DMC: Devil May Cry

Devil May Cry is a .. reboot? of a franchise that has been around for a while through console evolutions.  I believe they got up to #5 before this current iteration.

You play as Dante, a nephalim (offspring of demon/angel) who is badass in the most obnoxious of ways, jumping through falling debris to pull his pants up and heading room after room to parkour or kill demon entities in Limbo.

It's like 1000 games out there in function, but it's done right on so many levels.   Instead of forcing you to a path, there are many paths -- you could take them all to get all the collectibles, but you really only need to pay attention to the mission directive, so there is a lot you can do if you're into it -- or you could blaze through for the boss fights if that's what you'd prefer.

The boss creatures are hellacious and well done, but the combat in those appears is wayyy too scripted that nothing has taken multiple attempts up to this point.

Shelving because it's "fun" and I had to quote it.

The Yawhg

The Yawhg is a really short "choose your own adventure" type game where you have 6 weeks before the Yawhg comes and destroys your town.   You play multiple adventurers making simple choices throughout the day "You find a ring on the ground do you .. A. Put it on   B. Sell it" but there isn't necessarily a rhyme or reason as to what things necessitate success or failure, it's something you learn through trial and error over time.

My first playthrough I ran all over the place just getting a sample, when the Yawhg came and crushed the town I wasn't able to assist in rebuilding it and eventually got driven underground because my skin developed some scales and I was shunned by society.

My second playthrough (they take all of 5 minutes) I focused primarily on a couple places that gave a decent stat upgrade consistently with a random follow-up decision that didn't devastate their stats.  When it came time to repair the damage after the Yawhg visit - I sent them towards their proper positions.  The person I had doing landscaping repeatedly became a successful builder, the person I had cleaning the alchemy lab became a renowned wizard.

Win!  Simple game concept, but not a lot of reason to keep playing.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole

What would you expect from a South Park game?  The Fractured But Whole is hilarious, irreverent, inappropriate, poignant humor - and had me laughing from the character creation screen where one of the options was "difficulty", which was choosing your skin color, which actually didn't affect game play at all, just "everything else in your life".

The combat gameplay was super weak, but in between you participated in a completely over-the-top cartoon as the new kid in South Park with an incredible farting superpower.  Finishing the game starts rolling the credits similar to an episode.

It crossed the line so many times I wouldn't even know where to begin, if you like the show - you'd enjoy the game.   ... fat ass.

The Forest

The Forest is a game very similar in many ways to Green Hell.  You are the survivor of a plane crash on an island that is populated by cannibals.  What Green Hell had going for it with panthers and snakes, this has .. well cannibal detritus and mutants.

It was pretty okay, and had I not played so much Green Hell I might be enthusiastic about finishing it.  I'm a little annoyed though that some of the achievements they have are cannibalism "Eat an enemy 4 times".

I might pick it back up again when the sequel comes out next year...

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension is a game that pretends not to be game and wants you to quit, so you pretty much do the opposite of whatever you are requested and pull back the curtains and make it "gamey".   

It's silly and you have an argumentative computer that tries to thwart your every move, entertaining for a while but eventually you are taken to a Zelda'ish game-style world in this not game and do Zelda'ish things in addition to not gaming.

I completely lost interest at that point when the puzzle wasn't just beating the computer.   Strongly reminiscent of Buddy Simulator: 1984.

Remember Me

Remember Me builds a fantastic dystopian world over the course of the intro.  I was in from the opening cut scene.  Sensen is a corporation that can take and grant memories, the pitch was that you could effectively keep a loved one alive in you if the passed by the shared memories, how it would complete you to have the memories of your partner and know/feel how much they loved you.

Cut to ... you are being drained of your memories as an 'errorist' in order to be refabricated into a productive member of society.

Escaping from the facility has you slowly learn who you are and you abilities to rewrite memories.  This skill is used to effect significant change on your adversaries, you would be able to "rewrite" their motivational memory and modify it in some small ways that would change the outcome.  If your reason for being a bounty hunter was because you needed the money for an operation, but then your memory was adjusted to think that the person was killed -- you no longer have the motivation to go after the bounty.

Lots of platforming and "rooms of people to beat up" though in between epic moments.

... and I wonder if there will ever be a game where you play as a protagonist woman and are frumpy ... 

The Room Three

The Room Three is not too different from The Room Four, which I've played and talked about here already.   It was not worse or better, but it's still really really good and fun to play.

These kind of games are also brain exercise, you look at a room and have to notice that one of the screws is slightly loose on a hinge, or that the colorations of things match.  It's almost like escape room practice.  This one had multiple endings, but it was really only a couple alternate paths/puzzles at the end as there aren't really choices you make along the way ..

I'm keeping Two and One on the list.

Subnautica

Subnautica is a fantastic game where you play the role of one of the few survivors who crashed on a water filled world.   You gather resources and use various tech tools to fabricate underwater survival environments and avoid the gigantic leviathans that inhabit some of the scarier zones.

Playing this had the same thalassophobic effect that Beyond Blue had -- but it was justified.  There were growls and stalkers and glow in the dark poison pincer jellyfish, and throughout the game you are uncovering other survivor capsules that have been ripped open to recover their datapads and find patterns of things you can then build into your habitats and ships.

There creatures are done so well, you feel like you are intruding on their territory - but unlike a "dungeon monster" won't chase you to the ends of the earth just because they see you.   Interfere with some of the bigger or get in the way of their hunting or be the size of their prey though and ...

Play it.  I'm really looking forward to playing the sequel ... I just need ... some less, terrifying 1200m deep caverns with active lava vents and patrolling warpsquids or dragon leviathan games first.