Recent reviews by The Ultimate War-she/her

The single player story is underwhelming compared to previous installations in the GTA series. Online is practically unplayable because of how many hackers/modders are in every lobby. there is a good game in here somewhere, but it's not available at this time.

I'm going to start off by giving Dave the Diver the praise it deserves.
This game is nothing if not charming! There is so much character to almost every aspect of the world, and it just radiates joy. The visuals are a beautiful blend of pixel graphics and low-poly 3D that on many occasions left me in awe. The story is fun and lighthearted, and it constantly encourages you to push on and explore more of the game world. There is a pretty large variety of things to do, and the game introduces new mechanics all the way up until the end which helps to keep things feel fresh, to an extent...

Which brings me to why I in good conscience just can't recommend Dave the Diver to anyone;
It's simply too long and paced in such a way that some aspects of the game start to feel like chores instead of relaxing fun. In my opinion it overstays its welcome by something like 2-30 hours, and while there is a lot of variety, the core gameplay of actually fishing/diving isn't strong enough to carry the rest of the game on its shoulders. It sells itself as a game where you dive during the day, and manage a restaurant during the night. But that balance is so heavily skewed towards diving that only 5 minutes out of every hour is spent actually managing the sushi shack. And by the time you get to the deeper parts of the sea, you're going to spend a lot of time retreading the same maps over and over and over again.

Which brings me to the second part that was a letdown for me; The broken promise made at the start of the game. The blue hole is a changing place that mutates and shifts every time you dive into it, sure, but the blue hole is a very shallow part of the over 600 meter deep map. Adding to the frustration, you will almost always want to fish in the deepest waters possible, which means that you're going to spend a big chunk of your time pacing through the same oppressive dark corridors of the Depths desperately trying to find rare spawning fishes so that you can progress your Cooksta rating. Disappointingly enough, once you manage to get past the depths and reach the two last levels of the sea, you'll quickly realize that they are the least interesting maps in the game. Both sporting a very limited variety of fishes, and uninteresting geometry to navigate. (For what it's worth, they're really pretty, as I mentioned before.)

Furthermore; Holy Mackerel this whole game feels like an extended underwater level, and I mean, yeah sure, it's a game about diving but... why does everything feel so sluggish? There is a notable delay between clicking the right mouse button and pulling up your harpoon aim, which makes it so that you often use a melee attack when you wanted to fire off a shot. This doesn't sound like a big issue, but since there is a big focus on fighting bosses that are very much faster than you (and I'm counting every shark as a mini boss to that list), you end up in scenarios where you have a fraction of a second to attack before you need to start dodging their attacks again. You could lessen this problem by using firearms with better range, but the game very clearly tells you that you shouldn't use them since you get fewer rewards from dead fish. This leads you to rely on random drops from randomly spawning weapon chests to get just the right harpoon tip that has either a slowing effect so you can actually fight the sharks, or a sleep effect once you unlock the yellow submarine upgrade (roughly 15-20 hours into the game, and it's arguably pretty underwhelming until you get the 2x and 3x upgrades for it). There's another point I could make about how your oxygen tank is both your health bar and sprint meter, but this review is long enough as it is and I don't want to rant forever and go on another tangent.

This sluggishness extends to every other aspect of the play experience as well. Dave moves like a mollusk both on land and in the water, which makes mundane things like talking to Bancho at the end of the restaurant or emptying the fish farm needlessly time consuming tasks. When you pour tea and other drinks at the restaurant there is a long pause between every action, so you feel like you're wasting a lot time just waiting to regain control of your character so you can service the other patrons. Even just confirming a choice by holding a button takes a few beats longer than it has to. (I think even the devs are aware of this, I've gone back to watch the trailer I can see that almost every single gameplay clip in it is sped up a bit. Not a great look to be honest.)

Another small issue that made itself evident throughout the game is just how many quick time events there are. On a conceptual level I take no issue with QTE's, but it feels a bit thematically dissonant to slowly paddle your way through almost all of the game, only for it to be undercut by having to furiously mash the space bar as fast as possible for an extended amount of time.

And lastly; The game holds your hand way too much. There are fun little puzzles throughout the levels (I think), I would have really appreciated it if the game didn't go into a cut scene while explicitly telling me the solution to the problems before I even get a chance to explore what's going on. It's a small nitpick, but it's a cherry on top of an experience that at its core is pretty descent, but undercuts itself by committing to a lot of annoying choices.

Out of the two fishing related games I bought as a part of this bundle, I can with confidence say that DREDGE is the stronger experience. It doesn't offer nearly as much in terms of gameplay, but when I walk away from that game I was hungry for more, whereas with Dave the Diver I felt exhausted and just happy that it was over.

Dredge is delightful. I've spent the last two days glued to this game exploring every last bit of it. All in all it's a perfectly portioned adventure that doesn't overstay its welcome, and I feel like it does all the things it set out to do really well. If anything I left the experience wishing there was more things to do, and I think that's a good feeling to have when putting a game down.

It straddles the line between horror and casual gaming masterfully and I don't think I've played a game before that has had me feeling both tense and relaxed at the same time. The gameplay loop is solid, and the progression system keeps everything feeling fresh up until the end. Exploring the world feels rewarding and there were several times where I just had to pause and take in the sights. The sound design is also in a league of its own and after 20 hours it never got old or felt grating for even a moment. It looks great, feels great, and sounds great.

The world felt interesting and gave me just enough of a glimpse behind the curtains to leave me both intrigued and horrified at the implications of what's actually going on. And to cap everything off, the game has a great ending that really took me by surprise. It's not a super long game, it doesn't have a lot of replayability, but for what it is it's 100% worth it and I think you should play Dredge if you just like to kick back and invest a weekend into exploring what lies just beyond The Marrows.

Fallout 4 is a weird game. Undeniably good in the technical sense, but also a massive letdown due to all the lost potential. I have spent hundreds of hours in this game, and while it offered me good value for the investment I made in terms of time, it never really left a big emotional impact that I look for in RPGs.

The characters are bland and lack any real sense of motivation, and the ones that are expectations to this rule barely get any screen time instead. The game world is vast and there are many areas to explore, but there is almost nothing truly interesting to find. The quests are... a split between forgettable or procedural generated time filler.

The map is pretty, but ultimately flat. Your choices follow the same pattern by sounding like they will have a big impact, but in the end they too change close to nothing about the game world. The game even lets you set off nukes to wipe out several factions, and that too feels like it doesn't do anything tangible. Something that Bethesda did previously in Fallout 3 with much better results

The feeling I keep walking away from when playing this game is that it's so close to being great, and it just throws it all away. It plays things safe when it has a chance to do something spectacular with its world, and on the off chance that it takes some creative liberties, it just feels weird rather than inspired. It's a game that will constantly make you ask "...AND THEN WHAT?! IS THAT EVERYTHING?!" It makes you feel lonely even when you're surrounded by dozens of wastelanders you've built a literal city for. It makes you feel frustrated that the developers built such an interesting world, only to phone the last 10% of the assignment in.

It constantly teases you with big, interesting questions about politics and the human condition. Only to pull out the rug from beneath you and blow a proverbial raspberry in your face. It's a game that thinks you are dumb, and it dumbs itself down to reach "your" level in an insulting way. Fallout 4 tries to do so many things at once, and it just spreads itself thin by having many internal contradictions and no real unifying message or theme that ties everything together.

And the story is bad. Nothing more I can say about it that other people haven't already. The main quest is a microcosm of everything I've already mentioned in the rest of the review. A collection of cool set-pieces that ultimately don't connect in a satisfying way, and ends up feeling flat.

In conclusion: Fallout 4 is the gaming equivalent of eating a bowl of cereal for dinner. Tasty, but it's not filling. You will walk away from the experience wanting much more.

Without a shadow of a doubt one of the best puzzle games I have played. Antichamber takes a difficult concept and really delivers well on it. There are a few questionable design choices and puzzle designs in the game, but when Antichamber is taken as a whole those decisions start to make sense. Antichamber is a constantly evolving experience that grows and morphs as you learn more about it. The game you play when you start is fundamentally different from the game you play when you're ready to tackle the final level, and most of it hinges on the things you learn as you go.

Antichamber is equal parts a puzzle game and a philosophical journey that teaches you about game mechanics, as well as life, with its simple but effective means of communication. The level design is open ended and doesn't offer much in terms of a clear goal, but if you take the hints the game offers there is a strong sense of direction. The experience is not rooted in mechanical skill and the levels can be completed at your own leisure. (Although there are a handful, less than 5, jumping-related challenges that require rather good timing to beat.)

Due to the open ended nature of the design I did have several moments where I felt like a puzzle didn't have any apparent solutions. But the game actively encourages you to leave problems that are too hard for later, and I felt a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction from coming back to an "impossible" problem with newfound knowledge that made progress trivial. I would sum up Antichamber to be a continuous series of "things just clicking", more so than other puzzle games of the same nature (such as Portal). You will get stuck, and the game is designed around starting over or trying something else.

The sound design is solid. The visuals are clear and effective, although I wish it had better anti-aliasing. The art style is very much "programmer art", but it still feels inviting and charming. Controls are logical and the game feels good to play. No major complaints about the technical aspects.

I managed to complete the game in roughly 6-7 hours without looking up any walk-throughs or tutorials. However, there was 1 puzzle that I only managed to finish by dumb luck It involved walking through a series of solid walls in a non-euclidean space at the top of the "tower". There were 2 optional rooms I wasn't able to connect by the time I finished my play-through, but I still feel like I had the full Antichamber experience without missing anything.

In conclusion: Antichamber is a game about learning to play Antichamber. In the same way that the levels bend back into themselves in impossible ways, the game is both incoherent and perfectly legible. Often leaving you completely on your own while holding your hand. It lets you outsmart it while still always being one step ahead of you. It even made me go back in time and retroactively appreciate moments when I was feeling boundlessly frustrated. It's hard to call something that is only 10 years old timeless, but I feel like Antichamber will survive the test of time.

It's not for everyone, but for some people, it will be everything. 8.9/10

One of the most addicting, fun and expansive games I've ever played. Buy it now.