Recent reviews by Barack Old Llama

she gnorping on my rock till i compress

man....

:(

Had a creepy alien guy ask me about my car's extended warranty

10/10

I'm sorry to Baldur's Gate 3 but The Talos Principle 2 is my game of the year.

It is an awesome improvement upon the first game in my opinion. I really wasn't a fan of the ultra complex secret stars in the first game so I appreciate the more straightforward approach now.
The puzzles have been expanded with a ton of new interesting mechanics and where towards the middle/end of the first game I felt the puzzles becoming repetitive and boring, The Talos Principle 2 manages to keep all puzzles and mechanics interesting and feeling fresh. The story of the first game has been continued so much better than I could have hoped for, with an insanely interesting setup for a potential third game.
The visuals are just amazing, I really felt overwhelmed at times with how gorgeous some of these locations are.
Like the first game, the confrontation with morale, human nature etc. is very well made and has been beautifully continued with some (hopefully) thought provoking content.
The music of the game, much like the first, is absolutely perfect.

I do have some issues with the game though, mainly the graphic settings. The world looks beautiful, but you cannot play the game without using some upscaling method. This means that I often encountered weird lighting or particle effect glitches, which can in some situations, especially when I'm trying to focus on the story and the insane visuals, be very distracting and take away from the otherwise great experience.
The game also needs some insane PC performance to run on highest setting. With my 4090, using DLSS on Quality and max graphics setting I usually stayed at about 40-60 fps with frame drops in certain regions/areas. This isn't a huge issue, but something to be aware of.

Thank you Croteam for this awesome experience and I would love to see what you can come up with in the future.

The game has a very uniquely beautiful and weird aesthetic and an awesome soundtrack. The game itself is not really difficult, most of the difficulty of the game comes from exploring all the locations and looking for (very obviously presented) clues. The murder mystery did not interest me all that much actually, I was pulled in much more by the worldbuilding, lore and the weird landscape you get to explore. The characters are quite interesting and the general worldbuilding is something I would like to see explored further in a future release.
If you are looking for a complex murder mystery detective game this is probably not it, but the game is something very unique that still warrants exploring its world in my opinion.
The game took me about 10 hours to 100% with all collectibles (though a decent amount of them are unnecessary for completion or the story). All in all I did really enjoy the game though not in the way I originally expected to.

Chants of Sennaar is a very interesting and visually appealing puzzle game. I had some minor frustrations with some puzzles that - at least to me - were not super intuitive, but I enjoyed the game quite a lot overall. It is a very unique concept based on real mythology that is played out very well in-game with an awesome reveal at the end. Also you can pet the cat.

This game looked very promising with very good reviews, though I cannot say that I agree with most reviews.

I really love the aesthetic of the game, these visuals however cannot make up for the absolute lack in story and dialogue. As some other people have pointed out, this game tries to balance horror and comedy and manages to fail in both aspects in my opinion.
Most calls with the victims who are about to be murdered have people trying to hide but then talking with you while they would likely be in or close to earshot distance from the killer, describing everything they are doing in minute detail which also feels like a very lazy and unsatisfying way of storytelling.
There are no real time limits for the puzzles, you are told to find something around the office to help the current caller but can take literally however long you wish to find these things - even though the caller is supposedly in mortal danger.

The most egregious thing about the game that basically completely ruins the immersion for me is the fact that your character knows that people are literally being murdered right now and that he is the stand-in for the 911 operator, but still opening every call introducing himself and the radio show as if it's a normal Tuesday afternoon, sometimes not even mentioning that he is the stand-in for 911, causing people to waste more time being confused of reaching some random radio-show. You can literally hear people being murdered on the other end of the line and your character and your partner are shocked for about 10 seconds, but as soon as the call ends they are basically like "Too bad for that guy." and continue with their banter/jokes between themselves and playing music or ads on the radio.

Some of the jokes like the calls from Ponty's Pizzeria are fairly decent but it simply does not do enough for the experience.

I do believe that this game had potential to be a thrilling experience with a unique gameplay style, but it simply fails to deliver. For these reasons I cannot, in good faith, recommend this game, especially at a price of 25€.

One of the best games I have ever played period. Go in blind and experience the story for yourself, you will not regret it. I am very sad that I won't be able to experience the game the same way again.
If you buy the game with the DLC together I would recommend completing the base story first and diving into the DLC afterwards.

Very beautiful and atmospheric co-op puzzle game. I would recommend playing over voicechat instead of using the walkie-talkies in-game though