Recent reviews by Emilio

Shipbreaker is a damn near perfect video game as far as I am concerned.
It has a pretty limited scope and the devs made sure everything within that scope was polished to a fine sheen and then some.

The dynamic music, the user interface, the sound design, the voice acting and the gameplay.
All of it flows together to make an unbelievably immersive experience.
It also helps the game is just short enough to not get repetitive, the flow of story to gameplay is just perfect.

I can not recommend this enough, simply put Shipbreaker is an incredible game.
Really hope we get another game in this universe!

Now this is a hidden gem!

An unconventional arena "shooter" roguelite.
I put shooter in quotes as you mostly kick and throw enemies, even though you have a bunch of weapons that shoot projectiles.

Apart from the crossbow, every weapon is very weird and you have to play fairly differently depending on what you get your hands on.
Even the bomb variants are all a little weird.

Plus as a goblin you can climb surfaces and have a variety of modifiers aswell that let you do different things, such as floating in the air and double jump.

I love the music and style of the game, it kinda reminds me of Oddworld: Strangers Wrath a bit; particularly the soundtrack.

My favourite part of the game is hands down how aggressive you have to be so you don't bore your fans, once you get that combo up you're practically showered in gold and items which is very satisfying.

The game is very short to complete and a single run is only about 20 minutes.
I can't believe this game only has 29 reviews as of writing this. Painfully underrated and 100% worth your time.

Atlas Fallen is pretty much everything I love in 7'th gen games, even though it is a pretty new release.
The two best comparisons I can make is that it's something between Darksiders 2 and Shadow of Mordor.

The game is mechanically quite simple as you pick two weapons to make up your primary and secondary attacks.
Meaning you really only have two sets of light and heavy attacks with the rest of the attacks being context sensitive such as attacking in the air or mid dash/sprint.
There are no real combos outside simple 4-5 button presses of the same button to finish your attack string.

The real beauty of the system comes from the fact that your skills can be customized rather extensively.
Every build starts from how you decide to heal and then you work your skills around it.
I genuinely think it's a fantastic system and I had a blast doing a few different builds and theory crafting a few more when I wasn't playing.

The maps are instanced and feel large, though in reality they are not overly huge.
I think the best part of exploration is the freedom of movement. Gliding on the sand feels great and is one of the best forms of movement I have played in a while, while the ability to dash in the air let's you do a surprising amount of platforming.

While the story is quite simple I really ended up liking the side characters who actually evolve over the course of the game as you help them. I was always glad when characters I helped kept showing up and interacting with other side characters.
It really does feel a lot more dynamic then it probably is in reality, but I appreciate the dedication to making sure the side content feels like a part of the main content.

The world of Atlas is also a pretty unique interpretation of a psudo-post apocalyptic medieval world covered in sand that still retains a lot of natural beauty. I especially enjoy all the Byzantine styled murals you find in the ruins that tells the story of the world before.

Overall I think Atlas Fallen is pure joy to play, just like the type of games I loved playing back on the Xbox 360.

This has to be the best traditional walking sim I have played yet.
It genuinely feels like an unofficial sequel to GET EVEN and Chernobylite.

Visually the game is an absolute treat, the sound design is super atmospheric and the story is incredibly intriguing.

Basically humans experimented with time travel and this messed up the timeline by changing random events.
To fix these errors and make sure the world doesn't end; agents are sent back in time to fix these anomalies.
You play as Agent 43 who gets sent to a quaint little house in the UK where 6 roommates that where not supposed to die, have been altered to all die in an unfortunate house fire.

You can tackle and change the timeline however much you want at any point for the entire week following up to the fire.
I couldn't help but feel like a peeping Tom when I was sitting and watching all these intimate moments of these peoples lives with the knowledge they are all currently dead.
By the end I was really invested in everyones life and genuinely wanted them all to live.

It's not a terribly long game but it's a worthwhile experience that I highly recommend!
I hope we get a sequel in the future.

I have to agree with the sentiment a lot of other reviewers express, for the large price and being just barely 20 hours long makes this a hard recommendation.

The new character introduced, Nazamil is interesting and I really enjoyed when she was present.
But she gets too little screentime to truly become memorable which is a big shame.

Beyond the Dawn has a big problem of expecting the player to have taken a long break since playing the original campaign and of the 20 hours the first 7 is like an extended tutorial which is pretty boring.

The middle part is too much filler where you just have little side fetch quests that functions as prologues to the different people you met in the main game.
Once the end part of the DLC gets going it's already over.

The parts that are good are great, but it overall feels like a fairly pointless addition to the overall package.
I wouldn't recommend it unless you get it on a sale.

TL:DR: The game plays it a little too safe at the start, leading to the beginning dragging on too long.
But once the game gets going it becomes a really fun adventure for the remaining duration.

Now while Tales of Arise is similar to Scarlet Nexus in a lot of ways and there obviously being some developer overlap I still prefer Scarlet Nexus in pretty much every department.

That said I do think Tales of Arise was a ton of fun to play through, it starts off a little slow and the combat honestly takes a little while to get good, but as you get access to the ability to do twice the moves aswell as a relic that further increase damage you give and take by 100% the combat finally clicks and I really do think it becomes a pretty stellar action game after that.
But I do realize that saying it takes 20 hours before the game gets fun is a tall order for some people.

The graphics are just drop dead gorgeous and most of the areas you visit look straight out of a painting, overall a very pretty game from start to finish.

The main characters are all very fun to hang with and I thoroughly enjoyed each characters story arc.
Side characters on the other hand just kind of exist for their quest and little else, the villans also have a habit of being a little underdeveloped.

The main story was fun and had a lot of cool twists and turns, which sadly I can't say the same for the side quests that where a little too fetch quest-y for my taste.

The music was fine but it wasn't very memorable unfortunately, even after giving it a once over.


If you like Tales of Arise then you'll probably love Scarlet Nexus and I can't recommend that game enough.

Slime-san is one of the best platformers I have ever played, and I genuinely can not recommend it enough!

It is completely full to the brim with content! You have 100 regular stages, remixed and harder versions for a total of 200 stages. Add the DLC, and you get about 100 more on top of that. For good measure, you also have a bunch of fun mini-games.

The game features an all-star cast of guest artists for the amazing soundtrack, such as Meganeko, Kubbi, FantomenK, Kommisar, tiasu, and AdhesiveWombat. Genuinely a 10/10 soundtrack if I ever heard one.

Every normal stage has four collectibles and a trophy time to beat, while the harder remixed levels are just designed to be beaten, adding even more replay value for completionists like myself.

Sitting at only 78 reviews as of this writing, I have to say that Slime-san is painfully underrated and 100% worthy of your full attention.

Where do I even start. Wow, what a ride!

The controls and game feel is fantastic.
You have a fair bit of moves and the fairly open levels let's you do some absolute bonker stuff to shave time off your speedrun to get the trophies.

Every level looks fantastic and is full of collectables aswell, and the stages are made with speedrunning and collectathon gameplay in mind, and in my opinion succeed as they are equally fun to run and hunt on.

On top of that is a whole bunch of mini challenges of different kinds (very much in line with Mario Sunshine special stages)
These all lack collectables though and push speed above all else.

The soundtrack is absolutely brilliant, I can't stop listening to it!!

It is simply an amazing platformer packed to the brim with content and I can not recommend it enough!

Painfully underrated game, play Blue Fire people!

While there are some surface level Dark Souls inspirations, particularly in the way the currency and bonfires work.
The game is a platformer at heart with some smaller Zelda-type dungeons and some amazing Mario Sunshine fluddless levels called voids.

While the combat is there and it has a few boss fights.
It is not the main focus and is easy enough that it doesn't hinder the enjoyment, since combat is by far the weakest aspect of the game.

What makes Blue Fire an absolute joy is the platforming, oh my god the platforming is PEAK.
You have so much freedom in your movement, and if you're particularly clever you can find some really funny sequence breaks to get some movement abilities early.
The way I was playing the game certainly didn't feel intended, but it really did feel like I solved it in my own special way which was incredibly rewarding, more so than if it was 100% linear.

The free dlc after the main game was also just amazing in every way.
It has so many new voids; most of which are so much better than the main game, plus the best boss battle in the game by a long shot.

Blue Fire is an instant classic in my book.
Please play it people!!!

Vampyr is a bit of an amalgamation of different gameplay mechanics and ideas.

The way the weapons are found, how you upgrade them, down to the equipment menu is very souls inspired.
Same with the stamina bar and dodge gameplay and how every barrel and crate explodes when you touch it.
Yet despite that, it plays nothing like a soul game and instead like a slower, more methodical 7th gen action RPG.

You can feel brush strokes of Bioware and Obsidian game design all throughout.
The skill tree, the way the dialogue is handled, and also certain story beats couldn't make me stop thinking about classics such as Alpha Protocol, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, and even Mass Effect 1.

What sets Vampyr apart is how it marries the narrative and gameplay.
You, as the player, and Jonathan, as the character, both want to do the right thing by not killing innocent people.
The way the game goes about this is that you are starved of XP by not killing innocent people.
This in turn makes your journey and choice of abstaining from innocent blood feel impacted not just in the narrative but also the gameplay.

I think on paper this is brilliant, though in practice the implementation of this system can sometimes leave something to be desired.
In particular, the way high-level enemies simply take less damage while dealing more to you.
A low-level playthrough turns a lot of otherwise simple enemies into damage sponges that one-shot you.

The skill tree also has a problem of not every skill being made equally.
When starved of XP, you really have to be efficient with the little you have.
But if you do decide to kill and level to max, you start killing most enemies and bosses in just a few hits, making the skills even more pointless as they all instantly kill enemies at that point.
It is a system that punishes experimentation and excess equally.

An interesting way Vampyr handles NPCs is that almost every single NPC you meet can be killed by you, either for story reasons or for XP. To actually make you care for these characters, almost every single character actually has a side quest for you and a lot of backstory and dialogue, more so compared to the average NPC in other games.
Though at times, and especially when you meet bad characters or criminals that abuse or hurt other NPCs you interact with, you are never actually allowed to help them or stop these crimes from happening.
Either you take it upon yourself to kill these people or leave them be; much to the dismay of the community.
I wish it wasn't so black and white and let you resolve these conflicts in a more elegant way.

The story NPCs have better-defined arcs and satisfying resolutions to their conflicts, on the other hand, thankfully.
It's not a huge cast of story-important characters, but much like the NPCs you meet in the world, they have so much dialogue and backstory you barely even notice how few of them there actually are because you know so much about them.
I think the developers did a great job making the conflict and story feel deeply personal. Immaculate voice acting all around. The world design is just incredible. Loved the costume design of the characters, and the music paints a somber picture as much as the visuals do.

While I won't say I enjoyed every single part of the game, I ultimately enjoyed it as a whole package and do not regret the time I spent in this wonderfully macabre world.
For the very low price this game goes on sale for, you really cannot go wrong with Vampyr.
It's completely worth it in my humble opinion!