Recent reviews by Clever Dan

Baldur's Gate 3 is my 2023 game of the year. It's so ambitious, the story is great, voice acting is phenomenal, there are so many overlapping systems and things it accounts for. You can approach things in so many different ways. It's the perfect combination of "open world" and "narrative driven" games and feels like a unique step forward for games.

This is my favorite 40K game.

DRG is one of best four player co-op games available. The devs are great and don't use FOMO tactics to keep people playing.

Having finally completed The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles I can say this is probably my new favorite Ace Attorney game. I know it's actually two games from 3DS that only got a Japanese release in 2015 and 2017, but they were meant to be played together. The story was written as a whole by series creator Shu Takumi, who wasn't working on the mainline games anymore. It did take me about six months to complete as I took breaks between cases to not get burned out and to better absorb the story.

The tone of the game is much more grounded than other Ace Attorney games. No longer set in the nebulously defined land which fans call "Japanifornia" but primarily in London *around* 1900, but don't bother looking for a definitive year that aligns with real people and events.
The Japanese protagonists have to deal with quite a bit of xenophobia from the people of London who would already see them as untrustworthy, especially in a court of law. However that doesn't mean the game isn't funny or without ridiculous characters. There are many ridiculous witnesses and jury members, and of course, Herlock Sholmes. His character is already hard to describe, but he will also create inventions that mirror our current technology that put him pretty far into steampunk fantasy.

Ryunosuke feels more competent than Phoenix, relying less on bluffing and more on eliminating the impossible. He's earnest but still fun with his interactions with Sholmes. I do wish his voice actor gave a stronger "Objection!" Assistant Susato is pretty calm, knowledgeable, sweet but serious, but is a total fangirl for Sholmes. Meanwhile the primary antagonistic prosecutor feels smarter when it comes to standard law practices when compared to those we've seen in the past. All of the other main characters were very enjoyable. If I didn't care for character initially, I had grown to like them by the end with their complex motivations and moral shades of gray. Most 'one-off' characters were good as well, but there were a few annoying ones too.

The music is phenomenal with many songs that stick with you long after you stop playing, orchestral sounding pieces with lots of stringed instruments, accordions, and harpsichords. There isn't much else to say besides me just gushing about each song individually.

The overall story is great with several shocking moments. There are are some moments that were less shocking and were more expected. I suppose that balances out but some of the unsurprising moments reminded me of events in the original trilogy. For the individual cases, most I couldn't stop once starting. The first two cases did feel a little slow, like I had figured out things out ahead of the story, and the first case took about 4 to complete. And there was one case that kinda annoyed me with its crime and characters, but the rest are some of the best cases in franchise. All of the cases are pretty long, but it's not a problem for the good ones.

The game has many quality of life features that make it hard to go back to previous entries: reviewing recently mentioned text, seeing at-a-glance how many parts a witness testimony has and which part you're currently viewing, and an auto-play toggle to automatically advance dialog after short moment so you don't have to press a button to advance to the next text box. The game also has a 'story mode' setting where the game plays itself for you to watch, solving puzzles for you. I never used it to try it (it disables achievements.) I hope future games have full voice acting. Also many characters have their dialect written into their text, so I had to read some lines aloud to understand what they were saying. I can see this being more difficult for non-native English speakers, so an option for plain text would be cool to see.

Graphically the game looks great. The backgrounds and character designs are fantastic, no complaints here. While the other Ace Attorney 3DS games kinda made me miss the 2D sprites, this game is how I want to see the series look going forward. Characters are able to interact and look at each and into the background. The camera pans and sweeps add a lot of flair to the scenes they're used. The game is locked at 30fps and looks fine, but if you have it on Steam, you can install a mod to increase it to 60fps and the character animations look so silky smooth.

I highly recommend this game for fans of the previous game, or ones who thought the prior games were too silly, or newbies who have been interested in these silly visual novel games and want to see the best they have to offer.

Stream this with friends and take turns making the choices on a playthrough. There's 117 different endings and every mundane or surreal thing you do can change the outcome. It even has workshop support for custom storylines.

I found it hard to put the game down. The writing of the characters and story is fantastic, the worlds are colorful and interesting, the voice work is top notch and maintains quality and quantity throughout. I would recommend this game to anyone. I wouldn't say it left me wanting more, but the game doesn't overstay itself and I can easily see myself playing through the game again in the future.

While the game itself is great, it is not 100% completion friendly. While outfits can be grabbed for a permanent unlock, compendium lore items cannot be saved but by chapter skipping so if you want them, you'll have to do full playthroughs. You can't skip cutscenes, only individual lines of dialogue. Also many of the collectables have conversations with team members tied to them the usually explore some emotional backstory for one of the characters, but doing a new game plus keeps the items collected but doesn't allow you to revisit these scenes.

I also encountered a few bugs that soft-locked me, but most were fixed by reloading the last checkpoint. The game auto-saves often and I never lost much progress.

Don't let the poor decisions of the Avengers dissuade you from this game. I was pleasantly surprised. It is a lot of fun and has lot of heart.

This game strikes a fantastic balance between puzzle platformer and precision platformer. The level design is great and varied which is an achievement with limited mechanics the game uses. There are many points where the game may feel pretty tricky with the jumps or or a collectible is difficult to find, but it has a generous checkpoint system that prevents a lot of frustration. Getting everything in a level is satisfying and encourages you to play 'just one more level'. The music is catchy. The story is charming. Getting an unlockable costume piece each level fun. I highly recommend it if you're into platform gaming. This game needs more attention.

As a fan of Supergiant Games and not a fan of rougelikes, I was skeptical of how much I would enjoy Hades. I picked it up based on other reviews and being familiar with the company. I'm glad I did because this game seems to fight the frustration of losing all progress in rougelikes in a like the BBC will re-cast the Doctor as resets are part of the story.

The gameplay is satisfying and can be quite varied based different weapons and items. You can feel yourself making gradual progress and upon a loss it feels like the game is cheering you on to try again. And once you complete your first 'run,' you'll want to do it again, better and faster.

The story is intriguing, the art is beautiful, the music sticks with you, and the voice acting is top notch with an incredible amount of dialogue.

This is my Steam game of 2020 and I've been recommending it to everyone.

I didn't expect much from this game before release, but after playing, it surpassed all my expectations and became my 2019 Game of the Year:

The shooting, resource management, puzzle solving, and survival gameplay all feel incredibly satisfying.

The sound design is sharp, I highly recommend playing with headphones with directional sound.

The difficulty isn't too hard if you keep your wits and plan well on the initial difficulty, and the hardcore mode is a great challenge for those who already know what they're doing.

The story is classic, but done in a serious way so it's not completely campy, and it keeps you invested.

It's not a long game that overstays itself; an initial playthrough takes about 8-12 hours. But it left me wanting more, and the game is made to be played multiple times with different characters and scenarios.

There are many games in the Metroidvania genre of games, in their exploration and item finding, but few games actually feel similar to the 2D Metroid or later Castlevania games. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ticks the box for Castlevania nostalgia, while modernizing itself, which allows it to stand on its own.

There are so many weapons, magic abilities, and techniques that every can find their own style to play. Many weapons and abilities are quite unique.

The castle is memorable and unique rooms stand out. During my initial playthrough I could easily remember what rooms I wanted to return to them later.

The story isn't too unique, but works well enough and I grew to like the characters.

On Normal Difficulty the game is actually pretty easy, and gets easier when leveling up. However it was still very satisfying becoming incredibly strong and quickly destroying most enemies. I play to replay on the hardest difficulty which does allow for leveling and keeps you at level 1.

This was a crowdfunded game with multiple delays, however the passion behind it is apparent and the game was worth the wait. I could barely stop playing Bloodstained once I started. Easily one of my favorite games this year.

Subnautica is a fantastic experience. Survival/Crafting games are very popular right now, which made me hesitant at first. Quality of games in this genre vary quite a bit, but I was very pleased with Subnautica. This game stands out as a unique experience with its alien, yet realistic ocean setting that draws small inspiration from brilliant games I played before it such as Metroid Prime (creature design, feeling of isolation, scanning everything, backstory told through scans and voice logs) and Half-Life 2 (gravity gun, more creature design, navigating air vents).

The ocean setting is unique to his kind of game, and every biome in the game has a kind of beauty to it, from colorful to eerie. Most of the ocean life has some kind of bioluminescence, so exploring at night isn't a real hindrance. Seeing the ocean transform with no light is amazing.

The world isn't procedurally generated but handcrafted, so the world layout and progression is well crafted. Exploring is satisfying. The game has a few jump scares, most of which can be avoided if you're careful, but the true scariest parts of the game are being in parts of the ocean that are so deep that sunlight fails to reach it, or seeing immenseness of the water surrounding you that goes on forever.

This game surpassed expectations, gameplay of base building and environment exploring was satisfying, the world, creatures, and water effects at pleasing to look at, and it delivered emotions including joy, sadness, and fear while playing with its world and story. I even had stories about my experiences to share with friends who also play the game. I know this game was in early access for a long time, but I'm glad I got the full experience by playing it after the game released.

If you enjoy this genre of game, I can't recommend it enough.