Mark of the Ninja: Remastered

Mark of the Ninja is a very well done side-scroller/platformer.

You have a mission to get to a section in a set of buildings and have to navigate the traps that are in your way with the ninja skills that you develop over time.  You could stealth and use intelligence to bypass things, or brute force -- but the game tries to encourage you to the former with level accomplishments.

I didn't get very far into the story to understand what the significance of the tattoo ink that you are getting branded with does for you.  All of the skills I learned were of the typical "ninja" sort - traps, smokebombs, throwing knives -- but one of the first cutscenes talked about the great cost and how whoever gets inked by it will eventually *have* to kill themselves.

My guess is this is used to have you turn against your masters at one point.

... maybe one day.

Lords of the Fallen

Lords of the Fallen was a game I originally purchased on XBOX but never got around to finishing, but was on a recent Steam sale at 85% (!!!) off.  So for under $5 - I figured I would give it another go.  The very next random number selected it, so it was obviously meant to be.

The game is beautiful, but coming from the likes of Sekiro and Dark Souls, it feels "slow and klunky".  I did go for the warrior build (my default for any new game) so some of that was me, but man those weapons were frustratingly slow windups at times.   

Magic ended up being a fairly important part of the game, which is unfortunate because I was min/maxing my warrior build - completely unaware until I encountered some spectres that I couldn't touch.  Instantly my damage output was reduced from mighty warrior to mighty annoyance.

The boss fights were fairly rudimentary, with a few annoying effects - like insta-death if you don't stand in a certain area, with no obvious clues as to why.   Nothing was overly tough, the final boss was a one-shot - a couple took learning simple move sets, but given the age of the game completely understandable and acceptible.