Recent reviews by mogwins

Blasphemous is sort of filling that Hollow Knight-shaped hole in my life.

But if you're playing on the Steam deck (or have frame rate limited on your machine for any reason) be warned: the game is unfinishable at 30 FPS. There's a series of wall jumps that is literally impossible. Switch to 60 FPS and it's simple.

Delightful. The pages of the journal turn with such a satisfying scrunch.

This game sounds like it was written specifically for me. I lived in Boston for years. I adore most of the Fallout games.

But that's the rub, isn't it? "Most." This is basically more Fallout 3. Not more FO1, 2 or New Vegas. It's just a bit bland.

The hand-crafted puzzles perfectly walk that line between challenging but fair, taxing but never tedious. Crucially, the challenge is built through increasing logically complexity, rather than mere size or increasingly iterative "what if..." requirements.

I'm less than halfway through. So I'm projecting about 100 hours of superbly rewarding game time for £2. Currently 99p. Madness.

Do you want to play some cards, Mr Turpin?

'Course you do.

I cannot lie: It's super janky and often looks awful. Textures pop in and out... Out mainly. To the point where some puzzles become unsolveable because you can't see what you're supposed to be doing. Load times are loooooong (partly as a result of it somehow being 54 flippin' GB, which was too big for what's left of my SSD). Crashes to desktop aren't exactly rare. The story, such as it is, is the usual hackeneyed nonsense.

Do you like big buts? Cos this one's huge.

BUT

The combat is super tight and rewarding. There's a real sense of progression. The puzzles are just the right side of frustrating. The world is huge and varied. The skill trees and gear are really interesting, well thought through and balanced.

It's really compelling and I can't stop playing it. I'd highly recommend you play it too.

It's a really polished version of the classic picross/nonogram format. The music is superb. And there's a tonne of content.

But the puzzles never get logically challenging, just bigger. And without that challenge it's a completely empty experience.

[For the record, I played up to the 20x20 puzzles and never once had to make any kind of logical leap that you'd normally expect rom picross. Just count slightly bigger numbers.]

OK, let's get the obvious out of the way upfront. It's not Torment (1999). The world isn't as well realised, the story doesn't hit the same highs and, most importantly, the companions aren't as well fleshed out.

But Torment is not a useful yard stick. Few games have even come close in nearly 20 years.

Tides of Numenera is still, by any reasonable measure, great. The central conceit is fresh, but still faithful to Torment. And the combat's improved.

It's a bit of crappy port: You have to use the mouse to start the game, though there's controller support after that. None of the on-screen button prompts makes sense with a controller, etc.

And the actual game is fairly poorly designed in places: The opening sequence is one of the trickiest bits in the game - but once you get past that, the open-world bits are far more accessible to kids.

But my 5-year old loves it. He'd happily tool around in the game world for hours. So, recommend, I guess.

The video clips are super charming. I really wanted to love this. But there's just wasn't enough game there to keep me hooked in for the duration. So I can't legitimately recommend it.