Recent reviews by Nial

A really well written VN with many branching paths. It also commands a very pleasant artstyle despite the deceptively amateurish character design at first glance, is brilliantly voice acted by just two people who take on mantle of dozens of characters, and has a beautiful haunting score that elevates all the emotional highs (of which there are plenty) and electrifies the horror / action bits.

Worst handling motorcycle in history of videogames, emptiest open world since Assassin's Creed 1 to traverse on your worst motorcycle, teeth grinding ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ side missions (some of them broken due to being tailored to Wii's original motion stick inputs), some bugs there and there, pretty basic gameplay, and yet it's worth playing just for the wacky and weird main story and cast.

It's ok. The gameplay is nothing like XCOM as I previously thought. It's realtime with optional pause / slowdown for using special actions. You control your squad as a singular unit, and there's a heavy emphasis on stealth, at least if you want to make any kind of progress. Xenomorphs respawn infinitely and you can't clear the map of them, but you can make it worse by aggroing them too much and raising their agression level which spawns an overwhelming amount of patrols, onslaughts, and special mini-bosses. A recon with a silenced sniper rifle to pick off lonely patrols is a must, Customizing your recon marine with a black bandana, moustache, gray hair and nicknaming him Snake is a must (as confirmed by game's achievement). Story is nothing special, your marines don't really have anything going for them, main characters (Hayes and Harper) are written just good enough to make you give a damn about them, but the rest are meh. Also like 3 out 5 five heads of ship's departments are black women with as much personality as those other two in Helldivers 2. The ending comes quickly and is not satisfying, but the gameplay loop of sleathily exploring the map, collecting stuff and then holding ground when ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan is very entertaining, enough to recommend the game.
Also there are quite a few bugs. Most of them not game-breaking like marines getting stuck in supressive fire or achievements that are completely broken, but on my second playthrough with restricted saves I had to restart a whole mission 2 hours in because the marine got stuck unlocking doors and they wouldn't open during infinite onslaught. After restart I got stuck shortly after because I paused the game just as the tutorial prompting me to run to a certain place popped. So I had to forcefully kill the game, losing all progress again. It can be a mess sometimes.

Good stuff, pleasant to listen to on its own.

A neat tightly written murder mystery detective. Unique visuals and atmosphere, good voice acting despite most characters only appearing in singular scenes, and satisfying gameplay revolving around figuring out who is who and how they died.
My only two gripes are a bit disappointing ending - the information revealed in final hidden chapter isn't really a relevation to those paying attention - and a really obscure way to confirm certain people's identities. To spare you the frustration I've experienced I'll give you two hints on that. One: people's numbers in the ledger correspond to numbers on the hammocks and two: look at the damn shoes, better yet, take a screenshot of them like you're some fetishist weirdo. This will only be relevant once you've reached the end of the game and are tying up loose fates.

A physics puzzle didn't have to go this hard on soundtrack, but that's what made it memorable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qznYSE7J4ZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb0s7UavHNU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i9oZnDdI9A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulf19Ut2SzA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0tbDIsmx_c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwmxrIwetyU

An iconic indie game from 2008. Interesting storybuilding, unique art and atmosphere of this weird goo world, great music, simple to learn hard to master gameplay.

I crashed within first 15 seconds after starting the game for the very first time, and then it just kept crashing during runs every ~2-3 minutes, which obviously is quite frustrating. I haven't seen many posts about it on forums so it must be a rare issue, I tried tinkering with every setting but nothing helped.
While the game has a unique look to it, it's a completely chaotic incoherent visual clutter perceived through fisheye lens, which, while pretty to look at via other players' replays, is an absolute torture to play. Since there is no point of reference in form of environment or floor or anything I couldn't discern whether I was mid jump or on the ground, and for a game that heavily relies on bunny hopping and air dashing it felt terrible. I suppose you're expected to learn the timing and just do it blindly. Main and only objective of the game is arena time score - I didn't find that engaging in the slightest.
Not my cup of tea, but apparently it is for quite a few people. Refunded.

I haven't cared this much about fictional characters since the Witcher III.

Post-game update: the ending was very lackluster and abrupt with little to no closure for most of the companions. I was lucky that Karlach got the ending update before I got to the end of the game, and Larian's apparently working on other characters' endings, but right now it's a lot like those Resident Evil helicopters flying into sunsets. Still, the journey was far too good to get spoiled by mediocre destination. 4/5.

A bit janky and sometimes frustrating indie platformer. Stylish but severely lacking technical polish, also very short (4 hours for full completion). The last level story revelations considering protagonist and the shadow dimension made me expect some kind of a bigger closure, but it unceremonially drops all the suspense it built and closes its doors on you. 6/10, I think? For interesting artstyle, nice music and good voice acting.

I laughed like I haven't in months at some parts, was left thrilled by certain setpieces, and generally had fun the second time around. It's worth its price and roughly doubles the amount of content the original had, if not triples, depending on what you consider content. Roughly halfway into the new stuff you get an item, which you can carry with you. And when you do, you get all brand new Narrator monologue for EVERYTHING that was in the original 2013 game, endings and all.