what key to press to confirm them. The good thing about them is just that you just need to hit them within a certain window. In higher difficulties, I just concentrate on confirming them be it early, on time or super late.

The songs in the game are great and if you are a fellow rhythm gamer many of those songs or artists will be known to you. The charting is very good in general at least until level 12 and contains long notes. I'm not a fan of long notes but the LN charts in this game make sense and made me even change my opinion about long notes in general (that require a release at the end). They are well placed and fit into the music. The higher level charts 13 and higher sometimes seem a bit chaotic, they seem less coherent. Still way better than many custom charts I played in other games.

The game can be played casually with no life bar or you can decide to pick a different life bar to make the game more challenging. The harder the life bar the more points/battery you will get (used for unlocking songs/story).

There are options to make the rhythm game part of the game more enjoyable with different kind of usual settings (speed, stats shown/hidden etc).

Vivid/stasis does not have different skins or noteskins though which may be a disadvantage to some. There is not even an option to change colors, which makes it harder for me to play as I can't see pink color well (and need color blind mode for games using pink).

The story part of the game is like a visual novel style game. It's about a group of girls going out on an adventure saving yet another girl. The story is for everyone to experience on their own. There is a lot of things that reflect how many people from the rhythm game community feel and that also may be one of the reason why many people can be very attached to the this game. Even if people won't enjoy the story that much, I would welcome if they would think about the behavior and feelings of the characters in the game.The game features unreal elements but the dialogues and thoughts are very real, realistic.

The story lets a player choose what to do in certain scenarios and depending on that the game will take a certain turn. At the end of the chapters there are puzzles (or locks) to solve and they can be quite difficult to crack. One needs to be attentive to details and use logic to solve them. I liked them very much (I stared at the screen for quite a while before I realized where I could even start).

The game has nice visuals and pixel art style ui. There are also many neat details (animations) that are enjoyable to watch.

Vivid/stasis is very unique game, a mix of rhythm game and a visual novel. The rhythm game part is suited for any kind of a player - be it a total beginner or an experienced player. Unfortunately for beginners, there is nothing like a tutorial and the UI elements and settings may be very confusing. For more experienced players it can still be a bit confusing, but if one doesn't simply try to figure out what does what, doing the puzzles may be a nightmare.

Difficulty-wise there are 4 of them and they start very easy and teach patters fairly well. I think the learning curve is good in this game (I played all difficulties, which I don't usually do).

I enjoyed the story a lot and also like the fact that both parts of the game are intertwined. On the other hand this fact can also be a downside for others.

Verdict: 4/5
I would recommend this game to anyone who likes rhythm games and wants a change from their regular rhythm game of choice. I would also recommend this to anyone who likes nice cryptic puzzles. As for the story, I would recommend it to everyone, because it gives a very good insight into certain people's minds.

Qwilight

In general, Qwilight is a vertical scrolling rhythm game, featuring different key modes, with an internet ranking for 7k (+turntable) that requires a third party login.

For those more invested in VSRG, Qwilight is a BMS player as in, it lets you play BMS/PMS files. On the other hand Qwilight should be looked upon as a game quite different from what you'd expect from Beatmania IIDX or BMS players like Lunatic Rave 2 and Beatoraja. In fact, it's rather closer to Osu!mania.

The client feels more like an osu!mania one when it comes to settings, judgment windows and grading system (and look). Nonetheless, you can make it even more like osu!mania or make it more BMS player friendly.

First you will need to set it up. If you come from BMS you will be alienated by Osu! logic/settings and if you come from Osu! IIDX settings may confuse you. In either case recommend reading the manual first https://taehui.ddns.net/forum/qwilight/350. It took me an hour to setup without reading it, mainly because there are different menus and things I'd expect to be at one place (lane cover, sudden+, speed etc) are not. Just go through each menu and set it to suit you. Note that if you want to set lane cover, lift etc. do it while in-game not on the song selection screen.

What I like about the client is that it gives you a mania-like skin or more IIDX-like one and you can choose if you want gold notes or not. For speed you can either use the slider with both IIDX and beatoraja green number conversion or F3/F4 in-game (no possibility to change lane cover while playing?).

When it comes to gameplay you can choose from different key modes, that are either forced or native ones. For each mode you will have to set input, both keyboard and controller can be mapped. My controller is set in PS2 mode so I can play Infinitas and Beatoraja/LR2 but doesn't work with Qwilight though (I used joy2key to play).

The default windows are quite big compared to LR2/Beatoraja/IIDX. You can make them tighter (or wider) if you like or even set custom ones. You can use LR2/Beatoraja windows but your scores won't submit to the internet ranking.

EX score is missing which made me sad. What you can look at instead is a score which doesn't really say much to me. There is also percentage that can give you a better idea of someone's accuracy (which seems to be more or less a sum of Yell!, Yell and Cool, the three highest judgments). Based on that you are also given a rank. The ranks are D, C, B, A (90%), A+(95%), S(98%), S+(100%). The score is based on the accuracy primarily but it is obvious that other things affect it (type of clear for example).

The life gauge is very different as well. It is way more lenient compared to what IIDX/BMS players are used to (feels similar to the dan course one). There are several different types, similar to IIDX - very hard, hard, normal, easy and very easy (no idea how the easy ones work). In IIDX/BMS when using the normal groove gauge, you need to reach 80% to clear the song but it can go down to 0%. In Qwilight it just goes from 100% to 0%, 0% you fail.

Loading songs (if you already have them downloaded) is a breeze as you just pick a song folder containing them. Otherwise links for downloads are provided, but you still have to download the songs via a browser window that opens. I imported my BMS library of 300GB and it took about 30 seconds to load, this happens every single time the game launches (unlike in other BMS players where once you load it the first time, everything is fast).

Loading tables is easy as well. You can either enter the url of one or manually put it in Qwilight/SavesDir/Level/. The body should be named [filename].json and the header should be named #[filename].json. Then these can be loaded with few clicks. (Once the table is loaded though, you can only text search within the table)

Apart from what I mentioned Qwilight offers a myriad of settings that can make the experience better but one needs to get familiar with the (advanced) menus. I'm very happy what it provides and how well it performs.

Verdict:
Qwilight is a good game if you play it with the default settings and participate in the internet ranking. The way how Qwilight functions is unique and thus makes it incompatible with Lunatic Rave 2/Beatoraja Internet Ranking - you can't compare scores from the other BMS players with Qwilight ones.

I can see Qwilight as a brigde for player who want to start playing BMS but are too afraid to try other BMS players or find playing IIDX/BMS hard. Qwilight is easy (for a BMS player) to setup and offers a full experience right away.

I can highly recommend this to anyone who would like to explore the world of BMS but may not have the necessary skill or mindset for it. Qwilight can help beginners gain confidence. I would also highly recommend this to (7k) osu!mania players, as this is a very easy way to explore BMS without the need to change playing habits or gaining a vast knowledge about the whole BMS world prior setting a BMS player up.

(There is one negative thing I did not manage to solve. From time to time the input simply freezes. This can be a Cool gotten out of a Yell! but can also outright fail you. This may not be happening to everyone though)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was on my list of games to play for a very long time similarly to previous Zelda titles which were being released on different consoles. This is what made getting to play them a bit harder since this was still pre-Wii U and pre-Switch time. Few years later after the game's release, I finally delved into the open world Breath of the Wild offers.

Open your eyes

The game starts with Link waking up after a regenerating 100 year slumber. After walking out of the Shrine of Restoration Link finds himself on the Great Plateau which is already relatively large area to explore. The Great Plateau is on a high cliff so Link can't leave it before he finds out what his quest is - to defeat Calamity Ganon a huge beast he failed to defeat 100 years ago that devastated Hyrule.

When you reach this point after hours of game play you might still think that this game will be similar to previous Zelda games but it is the moment when you will fully realize it is not as you are suddenly given a freedom that seems to be very rare in games.

Once you makes it out of the Great Plateau it is up to you if you will follow up on one of the main quests or you will just go explore. Each of the locations you are supposed to reach is marked on a map on your Sheikah Slate (one of ancient technology gadgets, helping you on your way). The blinking dots are, as you will notice, in unmapped areas.

In order to get a map you need to climb a Tower and scan the area. This may sound easy, and at first it is, but the further from the central Hyrule the harder it gets to reach and climb the Towers. Thankfully when you triumphantly reach the top of the tower and activate it, you will be able to use it as a fast travel point. From the Tower you can look around and find places of interest that you can mark on the map thanks to Scope function (by pressing the right thumbstick) and then just start a new adventure of getting there. It felt like going geocaching when doing this, just going straight in the direction of the coordinates. Reaching the destination this way may turn out to be a very difficult but it is doable as Link can climb and swim or fly over things on a paraglider. He can get anywhere!

Link cannot do these activities indefinitely though, they all depend on his stamina. When you run out of it, Link either starts walking if he was running, starts falling of a cliff if he was climbing, drowns if he was swimming etc.

Shrines

There is plenty of places of interest for you to discover but the obvious ones are Shrines - there's 120 of them or even more. In order to find some Shrines you need to complete a quest/puzzle. The Shrines on the Great Plateau serve as a tutorial ones each giving you a rune - an ability you can use. The first two runes allow you to create either spherical or a rectangular bomb out of a thin air and detonate it. Another rune gives you the power of Magnesis which allows you to move metallic objects. The fourth rune - Stasis - allows you to stop time of an object for few seconds. The Shrines outside of the starting area are some sort of mini dungeons that offer a trial - mostly physics based puzzles that usually take minutes to finish. Often you will need to use Link's rune abilities, sometimes the puzzles will be controller motion based and some are combat trials where you 'just' face a Guardian.

The Shrine puzzles can be solved in variety of ways so you don't need to find the one and only way to solve them which is good. Either saves you frustration or makes it more fun. At the end of each shrine a monk will give you an Spirit Orb. Four of these Orbs can be traded for a heart container or stamina container. At first finding Shrines will be easy but later on finding them or reaching them will become a puzzle of its own.

Surviving

The world you will be exploring has rules and if you learn them you will survive. Most of the rules you'd expect from real life. The first time you will try to enter a snow covered chilly area you will find out that Link starts to lose hearts while shivering with cold. At this point you might realize that the temperature indicator on the screen has a reason to be there. The first storm may be also a revelatory experience when a lightning hits you before you realize what is wrong (Link having a metallic object equipped).

Items in Breath of the Wild break. This will force you to change weapons often, discover their advantages or disadvantages or sometimes simply decide not to use them and save them for either different activity or different encounter. For example, if you want to chop trees you may want to use an woodcutter's axe, if you want to mine ore you may want to use use iron sledgehammer and if you want to break someone's shield you want to use a heavy weapon. There's plenty weapons around and enemies also drop them and I don't mean as a 'drop' when they are defeated. If you stun them, they will release their grips on weapons or shields so you can snatch them and use them against them.

Day and night are also different. During the night there are undead monsters lurking that will come out of nowhere (the ground). Note that undead monsters don't die. On the other hand flesh and blood monsters also need to sleep and you can sneak up to them.

Fauna and flora differs in different regions and some can only be encountered during the night or certain weather. If you think this is something for decorative purposes, you are wrong. One of the activities you will most likely do a lot in the game is - cooking. Eating food is what recovers Link's hearts. Cooked food can recover more hearts or even give him special abilities (resistance to cold, higher attack etc.) and for that you need to look for different kind of ingredients.

There is no cooking tutorial but each ingredient or monster part has a description which will give you a hint on what it does (it follows a simple logic). Once you figure out the rules for cooking you can prepare all the meals and elixirs you will need on your adventures. While trying you might end up preparing a 'Dubiously looking food' (that is actually edible).

In order to survive in the wilderness you will also need to learn how to fight. At first just picking up a tree branch and beating up Bokoblins with it will be good enough but for stronger enemies you may need to either come up with a combat strategy or learn how to parry. You have access to melee weapons and ranged weapons (just bows). There's a wide variety of them and you will always want to have certain types in your inventory. The inventory slots are very limited. There is a way to get more but at a cost - you need to find the creature that can give you more slots in exchange for Korok leaves that can sometimes be hard to find (mini puzzles).

Verdict

Breath of the Wild feels definitely like a Zelda game even though it is vastly different. It feels more like playing a game from decades ago when you were simply thrown into the game and it was up to you to figure out what to do and where to go next. There are no endless tutorials and you don't need to blindly follow a scripted story. Instead you are free to roam a huge open world and if you wish you can complete the 5 given main quests one day. I highly recommend doing the Divine Beast quests because those are nice little dungeons. The world in Breath of the Wild has its mechanics and it is up to you to adapt. While Link doesn't get any better in terms of stats for example, it is you who gets to know the world and mechanics better. The more you discover the easier is to survive. If by a chance you haven't played this game yet, go get it and play it.

And if by a chance you can't play BotW just yet, go visit Breath of the Wild world in VRChat. Honestly, the way how the game works this would be great in virtual reality. Doing backflips wouldn't probably work but there are many things that would work and I treated the game more like a VR one rather than a traditional one.

Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)

Stray

Stray was a long awaited game by many cat lovers including me. When you first start the game you are shown a stray cat from the 3rd person. You can control it and your first task is to play with the other strays that are in the area. After watching several beautiful playful scenes including these kitties you embark on what seems to be a routine daily journey hopping from one pipe to another. At one point though the cat falls and lands in what seems to be an abandoned city. It turns out to be not so abandoned as the cat will encounter humanoid robots with human behavior. Your task is to get back to the Outside from which the cat came. The cat is joined by B-12 drone that helps the cat and the player to reach the goal.

Stray is a straightforward platforming game that includes several puzzles and offers additional sidequests. While the story and gameplay may be simple, the game bursts with life and cuteness even in this cyberpunk devastated and mostly abandoned city. You explore the world and discover more about the city and its history - about what actually happened.

While roaming you can also simply be a cat, you can scratch rugs, walk over keyboards, nuzzle robots, run under their legs, knock objects off, meow or simply sleep.

The platforming part is rather easy, you simply follow directions that the game provides in cues that are more or less noticeable and if you need help all you need to do is ask your companion robot. You use spacebar to jump and the cat does it automatically meaning that if you are really bad at jumping like me, you don't need to be afraid of playing the game. On the other hand it also takes the effort from you and for some this can be a downside as well. There are several chase parts in which you have to run and avoid mysterious creatures though.

The visuals of the game are wonderful. All the environments are nicely crafted. The combination of dark city with its neon signs blinking and with nature creeping in is wonderful to watch. The lightning all this creates is perfect for really nice shots but sadly cats don't take selfies.

The animations are what breath life into the game. This mostly applies to the cat itself. If you ever had a feline companion at home you will be able to see how truthful the digital cat's behavior is. You can truly feel like a cat playing this game.

Verdict:
Stray is a short (several hours long) puzzle platformer game that puts you in a role of a cat finding a way to its home territory. The game has a simple linear story but offers two open environments to be explored. The game is played from the perspective of a cat meaning that in order to traverse these environments the player needs to think like a cat - spotting a ladder and wanting to use it is not what a cat would do since it can simply jump. The player is free to behave like a cat and some of these cat activities will need to be used to solve puzzles in the game.

Recommended to anyone who just wants to enjoy a very well crafted beautiful game featuring a feline protagonist.

Ren (stsungjp @twitter)

DJMAX Respect V

I was introduced to DJMAX what seems to be ages ago when a rhythm game player came to me and asked if I can try the game out. I was like 'sure, why not'. What I did not know was that he let me play the hardest song in the game and see how I'd do. I cleared the song to his astonishment. I asked what the game it was and that is how I discovered DJMAX. It became one of my most played games on PSP.

Wait, another vertical scrolling rhythm game?

DJMAX is a game that had a very big following and could have reached mainstream if it was released on more platforms earlier. That decision came rather late. Relatively recently DJMAX made it to PC, that is with DJMAX Respect V. DJMAX is a vertical scrolling rhythm game with several button modes. You can start with 4 button play, progress to 5 buttons, then 6 buttons and eventually end up playing 8 buttons. Apart pressing the regular buttons there might appear a slide note from time to time, there are two slide notes (mapped to Shift keys on PC) and they add little bit more complexity to the game. Since this is a game that was meant to be played with d-pad and buttons the song charts are made the way that it is possible to play them with these - players used to play rhythm games meant for keyboard play may wonder why there's just certain combinations used in the charts.

There are long notes in the game that you need to press as well, just hold them and release them on time. Each note be it a regular note or long note are being judged - you get judgment from 1% to 100% depending on how close to being on time you were. The timing windows are actually huge which makes it easier to hit a note (if you miss by a chance you can just press it again to still hit it).

The timing in the game is very lax (feels even more lax compared to the PSP games). It is the combo, as in many Korean games, that counts the most with you keeping max Fever going. There is a Fever bar that fills with each note confirmation, when it gets full you need to activate it to get a 2x multiplier. Then you continue to fill it again. When you fill it and activate it in time you get a higher multiplier for everything (3x). The maximum multiplier you can get is 5x which will stay for as long as you manage to fill the bar and activate Fever in time.

Each song has a difficulty shown in stars. It ranges from the easiest 1 to the hardest 15 for the 'playstation control' charts. There is another scale marked SC which is meant for keyboard play and starts around 3 and goes to 15 as well and will introduce a playstation player to more patterns and chord combinations making it even way harder - a PC VSRG player will find these SC difficulties more familiar. Note that a SC 3 charts is more like playstation 8 in terms of difficulty.

There are several modes in which you can play, there is Air that lets you play a randomly chosen song or just watch and comment on it. There's Freestyle mode where you can pick any song you want and get the best score. Then there's Online play where you play against other players either using a ladder system or just playing for fun. Lastly there is Mission mode in which you complete a set of songs with certain modifiers or conditions.

So much music
DJMAX offers a wide range of music styles. Many of the songs may be new to non-rhythm game players but there is a lot to choose from and the music is good. For rhythm game enjoyers there are DLCs from previous versions of the game including Technika but also from other rhythm games like Chunithm, Deemo, Muse Dash, Groove Coaster etc. The base game gives you over 150 tracks (there are free tracks added from time to time). All these songs have music videos that you can unlock and watch in the game as well.

DJMAX has style
Korean games tend to look great and DJMAX is not an exception. It looks simply great. It has a great style, and not just one. You can unlock more skins and also customize the look of in-game when you are actually trying to read the charts and pressing buttons. Not many games can rival the look of this game.

In order to unlock customizations including songs you need to fulfill certain criteria. There is a lot of achievements to get in the game and are neatly presented to you. Some may seem impossible to get but when you get them you will feel rewarded. There is no other game that motivated me enough to actually hunt the achievements!

Not everything is great...
DJMAX is a great game that offers a lot to the player but unfortunately there are few things to note. First the game uses anti-cheat Xigncode which requires an internet connection. There is no way to play the game offline or with a bad internet connection. Second thing to note is that the game is very expensive. To this date the total of the game including DLCs would total for me to 388EUR. It is for a lot of content though but there is even more content that is behind a paywall. Each season you can get 'free' stuff, even a skin if you finish all steps. That you can only get if you get a battle pass though. You can even pay for it to automatically unlock at the end of the season. Means throwing a lot of money at Neowiz.

The last thing I'm not fond of is the fact that Steam achievements expect you to have those expensive DLCs. Perfecting this game means a lot of money spent.

Verdict
You can clearly see that DJMAX was created with love. It has everything players could possibly hope for in a rhythm game. It is beautiful to look at, offers 150+ songs of various genres, has different button modes and game modes and gets many DLCs with more great music. So far it may be the only game coming from a different platform that runs without any issue on PC. Unfortunately the game needs constant internet connection and is rather expensive.

I can highly recommend this game to anyone who likes to press buttons at high speed.

Ren

Muse Dash

Since rhythm games first emerged in late 90s many games were produced for different platforms. With the rise of mobile devices using a touch screen this game genre got even more popular. Finding a good rhythm game became harder and in order for a rhythm game to be good it has to stand out even more than in the earlier days. Muse Dash is one of those games that stands out with its art style, catchy tunes and simple but great game play.

Muse Dash developed and published by PeroPeroGames is a side scrolling rhythm game which makes you press two buttons or tap the screen at two different places in time with the music's beat. On your screen you'll see one of your chosen characters running, attacking enemies and avoiding obstacles. The enemies and obstacles, the notes following rhythm of the song, come at her in two lanes. In order to attack or avoid these you have to press one or the other button in time. You can map those yourself, but the default for keyboard is D, F for ground level and J, K for the upper level. Apart from notes that you simply hit, there are also sheet notes that you have to hold and (mini)bosses that require you to punch them many times in a very short time. The character has hit points. Whenever you run into an enemy or an obstacle the character will lose some life and points. Sometimes, in a chart, you'll see a heart. If you run through it you will regain some life and gain extra points.

The game is very simple but the very lively graphics and animations make it a great playing experience. On the other hand, sometimes this can be difficult to read. Some notes will come from unlikely places and won't correspond to the blue/pink color the regular notes have. While this may be a bit of a challenge to sight-read it is very satisfying to hit all the enemies.

There is over 50 default songs that you can unlock. After each stage you will gain some experience. With each level at first you will unlock one song. At higher levels it will take longer. Leveling up will also give you more items that you can use to get more sexy girls and cute support animals. Each of the characters and elfins have certain abilities that can either help you survive songs or get higher scores etc. So you can find a combination that suits your playstyle, skill or current motivation you have for playing (getting full combos or getting the highest score etc.).

Getting the highest score possible will depend on your ability to use a special feature in the game named Fever. While under Fever score received will be higher. Finding the best moment to use Fever in a song will lead you to getting higher score, considering that you can full combo the song already.

For Asian rhythm game players the music won't be anything new. I can name a few, from my favorites creating nice chill instrumental tracks like M2U, a_hisa, Ayatsugu_otowa to pop songs with vocals to very well known artists like Camellia, REDALiCE, t+pazolite, USAO which are known for their hardcore music. While it may not seem from my examples, the music in the game is very diverse and I honestly think that anyone can find something they will like.

As in many rhythm games, the songs have different difficulties - Easy, Hard and Master. Master difficulty needs to be unlocked and as in other Asian games you need to get an S on the easier difficulty (in this case Hard). That means getting 90% accuracy or higher. See each enemy hit is judged either by Perfect, Great if you are a bit too early or late and Miss if you miss the note. Obstacles can be missed (usually meaning you run into them and take damage) or passed (jumped over).

The game has leaderboards, that are filled with people who got 100% accuracy and even the highest score. There are also many achievements that are either song based or just game based. There is so many of them that you will most likely get some each time you play. It adds to the replayability of the game or the songs themselves.

The scores are transferable from mobile to PC and vice versa, but the DLCs you have to buy for each platform. The 'you get everything' DLC for Muse Dash costs 30 EUR. It is definitely worth all the money. The base game itself is very cheap - 3.49 EUR - and for that price offers hours and hours of fun.

If by a chance side scrolling feels odd to you, you can always turn the monitor sideways!

Verdict:
Muse Dash is a very cute looking, lewd and nicely done casual rhythm game. Game play is very simple but that also makes it great for beginners and casual players that just want to enjoy an easy game. The aesthetics of the game and animations make playing the game a great experience and make you want to come back and simply play more. The replayability is also helped by many achievements and special abilities by your character and its elfin. The music is diverse and the charts feel fun and not too straining for your fingers. In overall this a very solid and cheap game no matter if you play it on mobile, Switch or PC.

Ren

The Talos Principle

The Talos Principle is a puzzle game with a story that asks philosophical questions about being human, life, death and eternal life.

You will wake up in a garden and hear the words of Elohim, god-like creature claiming to have created you, guiding you one of his children to a temple and telling you to pass different kind of tests.

You will learn that you should be collecting Sigils to progress. Each of these is at the end of a spatial puzzle. Each of the puzzles is taking place in a closed area that can often feel like a labyrinth. You will have to deal with forcefields, sentinels (some explode when you walk closer to them), laser guns, closed door etc. For that you can use one or more tools you will get on your journey. For example, one tool will allow you to redirect laser beams, other will disable a forcefield or stop a sentinel in its track. There is also a cube that you can use in various ways (climb, or use to put pressure on something) and a fan that allows you to get to difficult to access places for example. One of the weirdest tools is a recording device (when you need two people to solve the puzzle).

The Sigils you will be collecting have a form of a tetrimino and are used to unlock doors. You will unlock a way to other very distinct worlds. In each world there is a hub from which there are doors leading to other parts of that one world. There you have the individual puzzles rewarding you with the Sigils. The Sigils have different colors and the difficulty of the puzzles is also reflected in that. You will start with collecting Green and Yellow Sigils mostly and these puzzles are quite easy. The green ones are good introductory puzzles, yellow ones are about testing what you learned from the green ones. In the later stages of the game all you will be collecting are red tetriminos and it is where it starts to get complicated. While exploring the worlds and solving puzzles you might come across golden stars. Those you can also collect and will take you through a hidden door to other puzzles. In order to get a golden star you will have to think outside of the individual puzzles, you will often need tools from different puzzles. There are different ways how to solve these and are very fun. Actually sometimes you won't even see the star itself, you will just encounter something that's not supposed to be there and after you get there you will discover a star. All the puzzles are very satisfying to solve and the star challenges were really brilliant and often breathtaking. The names of the puzzles are something to pay attention to, especially if you get stuck because they will give you a hint.

One of the great things is also the fact that you don't need to do any of the puzzles in a certain order but you do need to collect specific tetriminos and certain amount of stars in order to open doors. It gives you freedom and also won't frustrate you if you get stuck. You can just go do different puzzles and come back (to realize how simple the solution was). All the puzzles are very well designed and while some need you to stack objects in a certain way you will mostly be thinking about how to effectively use the tools at your disposal since you've got a limited amount which is lower than the number of obstacles.

While exploring you will encounter QR messages from other children, audio logs, and (beeping) terminals. This is where the story part of the game takes places. When you hear a beeping sound and go closer you will discover a terminal on which you can read messages and articles from a corrupted archive and this way you will learn that something went terribly wrong. You will start asking yourself questions and later you will start a conversation with conscious artificial intelligence. It is here where most of the philosophical questions will be asked. This being will start questioning you and you will have to think hard how to answer. Your point of view will then be questioned and it is up to you whether you change your mind or not. The thing is, you are a robot while you think you are a human being, but are you?

You will start to think about mythology, eternal life, God, technology and (trans)humanity. Maybe you'll start pondering about your own future and the future of today's society. You will always be given a lot of time to ponder about all these questions and doing puzzles in the meantime. When you hear the next beep, you will most probably be ready for next encounter.

The conscious in the computer system will start making you doubt your creator - Elohim. You will most probably start questioning Elohim (hopefully because than the game will end prematurely) and start wondering what's at the top of the Tower which he forbid you to visit and will remind you of it whenever you start climbing up. If you decide to climb the tower you will learn even more and will still be able to decide what the outcome of the game will be.

I'm not entirely sure how to write about all that is going on in the game, I'm not that good of a writer. The experience is very unique and personal. The story is very deep, poses very important questions and everything is very well written. In all that there is even room for humor.

Even though I wanted to end the review here, I should also comment on graphics and sound. The game is very beautiful. The environments are large and I spent hours just walking around enjoying the view, the atmosferical effects and even tried to reach different places to see the environment from different point of views. This sometimes resulted in me stumbling upon a golden star. I had no problems with performance in VR and enjoyed a crystal clear and sharp textures all the time no matter how fast I moved or how close I was a wall. I was actually surprised how well the game looks on Rift because many games don't that great compared to Index. I would have never guessed this game is from 2014. Music and sound is excellent. Music is a delight and I'd just stand on the beach, watch the setting sun and listen to the music. The little voice acting there is, is impeccable - in terms of it makes you feel emotions and not many games I played achieved that.

Verdict:
I bought this game for the puzzles but very soon realized that it is not about the puzzles. While the game can be played just as a puzzle game, and very good one, you will miss a lot if you ignore the story. The story is philosophical, thought-provoking, well written. The game has a very good learning curve, is also well structured and offers even more challenging puzzles to hardcore players. The game environments are distinct, beautiful, breathtaking and simply serene. The music is soothing for the soul. In overall it is a perfect game.

Thanks for reading
Ren

The Room Three

The first The Room game I played was the VR title named The Room: Dark Matter. I enjoyed the game very much (review here) and that is why I decided to buy the previous games that existed at the time. After playing The Room One I was very disappointed with it (review here) and was not sure if I'd play the following games. I suffered through The Room Two - too ambitious project Fireproof Games didn't seem to know what to do with - and then just gave up. 11 months later I decided to play the third game in the series. To my surprise the game was different than the previous two games.

The Room Three is a mix of point and click adventure and a puzzle game developed and published by Fireproof Games for PC in 2018, three years after its original iOS/Android release. The game is about still unnamed protagonist from the previous games who gets kidnapped and imprisoned by The Craftsman on an island everyone avoids. The protagonist's task is to prove himself to the Craftsman and that is how the adventure begins. What you need to do is power up rooms or buildings, open a hidden door and solve a series of puzzles to get a pyramid. After collecting all the pyramids you are allowed to go to the final stage of the game and reach one of the several endings. While on your adventure or rather escape you learn more about the mystery about the Null - mysterious alien creatures/energy - through notes left by the Craftsman and his prisoner.

The Room Three is different compared to the previous two games mainly because the game takes place in one building complex where you have to walk around and backtrack to find and solve puzzles. For me it breathed more life into the game and gave me a sense of immersion that I didn't have in the previous games. The environments are beautiful and walking around would be simply wonderful if you could do that, instead there is one place you will simply appear after a rather long animation of getting there. The game is still linear and won't allow you to roam freely most of the time while you are 'locked in' a chapter. You are actually locked in a certain part and can't leave until you finish the chapter. After finishing the game for the first time you will be able to 'Change your fate'. You will be back in the old manor and you can try to walk around and solve certain puzzles to reach 3 more different endings. This time the objects you are looking for can be anywhere and can be used on something being totally elsewhere. Once you get all the needed objects you can go to the final stage of the game, solve the same puzzles over and over and get the different endings. In a way, we can be happy not to replay the whole game, but 'solving' the puzzles again certainly feels bad.

As for the puzzles, similarly to previous games, I wouldn't really call them puzzles. The game is more of a 'find an object, insert it into another object, move this and that, get a new object'. This time the order of puzzles is actually logical even though you still don't need to use your brain to solve them. As in the previous games you'll be clicking around, finding things that can be moved or pressed. If you played the previous games you won't need to click around that much since you might already look at a drawer from all angles in anticipation of a switch or a button at an unlikely place. When you get a new object you'll try to think where it could fit. I'd say the complexity went down in this game but I don't think it was a bad decision. The puzzles and menial tasks you have to do are not confusing which makes the experience good. Thanks to the eyepiece that shows hidden things you can also enter small places - see Alice in Wonderland - and thus operate some things from the inside. I liked this very much even though it wasn't as cool as in VR.

There are still hints in the game. If you get stuck you can click on a lit up question mark and get a hint. There might be more hints for one puzzle and there is a timer when the next one becomes available. There are no hints for puzzles needed to be solved for the alternate endings.

The graphics is beautiful. The textures are beautiful and seem to be of high resolution. Lighting is great. The only thing that's weird are the Null tentacles which seem to be rather low poly compared to other models and moving at half framerate. I haven't played the game on mobile but the PC version truly feels like a game meant for a computer unlike the previous games that tried to run in a mobile phone resolution and whatnot.

I can't comment on sound or music because I turned it off (due to certain sound effects irritating me in the previous games so much).

As for the controls it felt similarly awkward as in the previous games. If you can avoid playing this game with a mouse I recommend doing that - either a touch screen or tablet. On the other hand due to less creative and complex puzzles you don't need to be moving objects in a really strange way so you should not struggle as much as in the previous game.

Verdict:
The Room Three feels more like a PC adventure game rather than a mobile puzzle game. It is a point and click game and that's about it. The previous games focused solely on the puzzles, the first one on single objects, second one on various objects within a room. The Room Three takes it a step further which may not work that well for a mobile device but works on PC. On the other hand this game is very limited in terms of exploration and this way feels rather lacking. While many animations felt more smooth and faster than in previous games, the one most important animation - movement from one place to another - takes a very long time.
The graphics are way better and make the game a very enjoyable atmospheric experience (with several horror elements).
The controls are still as clunky as ever but the puzzles themselves require less object manipulation which results in less frustration. On the other hand the game is rather buggy and often there are certain layers of graphics that do not align and that make operating the game or solving puzzles more frustrating.
I finished the game in 6 hours including the alternate endings which makes it longer than its predecessors and provides more on the story as well.
I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone, but if mindlessly clicking is your thing you can give this game a try.

Thank you for reading
Ren

Prince of Persia review and walkthrough

Prince of Persia is a platformer developed and published by Brøderbund in 1990. It is one of the first PC games I got to play and as such it was the game to teach me how to use the keyboard to control the prince, survive and eventually, many hours later, save the princess for the first time.

Most platformers I played around the time were rather action related. You were running around avoiding weapon projectiles, shooting enemies while trying to get from point A to point B often jumping across gaps, traps and moving platforms. When playing game like that you had first discover what is possible and what is not in terms of jumping, falling, avoiding or shooting. There was nothing that would hint that. It was up to you to figure that out by trial and error. I was pretty bad at this and I knew that spending money on these arcade games was a recipe for disaster.

Prince of Persia is a different kind of platformer. The game looks realistic compared to other games of the time, that is primarily because it is realistically animated. The intro shows Jaffar and a princess. The interaction between the two characters shows movement that made me see these characters as living people. I also enjoyed the colorful graphics and the rather unusual point of view in 2d platformer games. When the game begins we see prince being thrown into a dungeon. When he landed on the ground I realized that this character would walk, run, jump and fight like a human being - not a floating 2d sprite that hardly had any legs. I was right about it. The prince's moves were all animated. The animation felt real even though one would question the efficacy of the movements.

Starting in the depths of a dungeon, you need to find a sword first to defeat your first enemy and then go up to the highest level and save the princess. You have 60 minutes to beat the game. You'll be running around the level trying to find a way to another door leading up to another level. There will be gaps you'll need to jump across, blades you need to avoid, environmental puzzles to solve (usually just involving different platforms to step on or avoid), enemies to kill or avoid etc. The prince moves in a way human person would, meaning he can't just unrealistically far or high. He can make a step, walk, run, crouch, climb up or down, jump (over something), do a running jump. All these follow the same rules so knowing them you will need to figure out how to clear a level. The prince has 3 lives at the beginning of the game and there are potions that can be drank to either get additional life (hidden at places that won't take you closer to next level), cure a life or lose life (these are blue). The prince loses life when hit by a sword, or when he falls two floors down, or when a platform falls on his head. The prince will die when he falls lower than two floors, is stabbed in the back or gets caught in a deadly trap be it blades or something else. After dying the level restarts with the exception (level 3 where there is a checkpoint).

As for combat, the fighting is also more realistic than other arcade platformers. When prince gets near an enemy he draws his sword. The player can either attack, black or sheath the sword. Parrying is not necessary to use against most enemies but two Jaffar himself and one of his best guards. The enemies are harder and harder to beat and even have their own fighting style.

The game doesn't feature in-game music, just intro and outro music which I enjoyed. The sound effects are ok. At that time though, how many of us had sound cards that could actually produce good sound?

Verdict:
This game is a must play for any gamer. Prince of Persia is a game that started a new genre of games and set the bar quite high. The game has very good graphics and atmosphere. It has great animations that breathed life into the game. The gameplay is good, it requires some skill in controlling the prince but it is something anyone can learn to do. The level design is great and it forces you to explore while being wary of the remaining time since there is 60 minutes to complete the game.

For those that would find the game too difficult for some reason, you can type 'prince megahit' to run the game which will unlock cheats. Pressing + will give you more time, K will kill any enemies on screen, R will resurrect the prince etc.

Thanks for reading

Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)

Paper Dolls 2

Review of Paper Dolls: Original (includes a walkthrough).

Paper Dolls 2 is a sequel to Paper Dolls: Original. It is a horror game from a Chinese studio named Litchi Game. Paper Dolls 2 is very similar to Paper Dolls: Original and I would suggest to play that game before playing this one.

The game starts where the first game ended, on a second floor of an old abandoned Yin mansion. Yang Mingyuan mysteriously appeared in the mansion after a car crash where he tried to find his daughter and his search continues in this game too.

You will explore the mansion at crawling speed while collecting clues, journal entries, and dialogues from the past. You will also need to solve puzzles to advance, unlock locked or sealed door and interact with spirits. The game introduced combat system. At the beginning you will have to hide or run away from the spirits but when you acquire weapons you will be able to defend and attack. Each spirit has several lives and thus needs to be shoot several times. The spirits have weak points when they attack, so if you shoot them at that time you will just need to shoot them twice. Otherwise you'll need to shoot 4 times. There are jars of wine scattered around which you can use to your advantage as they will explode and take down a spirit/paper doll nearby. There are boss battles in which you will have to take down one spirit several times before you will be able to seal it away. These can become frustrating depending on your skill at defending or attacking at a precise moment. The good thing is that you now have one additional life, so you can take one hit. There is a way to cure yourself, which may be needed during boss battles.

The game also has autosave feature but it's not that great. It will autosave before a major event but only once during the playthrough. The game won't save after that event so if you die right afterwards you have to start all over again.

The puzzles were a disappointment for me in this game. It may be because I got used to the style from the previous game and did not find most of the puzzles intriguing or fun. There was just one puzzle that I enjoyed (mirror room one). I solved half of the puzzles by trial and error and half by just following instructions. Most of the puzzle clues seemed irrelevant to me (if the talisman is confusing to you, all you need to do is set it to characters that are written on the seal).

The game is longer because the play area is larger (two floors). I was afraid it would have negative impact on the game but I found it well balanced. You won't need to be running around like crazy searching for something since what you need is most of the time close to the location where you need it. Later on, it won't be that way, but you will also know where to go with the item you received. It won't take you that long to reach the place. I'd still recommend saving the game close to the location you are going to visit next and memorizing the plan of the floors.

As for graphics and sound. I found both good. They are better than in the Paper Dolls: Original. The environments are more detailed and even more atmospheric. The sound is better, primarily due to the fact that you won't be going through door that often and because the voice acting is done in Chinese. I wouldn't say it's great but it keeps you immersed in the game. Music is great once again.

Verdict: The game has nice feel, graphics and sound. I'd enjoy just walking around the mansion in VR. The larger map may be upside or a downside, but I found it well done. Combat is something that frustrated me through majority of the game. I spent 3 hours running around the mansion and 9 hours in combat. Spirits have different behaviors but once you get them you shouldn't have much problems with them. The puzzles were disappointment as I did not need to use my brain (mostly used it for fights in which I terrible died because I'm incapable of controlling the protagonist). I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone, but if you enjoyed the first game you will most probably enjoy this one too (I didn't but still finished it for the story - the Yin family story concludes in Paper Dolls 2).

Note: There are cutscenes in the game and they can be skipped by pressing Escape and E.

Thank you for reading
Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)

Beyond: Two Souls

Beyond: Two Souls is a story-rich game from Quantic Dreams studio starring one of my favorite actors Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe whom I'm fond of too. It tells a story of Jodie (Page), a girl that was born with a 'gift' - an invisible entity named Aiden. Being special with such an entity around her, it's no surprise that she was experimented on and it was the government that wanted to use her and find the connection to the world from where the entity belongs to while she just hoped for a normal life. It seems obvious to me that the story was created to make us ponder about what lies beyond death but it seemed to miss the mark (for me at least).

The game is scripted which is no surprise since it is more of an interactive movie that was directed by David Cage. Cage has wonderful ideas but turning then into a masterpiece probably needs a bit more than one single great mind. You, the player, can play as both Jodie and Aiden. The game asks you in which way you want to experience the game, either chronologically or the way it was originally intended - that is what I chose. Here Jodie tells us that she doesn't know how to start and she may as well begin here. We then get to see a scene where we see her at a police station where a sheriff is trying to find out what happened to her. SWAT team storms the station. We don't see what happens, but we get to see how they all end up - dead with the exception of the sheriff who was kind and tried to help.

After the prologue and this chapter we start to see more from Jodie's life. Each chapter shows a life event from anywhere from her life between the age 8 and 23. The chapters of her life are very different and of a different kind of gravity. While this is something I'd expect, it is also something that made the game very incoherent story wise. I was once at a birthday party being a total clueless outcast and then on a CIA mission. Part of the game seems like a slice of life game, then turns into a drama, horror and then sci-fi.

As for gameplay. Well, there isn't much of it. Most of the time you'll probably watch cinematic scenes. When not, you will be asked to do simple tasks like stand up, grab something, walk or shoot a man. There are no puzzles or things that would stimulate the brain, all you have to do is follow a white dot somewhere on the screen. The other part are quick-time events that are happening during the cutscenes. There is also some combat. The game will slow down during a combat and tell you what button to press or where to move your mouse (stick). It's very hard to say what you are supposed to do, so choosing the right direction is quite a guesswork. No matter how beat up you end up, the game just progresses on. Can you even die since Aiden can heal people?

The controls is something I wouldn't normally comment on, but this game is ported from Playstation and as a PC user you are to use a keyboard and mouse. Moving Jodie was rather difficult since the camera seems to have life of its own and often decides to turn in the opposite direction resulting in you turning twice and watch the camera move just to end up in the same spot you started walking from. When the game goes into slow motion you often need to move your mouse in time to a certain direction as I described before. That alone is quite a mess and if it made actual impact on the story (as in Detroit: Become Human) I'd probably be more negative about this. You move Jodie with A, S, D, W keys but are often asked to press and tap one of the 1,2,3,4 keys which to me felt rather awkward. Moving Aiden is much easier since he can just fly through everything and it switches to first person view. On the other hand using his ability requires you to either align two points at another one, place the two points somewhere specific or just 'charge' the action. When in fight you can get confused about what you are supposed to do. For the first 5 hours I was more or less fine with this, but with each hour that passed it was getting more and more annoying. Especially in sequences that seemed to be timed and you were running for your life.

Aiden apart from flying and going through walls, he can move objects, kill people, control people, heal and protect. Thanks to Aiden Jodie can go through places a normal human being wouldn't be able to which also means that Aiden is the game's Deux Ex machina. Aiden's abilities would be great if they would be the same throughout the whole game since you could count with that and use your logic to solve problems. Unfortunately, that's not true. Sometimes you can roam free and explore a large area, the next time you just can't even go through the first door that is a step away. The fact that you are still always led to a certain action doesn't help it either - there's not much freedom in using Aiden.

Dialogues have choices which is nothing new and is expected in a story-driven game. Your choices can affect the outcome of the story but not much as in Heavy Rain or Detroit: Become Human. There doesn't seem to be much variety in terms of paths throughout the game - the game will simply gravitate towards one similar ending that is not even satisfying since it brings even more questions than it answers. The revelation that you can just simply let go off the controls and just let the game flow made me wonder why this was even produced as a game. It would made a great short TV series. Or a 3 hour movie (8 hours if not edited and released just as it is in the game).

The story is what makes the game and honestly I'm not entirely sure what to think about it. The story is one huge mess that just drags Jodie through her life in which she wants to become normal but is not allowed to. There doesn't seem to be much of character development and many of the situations and dialogues seemed to be forced. The game was probably supposed to provoke deep emotions in us and make us think but unfortunately I couldn't fully immerse myself in the game. Jodie simply wasn't a believable character to me, no matter how great job Elliot did. I couldn't attach to her in any way because everything just screamed - a lie. The controls didn't help it either, the QTEs that felt futile or the frustration with the actual 'game' parts was something that was breaking the story apart too. It broke the tension and flow of it. I could just passively watch while being detached from everything going on in the game. Maybe it was also partly because I wouldn't choose any of the options in the game if it were me in Jodie's position.

As for visuals, the game is stunning. The motion capture they use is one of the best and the graphics is awesome. We get to see different environments, in some we can even roam free for a bit, and that is something great. Unfortunately all we can do is just look at the scenery and walk from given point A to a given point B without any detours. Exploring or interacting is simply not there. The animations and lighting effects are great. The game is one long interactive movie and many of the scenes are done in a way we'd expect from a movie. This makes for a really great scenes that makes us feel emotions we probably wouldn't from a more traditional approach game. The acting is excellent and Elliot Page did a really great job at breathing life into Jodie. Willem Dafoe played well too and even went out of his comfort zone at the end of the game. Unfortunately, the relationship between Jodie and Nathan somehow lost all kind of chemistry, it felt like the actors weren't even present at the same scene when it was shoot. It left me wondering if either of them cared about one another at some point?

Verdict:
This game was one big disappointment. As a movie-like game I expected a very strong and coherent story where every decision mattered, instead I got a very linear and clichéd messy story where I could not even make the decisions that seemed logical and the ones I could choose didn't change the narrative. There was one decision I was allowed to make that I liked - leave everything at the base and leave the past behind. Unfortunately, there was a hop into the future where the items were present again! I also coldly turned Ryan down at every occasion and would actually slap him in the face and to never see him again. Instead the game throws a decision at me stating 'Kiss' at the end (the possibility of taking his life would actually make sense but that option was not there).

From the game play view, this game could be described as follow the white dot or find a blue dot and do something with it. I did not pay 20 bucks for a game in which even walking is a tiresome task. I learned from other games that QTEs can be rewarding or satisfying but in this case they do the opposite most of the time because while they are easy to execute, they are difficult to read. 95% of the times you can just let the game go on without doing a single action (note I mean during the time when you are supposed to play the game), in those 5% that it matters, the decision itself won't matter much.

The story itself is actually good if it would be told in a different way than the two possible ones and would make for a great series or a movie. There is nothing that ties all the memories together and your decisions in the past do not change the outcome of the game (with maybe one exception, Ryan). The controls are so bad that will make you feel frustrated and distract from anything that actually caught your interest or engaged you in the story.

The camera is also something that could use some work, it moves when it shouldn't and there are moments during which it just simply shakes to add some dramatic effect. Unfortunately it made me sick and also made it more difficult to move.

The presentation of the game, graphics, visuals, animation, sound and soundtrack are truly stunning. Same goes to Elliot Page's acting. Without Elliot the game would be most probably lifeless. While I enjoyed the acting of other characters in the game, the characters weren't written in a way that would make them believably human from my point of view.

Obvious plot holes, and the fact I couldn't make decisions or feel like anything I did mattered just made me passively watch the game, not giving me any motivation to attach to the characters, story or even just play the game.

While I managed to find reasons to recommend games I didn't like to other people I just can't find something worth recommending here. It failed me in terms of story and emotions and even in terms of the little game play there is.

Thank you for reading,
Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)

VRChat

Writing a review for VRChat is difficult because, VRChat will be anything you want it to be.

VRChat is a social platform where everything is possible. That's where my review could pretty much end. On the other hand I could also write many pages of what VRChat is. So let's try to keep it within the 8000 characters limit on Steam.

In the past when I wanted to socialize with people online I joined a channel on IRC. People there already shared an interest or a hobby which made it easier to start a conversation. Sometimes when I felt 'lucky' I entered the wild world of Yahoo chat rooms where you either ran into horny men or ordinary people trying to find other people to talk about something. If you started a conversation with someone you needed to talk to them not knowing much about them which meant the conversation was reflecting a real life conversation more often than not. From these days I have many friends around the world that I later met IRL and we hanged out together.

Nowdays there are many ways how to socialize online and it's not limited to text form. VRChat is a place where you don on an avatar and venture into 3d worlds. You can run VRChat either in desktop mode, playing it in a traditional way, or you can launch it in VR. When in VRChat you can visit different worlds created by the community. These can be anything from a small recreation of someone's room, an art museum, a recreation of a game be it a VR title like Beat Saber or a traditional game like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a dance club, a pub, or a totally original world or game. While many of the content will be reflecting the real world, there are different limits to what is possible in virtual worlds. For example you can FLY!

The name VRChat implies that you should chat with people but there's way more to that and you don't necessarily need to engage with others if you don't want to. When you log in you can start exploring worlds or find a place you'd like to hang out. You might want to go to a pub to meet people and chat, but expect people to get drunk! Or you could go to a karaoke bar to sing or listen to others singing (quite an experience - due to internet delays), there are various clubs where you can dance, there's even a big rave scene in VRChat. You can also go to an art museum, or find a place where you can paint yourself. If you feel like just watching a movie, you can find a theatre to your liking, be it on the moon or in medieval world. You may want to exercise, be it squat challenges with other players, yoga or dance exercise.

Then there are worlds that are more interactive. You can go play some games. Capture the flag is an option for example, but there are also climbing worlds, escape rooms, dungeons you have to clear or worlds that are more like a full fledged game (see The Devouring).

There are also events in VRChat, they can be small - a class for learning Japanese, slightly larger - a dance party or huge - virtual convention. There are meets, cons, shows, panels, and concerts in VRChat. Anything is possible.

VRChat is also a platform that will allow you to explore your own self and it might start with a custom avatar you'd like to represent yourself. After a certain time of playing VRChat you will be given the possibility to upload a custom avatar. People can create whatever they want but you will most often run into anime girl avatars (with animal ears and tails) that are in fact men in real life. This is a VRChat reality and might take a while for you to get used to. Apart from anime girls you can meet any kind of avatar be it a furry, avali, Alien or a (talking) tank.

There is one more thing you might want to be prepared for - mirrors. We all know what a mirror is and use it to check if our hair is not a mess or our clothes fit well. In VRChat you will be encountering many people staring into a mirror all the time. They might be chatting, dancing but mostly just staring. Don't ask me why.

None of what I wrote will probably prepare you for your first VRChat experience because there are no limits to what VRChat can be and since people are different and play the game for different reasons, literally anything can happen. This also means there is a dark side to VRChat. In public worlds, you can encounter toxic people or those that will want to crash you (especially if you are streaming). Sexual harassment is an actual thing, if you are a woman you might want to be prepared for that. One of my first experiences is entering a public world in a female lolita avatar. A group of other avatars encircled me and started touching my avatars boobs. When I greeted these people (I seriously had no idea what to do) they dispersed with 'oh another dude' and it was over.

Verdict:
If you have a VR headset I would highly recommend visiting different VRChat worlds, because those are works of art. There are places that are truly amazing. There are many activities you can do, even in VR, with others and enjoy them even more. You can meet many great people and find friends. Together you can visit worlds together, play the games there, as they are mostly multiplayer ones. You should also be prepared for a culture that may be known to those who ever set foot at an anime convention. You will meet many horny men, in anime girl avatars with big bouncing boobs and bouncing butt cheeks, often playing with these body parts or doing some erotic role play with another man in a similar avatar. If not this you may listen to conversation that requires a knowledge of memes old and current, making you wonder if you actually live on the same planet. If you are loooking for extraordinary experiences and you are ready for anything that can happen, go try VRChat since it is free.

Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)