What is your last passed game? v. 8
Spellbound! Genre - Schmap (Shoot'em up)
Impressions
Last year's episodic project by Dontnod Entertainment, creators of the Life is Strange series.
The main characters of Tell Me Why, a girl named Alison and her "brother" - transgender Tyler, return to a small town in Alaska to sell their mother's house they inherited. With this house they are associated with multiple, but primarily terrible and tragic memories. Ten years ago, their own mother took a gun in her hands and chased her own child. Forced self-defense of children - led to the death of their mother. Tyler (then still a girl Ollie) was sent to a specialized institution for 10 years. And now, returning to their old home, the matured heroes decide to find out what drove their own mother to madness and was everything exactly the way they remember it?
Tell Me Why, like other studio projects, focuses on the plot, exploring small locations and dialogue with NPCs. The main "feature" of the project is the ability of the characters to hear each other's thoughts and see "revived" memories. In childhood, Alison and Tyler called themselves cunning goblins who stole from the forest "Keeper of Secrets" a "secret" hidden in the clouds. Since then, they began to "hear" each other. In general, the atmosphere of Alaska, along with pretty landscapes, as well as a certain aura of mystery, associated both with the above abilities of the heroes, and with the "Book of Goblins" (a collection of fairy tales found in the house containing clues to riddles in the house and references to those characters in the town), create a pleasant immersion in the game world.
But as for the "choices", there are not many of them in the game, and apart from the dialogues concerning the relationships between the characters, from the curious one can only single out the choice of "correct" memories, when Alison and Tyler "see" slightly different versions of the fact that happened in the past and the player needs to decide which of the memories "looks more like the truth." However, one should not expect really tangible consequences of these elections, the game has a rather mediocre nonlinearity.
Another point is the focus on the “problems of transgender peopleâ€. Here Dontnod Entertainment continues to raise modern Western political and social topics, begun in Life is Strange 2.
As for the main element of the game - the plot, it, despite some subsidence, still has a competent presentation. But the very finale of this "family drama" clearly lacks a slice of a good thriller.
As a result, Tell Me Why can be called a good project, although it is still noticeably inferior to the studio's main hit - the first Life is Strange.
7/10
Impressions The
sequel to the successful horror platformer from Tarsier Studios and Bandai Namco Entertainment.
The protagonist of Little Nightmares II, a boy named Mono, wakes up in a dark forest all alone. Trying to find at least someone, he wanders into the hut of a local hunter-taxidermist, who makes stuffed animals, both from animals and people. At the hunter's house, Mono meets the Sixth, the main character of the first part. Together they will have to escape not only from the Hunter, but also face the inhabitants of the distorted Pale City.
What about Little Nightmares II? The gameplay has become more diverse, the locations are even more gloomy and "horror", and the local "monsters" - more memorable and creepy. What is only a local school teacher who knows how to stretch her neck to almost any length? And her students are hooligans? By the way, in addition to hide and seek, escapes and riddles, the player will also face direct encounters with local "monsters". However, control while wielding an ax or using a flashlight (you will have to shine on some monsters) is not the most convenient, and it often becomes the cause of the hero's death. The excessive transience of the game is also upsetting - the project is very small, passes quickly, it would definitely not hurt another large location like a local school or hospital.
But in general, we have before us an unambiguously good sequel that will appeal to all fans of both horror / platformers and just high-quality atmospheric games.
8/10
Paradise Lost is not a bad game, but it has its drawbacks. Firstly, the genre of "walking simulator" is not for everybody. Secondly, the idea is interesting, but the implementation "pumped up", it looks like the developers did not have enough experience.
The Fabled Woods is a short (it takes an hour and a half to complete) indie game. Not a bad idea, graphics too, but:
1) Three stories, but none of them were fully told, everything is presented rather briefly.
2) The game is demanding for the hardware.
3) There are enough bugs, but patches also come out.
Once upon a time it was interesting to play games. But the further, the worse. There are almost no interesting games, or at least some kind of semantic load bearing less and less. Now the remake is driving. But, grafon does not solve everything. Degradation. And Playgount didn't notice how he bent down in front of the sponsors.
zs It used to be nice to see your screen in the feed ...
From the darkness is a horror from a Russian indie studio. The game is short, the puzzles are not difficult, except for the maze, which quickly becomes annoying. And so entertainment for one evening.
Risen 2. If I had ignored - I would not have lost anything. Enemies are boring, there is little variety, the animations of the NPC are bad, the rotating jaw of a whore from Antigua will dream me in nightmares, Russian voice acting is two plus. The combat system is crap. Early firearms are very interesting, as a mechanism, perfected at its level of technology, but its implementation here is just trash. The musket reloads in TWO seconds, while its damage is less than that of a sword thrust. What prevented this musket from being a single-shot prodigy? What prevented you from making a sling for 3-4 pistols without reloading them in battle, raising their damage? Nothing, they just didn't want to. It's boring to play, the fights are stupid clowning, and Mara is the weakest final boss in my memory.
Evil Inside is a short (about an hour walkthrough) indie horror. Screamers, simple puzzles and nice graphics. But "one-off" entertainment with one ending.
Disco Elysium. Overall, very good. And the voice acting, which is scolded, is quite suitable for the game. Quests and dialogues are interesting, locations are well drawn, but some checks are hidden too deep, and some will fail in any case, like the attempts of an intellectual thinker to dodge a bullet or remove a tie from a fan :) I also didn't like begging, collecting bottles and pumping power of will only in order to beg for money to repair the room on the very first day ... and the second half of the game I played with 60 rubles in my pocket and there was nothing to buy with them except for unnecessary sneakers. He already had two pistols and for them ... 2 rounds. In the entire game, he shot ONE time when they removed a corpse from a tree. I won't call the game a masterpiece, but it deserves 8/10.