Recent reviews by Dr. Dreamer the Artisan

Middle review. Decent game but poorly paced with not enough variation, not the best incremental game I've played. But there's a strong foundation here, a competent debut that the devs should be proud of!

The less you know about Bugsnax the better. Don't be put off by how it looks for this game is not what it seems.

Bugnax is difficult to describe if you haven't played it. It's utterly bizarre and unlike anything else I've ever played. The game is very self-aware about how strange and unsettling it is and how unlikable the characters are. Everything feels very designed and intentional despite its weirdness. The characters are believable and the story is very compelling and surprisingly mature which all feels like part of the overall joke, that a game that looks as ridiculous as Bugsnax could actually have anything interesting to say to the player.

Goat Simulator is a funny concept but it commits the sin of copying the gameplay of the Tony Hawk games without bothering to make it fun. This game is little more than a Youtube content farm and in less than an hour you've seen everything it has to offer (which isn't much)

Without rose-tinted glasses Kao the Kangaroo is truly unremarkable and not worth your time. This era is full of some of the greatest 3d platformers of all time like Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Spyro. Kao's most ambitious levels don't come close to the simplest Crash Bandicoot level. If you're looking for nostalgia then play any of these other titles first.

Nexus 5X delivers on the promise of quicker, snappy 4X matches. Lots of playstyles, tons of variety, great with friends

Despite everything I'm about to say you SHOULD experience Destiny, because there is no other game like it.

Destiny 2 is the coolest game ever to be let down by the most bafflingly pointless progression system and wishy-washy writing. If I told you 15 years ago that Bungie would release a bad game you wouldn't believe me, and in some ways you'd still be right. The moment to moment gameplay of Destiny is absolutely top-tier, - it's Halo with more gun variety and more movement. It showcases some of Bungie's strongest art direction; the locations, graphic design and fashion are all so unique and so different to what you're used to seeing in gaming.

Unfortunately Bungie forgot how to tell stories. Destiny is allergic to delivering satisfying story beats and hasn't managed to form a single compelling narrative in its entire lifespan, because every single interesting event either happens off screen or already happened before the game's plot. Dialogue is catastrophically boring and characters seem to be just as clueless as to what the story is supposed to be as the player. For example, the Forsaken DLC was given high praise at the time as one of Destiny's best expansions, but upon playing the campaign it was one of the most dull, repetitive and inconsequential experiences Bungie has ever offered. Destiny 2 should serve as a lesson that it's better to let a game's setting speak for itself than to attach an extended AAA narrative that only serves to make the game worse, such is the curse of the Live Service format (Diablo 4 suffers from the same predicament).

SteamWorld Hest 2 is a good game, and the original is very good too.

My pet peeve is that tactical RPGs without an undo button are very annoying to play. It is too much to demand that players plan their entire move in their heads. Being able to experiment with moving units around before firing helps you visually plan your turns, and other tactics games like Advance Wars allow you to do this unless you reveal an enemy in fog of war. SteamWorld 2 would greatly benefit from such a system.

I went to the live co-op playtest event and a dev confirmed that the vampire is actually definitely really 100%
hidden inside the giant sphere in the Bat Country stage. But he told me not to tell anyone so if you're reading this keep it a secret please.

Innovative take on the idle genre, works well on both PC and mobile

This is one of the few "soulslikes" that gets it right. The bosses are a lot of fun, and the enemy variety is surprisingly wide. For veterans of FromSoft games, Lies of P borrows a lot of its combat cues from Bloodborne and Sekiro, and its level/enemy design from Dark Souls 2. The latter inspirations are both a blessing and a curse, and result in inconsistent quality when it comes to level design. Some levels are intricately designed with snappy pacing, others are a repetitive slog with overused enemies and assets and too many encounters. Every Souls game has some questionable levels, and Lies of P is no exception.

That being said, Lies of P is a great addition to the genre. It is harder than Sekiro in my opinion, so it's probably good to play either Sekiro or Bloodborne as a tutorial to get used to parrying so you don't end up out of your depth with this game. Lies of P plays like it's designed for FromSoft veterans.