Recent reviews by Allus

Styx: Master of Shadows is a competent stealth game which is at its best when you're exploring vast, open areas, plotting a course to avoid the guards and get to the exit. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the mid-game takes place in tight, confined sewers, where it's more about waiting for gaps in patrol routes than organically exploring the map. Worth a look if you enjoy stealth games, but maybe wait for a sale before you pick it up.

Ended up getting a bit heavier than I expected in the story department, but other than two or three puzzles I had to look up the solutions to, this is an extremely well-done atmospheric exploration/puzzle game.

Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is a cross between Persona 5 and Akiba's Trip 2, but without as engaging of a story as Persona 5, and less satisfying combat than Akiba's Trip 2.

The main reason I don't recommend it is because of the price--this game is absolutely not worth $60. I bought it when it was 40% off ($36) and I'd say that's approximately the right amount to pay, given the game's content.

If you can find it on sale for 40% off or more and you're into JRPGs, then go for it. Otherwise, give it a miss.

I've seen a lot of people describe this game as "chill Factorio" but, if anything, it's too chill. It critically lacks Factorio's "just one more thing" drive that will keep me playing that game for hours on end. Instead, there's kinda...nothing. Once you've unlocked all of the different ways to operate on the shapes, there's not really much more the game can throw at you--there are only so many ways you can chop, rotate, stack, and color shapes.

TL;DR: An atmospheric environmental puzzler with hauntingly good sound design comes out of the gate strong, but runs out of ideas midway through and grinds players down by dangling its singular goal just out of reach for almost the entirety of its 24-hour runtime.

Let's get the praise out of the way first: this game has phenomenally good audio design. And I don't mean, "good for an indie game." I mean, "better than most AAA games I've played." This game was able to make me feel genuinely unsettled via only the media of dark, dank tunnels and the ambient sounds such an environment would produce.

The graphics are perfectly adequate. There's nothing that's going to require you to push your brand new RTX 30-billion to its limits, but there's also nothing that seriously pulls you out of the game.

This is where things get interesting. INFRA starts out very strong, with expansive environments that reward careful exploration and allow for multiple solutions to many of its puzzles. The puzzle design is intuitive enough that you're not left trying to jump onto a train of logic known only to their creators, but complex enough that you actually feel a sense of accomplishment from solving them.

However, by the end of Act 1 (of which there are 3), all of INFRA's cards are already on the table. All of the puzzle mechanics have been showcased, all of the environment types have been visited, and you've finally realized that the core gameplay loop is, in fact, a core gameplay infinite line, with the game's one and only goal of returning to your office being constantly held just out of reach as your sole motivation. Why would I want to solve more puzzles, when I know all that's waiting for me is yet another unfortunately timed infrastructure failure, whisking away all of my hard-earned progress and leaving me just as far away from my goal as I started?

I started following a walkthrough about halfway through the game because, despite losing all motivation for organically solving INFRA's puzzles, I did still want to know how the story ended. In that respect, I suppose the story is doing its job. However, if you're not following a walkthrough, it's incredibly easy to miss many of the collectible documents and audio logs (the collection of a certain number of which are required to receive the best ending) through which the game tells its story.

All things considered, INFRA goes on for about 50% longer than its ideas can carry it, and the experience suffers as a result. Cut the game down to two acts instead of three, let us actually make it back to the office between acts, and give the final chapter some TLC, and this would be a tight, memorable game. As it stands, INFRA only disappoints after its strong start, and certainly isn't worth the ($30, as of writing) price of entry.

A fantastic, well-written CRPG that encourages exploration and actually role-playing. To that end, while you can certainly save-scum the game's stat checks, like a good DM, Disco Elysium will find a way to keep the story going, even if you fail.

While I am a programmer IRL (and perhaps because I am), I had to put this game down and step away in order to save my sanity. Don't get me wrong, the world-building and technological concepts are great (I even printed out the game's manuals and stuck them in a three-ring binder for reference). However, as the puzzles get more difficult, you are expected to come up with ever hackier and kluged-together solutions, and I was starting to get disgusted at the code I was having to write to solve them. (For the record, it was the realization that, due to space constraints, I was going to have to store two data streams in alternating memory addresses within the same memory module, which was the last straw for me.)

I probably got at least $15 dollars of entertainment out of this game, but I can't, in good conscience, recommend a game that encourages such poor coding practices.

TL;DR: If the concept of this game looks interesting to you, I highly recommend you play Akiba's Trip instead. It is essentially this game, but much better.

The overworld of Ximending is very colorful and lovingly rendered, but the mirror world of Youshanding (where all of the combat, and therefore the majority of the gameplay, takes place) consists almost entirely of featureless black surfaces and red neon accents. It gets very monotonous, very quickly.

The combo system is interesting, but the fact that Yumo has to stop and take a breather after the end of every combo means that it's impossible to build any kind of momentum in combat. The result is that each combo is completely disconnected from the one which comes before or after it, and there is no point in trying to set up anything more complex.

Some of the bosses in this game also have frankly inexcusable amounts of health. When you start thinking, "alright, I've been through about five cycles of this boss, surely I must almost be done," and look up to see it still has 2/3 of its health left, the fight turns into a test of patience, rather than a test of skill.

It was fine, I guess? I can't recall any major failings or awkward moments, but I also can't recall anything which stood out positively, either. It's a cast made entirely of stock anime characters, following a stock anime plot.

This game ended up being one where it felt like a chore to push through to story end, but there wasn't any one aspect of it that failed so hard that it made me stop playing. As I alluded to at the top, it very much aspires to be Akiba's Trip: Taiwan Edition, but critically lacks the soul and tight design of its inspiration.

A really nice little hacking game. Not the most realistic depiction of hacking (play NITE Team 4 for that), but I definitely appreciated the more story-driven gameplay.

About 8 hours to story end, 11 hours (total) to 100%.

Who knew that playing as a space station's onboard AI could be so immersive?

Keep in mind that this is a narrative-focused game with no branching paths and a heavy emphasis on discovery, so if that's not your bag, then probably give it a miss or wait for a sale. However, if you're down to play the part of a spaceship's AI in a sci-fi thriller, then buy this game now!