Recent reviews by Ransom

Full of charm and memorable characters, a really fun, detective puzzle game.

A good, short puzzler, executes well and keeps surprising you with new ideas. Deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Portal, the witness and the Talos principle.

The game is fairly short and prefers to give you a lot of quick "aha"s instead of long complex puzzles. There are a few optional ones but a dlc "master pack" exploring the concepts introduced in more depth would be lovely, but this is complete as it is.

A lovely little game (about 3 hours long) about frog people, grappling hooks and your uncle.

A masterful and very faithful remake of Half-Life 1. Fantastically put together and lovingly re-created.If it were just that though, it'd be a great mod on it's own merit, and the definitive way to play the original Half-Life updated to the new source engine.But it's not just that, because Xen is a masterpiece.Where the original Xen was an anticlimax, and I told myself "oh I'll probably play Black Mesa until Xen and then call it a day", I was completely wrong, and completely blown away. The team at Crowbar Collective show off their level design chops and expand Xen into some of the best Half-Life gameplay I've ever played.Each chapter of Xen feels different, but it all feels Half-Life, with some of the puzzles in the later chapters reminding me fondly of the Citadel portions of Episode 1. The gameplay is fun, challenging, and puzzling in a way that feels very Half-Life, and absolutely worth your time. If you remember Xen from Half-Life 1 you will be blown away, especially in the first level which is so graphically lush and otherworldly.For those of you missing Half Life gameplay, and especially if you don't have the luxury of having a VR headset to play Alyx, I'd highly recommend this game. It perfectly filled that itch for a main series Half-Life game, the last games to really do that were the main series itself and the fantastic MINERVA mod.A triumph of original design and faithful recreation that finally produces the back half of the original Half-Life that was missing for so long. Play this.

This came as a free extra for subscribing to Humble Monthly, and looked neat so I checked it out. A very good puzzle/worker placement/optimisation game about moving trains about to produce resources and then moving those products into other locations for further processing. Some of the track laying mechanics are a little unclear and you might find yourself a little frustrated with that, but otherwise a very solid puzzle game, highly recommended.

Well worth the entry fee

A short little game that manages to combine the building aspect of Path of Exile with the gameplay of an asteroids clone. Easy to pick up and play, and there's some replayablity. Some may find the "screen flicker" of the graphics annoying, and your ship can get lost in the clutter, but that's minor. If you have an hour or two free and this sounds at all interesting I'd say it's well worth picking up

A nice short puzzle game about programming. I completed the game in about 4 hours of gameplay, but this could vary depending on your experience of programming. Nice art style and a good soundtrack. Would recommend.

Play the original instead

I'm honestly shocked that so few of my Friends own Mass Effect 2. It's a crime.

My first impression of this game came about 10 minutes after I'd completed the original Mass Effect, as a sequel, this does almost everything right. The classes are much more specialised, so you'll get much more enjoyment out of multiple play-throughs, but the real gem is the people. From interesting one-off characters to familiar squad-mates, every one of them is well designed. Each of your squadmates has unique details that the game explores.

I really don't want to say any more. If you haven't played this series already, do - if you like video games at all, especially RPGs or shooters - you will love the Mass Effect series. Honestly the best game series I've played, ever. Stop reading this, play Mass Effect.

Sure, the game has a few flaws - what games don't? In the long run, you won't really care - you'll be immersed in the game's world, and that's exactly what's so good.

P.S. Jennifer Hale's voice acting is miles better than Mark Meer's - if you've only ever played this through once as DudeShep, you owe it to yourself to have a second run as FemShep - there's enough different choices to make it totally worth your while.

You should buy this game if you like:
* Games that are hard
* Respawning on the same section hundreds of time
* The feeling of acomplishment of hitting a check point
* Fighting the pope in a spaceship by firing rockets at him
* Dying
* Buying a new controller after throwing it at the screen in frustration
* Hearing a man / woman moan "oh yeah" every time you hit a checkpoint

Great soundtrack, challenging gameplay - a steal on the Steam Sale