This is another one where I’m late to the party. I started my run something like two years ago but I only just recently decided to play it through. Either something else got inbetween or I hit a point which I didn’t find interesting enough and stopped playing. This time I had my mind set on finishing it and I made it all the way.

There are so much to unpack with this game. There are so many weird places, characters and philosophical conundrums presented in this game so I really don’t know where to start when trying to describe it. Also worthy of note is that playing half the game first and then playing the second half two years later affects the overall experience and the ability to get some sort of satisfying conclusion on what the game was about.

At its core it’s an isometric RPG with turn-based combat. Comparetively to other games of its genre, its pretty combat light if you don’t actively go out looking for a fight. I almost always play brawler characters on my first run if is an option in a game, but even then I felt like combat was a pretty fringe part of the experience. Combat is most often implemented for the sake of coming up with interesting incremental power-ups for your character.

All the mechanics are focus around an effort system where you have three different statistics with each character: Might, Speed and Intellect. Each challenge that you come across will test one of these statistics. The base chance to success is based on your skills in the subject but you can boost your chances by spending points of the appropriate statistic. It’s a really neat flexible system that was very easy to learn. I felt a bit too powerful at the end and could manage to get 100% success rate on any test I tried, but I guess it’s fine that you feel like a god at the end of an RPG.

Another feature that I thought was really smart was the Cyphers. A cypher is basically a powerful useable item that can only be used a couple of times. Each one has a unique effect and most of them are used in battle. When it comes to limited consumable items in any type of game I always refer to something I call the “Megaelixir problem”. What that entails is basically that if you hand a player a very powerful item that they can only use once, they will not use it at all (the reference of course taken from the Final Fantasy-series). Torment has solved this in a very smart way with cyphers. You can only carry a set amount of cyphers on each character, if you carry more than you are allowed you get something called “cypher sickness” which makes your base chance less for each test. This makes you want to spend your cyphers to make room for new ones since otherwise you get a debuff. This is much different from a normal inventory system as it creates a much more interesting choice for the player. It might be okay to have only one cypher over the limit since I want to save them for a special occassion, but having two will severly impeed my abilities so if I pick up another one I will have to use my, at the time, most useful one. I really liked the minigame of keeping that balance.

The story is really interesting but I had a hard time following until the very end, and when I got to the end it had been such a long time since I experienced certain story beats so I had forgotten most of them. This made me miss a bunch of reference that was made to things I had done earlier in the game. I think my long hiatus really damaged my experience in this regard. I think this is really a game that demands your focus if you want to get the most out of it.

You play as an incarnation of a god. This god is knows as the Changing god, and throughout the game you get to experience fates of other incarnations. This lets you learn about multiple different worlds and places, many that really doesn’t affect the main story, but they all carry a lesson or some sort of moral. Some of them reconnect in the main story, but it was really hard to keep track of all the names, places, timelines and concepts. There were some time travel shenanigans, where something you did in one of the other incarnations past lives affected your current situation, but not too many. Lots of interesting concepts are explored though, it must’ve been as much a headache as it was an exciting adventure to write it.

Always a good sign is that I kinda want to start over immediately and play through a new run and make some new choices, and this time playing it straight through without a long break inbetween. Unfortunately there are too many interesting games to play so I’m not sure that I will have time to do so. Torment: Tides of Numenera is definately on my “good games” list though, aworthy spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment.

The Hangover movie as a base, spice it up with some Fallout vibes and sprinkle on an eceptional character expression/progression system. Where do I sign up? I had some high expectations on Disco Elysium and it still manage to deliver a solid 10/10 experience.

Right of the bat the game hits you with some quality witty dialogue. Loved it from the first second on hearing the crass voice from the reptilian brain. You wake up in a banged up hotel room, celarly you have a substance abuse problem and you also seem to have amnesia. Although I do not enjoy the “main character has amnesia for the viewer to easier relate”-cliché, Disco Elysium really does it all the way. It revives fond memories of playing Planescape Torment, another favourite of mine.

The characters all have clear weaknesses which make them feel very human. Every time you meet a new NPC your presented with their absolute worst traits. So it takes a while before you can properly assess the characters and their motivations which make the game very thrilling.

There is basically no combat at all, it’s all dialogue. I often yearn for more gameplay driven systems when I play an RPG, and combat lends itself well to create gameplay, but somehow Disco Elysium have find simple skill test mechanics throughout the game that you can play around. There are both active and passive skill tests. Active tests are dialogue choices where you see the difficulty of the test, some of these are one time chance and som you can try multiple times. Passive tests happen constantly and they affect what sort of information you get access to as you are talking to NPC.

The internal dialogue that is the result of the passive checks truly is the greatest USP this game has. Depending on what you’re good at, you are given different pieces of advice or information. These are meant to represent the main protagonists inner wants and primal driving forces. Very interesting take on internal struggles, needs and wants. I was so inspired I think I came up with three different concepts of projects I wanted to work with, based on this type of presentation.

You play a cop in a pretty classic murder story with the classic twists and turns. I was thouroughly engaged across the entire game. If I would have to complain about something it was that my ending was slightly underwhelming. There were many things I was not content with, but maybe thats what ZA/UM wants me to feel?

They really succeeded in creating a game where it *feels* like your choices matter. After I had finished the game, I immediately wanted to start a new run and test out new routs with a different set of stats. The game is also short enough, and I mean that in the best way, where you feel like you can spare the time to replay it once more.

I’ve recently been in something of a Star Wars phase, watching Mandalorian and also playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. It has really gotten me invested in the universe. The two are somewhat close to each other in the timeline as well, so you could draw some parallells. Mandalorian is set after the original trilogy and Fallen Order is set after the prequel trilogy.

Fallen Order presents a great gameplay experience. Taking much inspiration from soulsborne games in their combat design and level design, while still doing it’s own thing. I can imagine it being similar to Sekiro? But unfortunately I haven’t had time to play that yet.

The combat is centered on parrries, dodges and timed strikes. There are a pretty large variety of enemies that presents new challenges, for example ranged units where you bounce back their projectiles, enemies that block your attacks and large monsters and robots that can’t be stunned in the same manner as their smaller counterparts. I don’t think there was one battle in the entire game that I didn’t enjoy. You had so much room for creativity and playfullness, really nice execution.

For me, the game fails with the characters. The characters have very bland personalities, especially the main character, and several uninspired backstories that doesn’t really carry the weight that the game is trying to put on them. The overall plot is good enough, and a nice setting for a Star Wars adventure, but with such a bland cast I just can’t feel properly engaged. The character with the most personality is probably the sidekick droid that the main character carries with him.

That said, the game was a wild ride and it was great fun to explore all the planets. The game has a metroidvania-like exploration gameplay; when the player discovers new gadgets and force powers you get access to new locations and secrets. Not a unique selling point by any means, but combined with the beautiful planets and the cool force powers, it feels fresh.

Overall, this is one of the best Star Wars games ever made so big kudos to Respawn Entertainment. They really know how to make quality stuff. I don’t really want a sequel, but I wouldn’t mind playing something like this again.

SPOILER ALERT BELOW!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

The ending was superb. Introducing non other than Darth Vader as the final final boss of the game. I loved it! The description after scanning him was something like “Only way to survive is to escape”. Even though that character has almost been exploited to oblivion, the presentation of him and the small hints throughout the game made the reveal super satisfying. He is perfect as a final boss!

I was thouroughly entertained by Machine Games previous Wolfenstein: The New Order and was pretty psyched when this one came out. It took me a while to get to it because of a backlog with no end in sight, but I finally managed to pick it up and play it. Always a small sense of pride when it’s been developed in Sweden and that I know people who has been involved.

I’ve always found it hard to distinguish shooters between each other. There are very seldom a memorable unique gameplay experience to be had, other than that it “felt” good when you played it. Instead, games with gun-centric gameplay tends to lean heavily on cinematic experiences to give them that extra edge. For me, it feels a bit backwards somehow that the most important part of a shooter often boils down to the story and plot.

In that regard, The New Colossus does a bunch of really neat things. It’s a great mix of highs and lows, serious topics and not so serious topics. The characters are overall great and there is a vast diversity among the cast. The story and the individual character arcs take some really unexpected turns and I often found myself rushing through the gameplay areas just to get to the next story beat.

The gameplay is what you would expect, no more, no less. It’s a decent first person shooter with some stealth and some minor puzzle solving. There are some secrets, but I never found them rewarding enough to search for. I felt like I played on a pretty good difficulty level, died quite a few times, but had no problems overall. Can’t say that I needed to change my strategy much, played pretty much the same way through the entire game, alternating between two different weapons.

There are some achievement based power level progression which I in theory is pretty neat. I like when games try to base experience systems on what the player does, rather then to generalise it. More times than not though, it’s not very engaging to interact with. Even though there were achivements like “kill people with headshots” or “kill people by burning” them, I only spent maybe the first hour or so actually caring about that. I felt like it managed itself without me needing to do much. I also didn’t feel like it affected my gameplay much, except maybe for the crouch speed you got awarded for stealth kills.

One type of “secret items” that I though was really neat was the Star Cards. The Star Cards were, as I understood them, pictures of people from the development team with their real names or a nickname printed on them. I even recognized some people! I really like when games try and show off the developers more.

Overall, this game was a great experience because of the cinematic bits. It was really worth to play through and it hade quite a few memorable scenes and characters. The game really went all the way with all the themes it presented and was raw and honest about them.

I also have come to really appreciate games that focus solely on a single player experience and not at all on multiplayer. There are too many games out there that focus only on multiplayer so it’s almost impossible to compete anyway.