Recent reviews by The Gaming Archaeologist

Though as of writing this I have still not actually finished the game yet, however I have played many hours and even though I've not quite reached one of the many endings, I have certainly spent many hours on it and getting myself ♥♥♥♥ scared!

Here's some footage of me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ myself for your viewing pleasure: https://youtu.be/cuoiUfgPfeM

The story goes between different characters who end up getting involved in this ancient mansion that holds a dark and deadly secret! As one of the characters (who is attempting to sell the home to get a big commission and send money back to her family in the Philippines) you come across a ancient-looking letter that curses you to show it to several more people or you die too. Like those chain letters I first experienced in email where they claim you'll be haunted if you don't, however, in this case it's REAL! That said, the person that haunts you can appear anywhere (not just in the house) follows you and can appear at the most random moments whilst making this creepy sound that's similar to someone being choaked to death and her appearance is like some half-rotten corpse that glares at you with those big, haunting and soulless eyes!

The many scenes like this certain worked in scaring the ♥♥♥♥ out of me and creeping me out, putting me on edge whenever I started walking around someone dark in the real world for a bit...

Beyond that, the game itself is a typical VN where you play as different people's perspectives, including those who have chosen to buy this house and will end up getting afflicted by the curse too.

There was a lot of great talent that went into this game, along with the voice acting too and some great character development too. I totally recommend it for any horror fan out there who likes VNs and getting terrified!

Originally played this on DLsite some years back, but recently it's entered Steam like so many pornographic games have done in the recent years.

You play as a character who isn't interested in treasure, exploration or even just glory for slaying monsters, but a guy who is interested in "laying" all the monster girls that live deep in the dungeon and you're treated to hentai images for defeating them. Often gaining stat boosts too.

All the monsters in the dungeon are static and have their own HP, Defence and Attack Power stats that you need to overcome when getting in contact with them to play out a turn-by-turn auto fight. Along with this there are multiple locked doors that require and eat keys so you have to plan carefully where you wish to go and what enemies to face as you need to level up before taking on the far more dangerous creatures and have to pick which stats you want enhanced too.

It's a pretty fun game for what it is, though at times I've often gotten stuck or lost. I've only managed to get the bad ending so far, so I am curious what other endings await.

((As of reviewing this, the steam version STILL doesn't have it's achievements working! 8th of August 2024))

I played this quite a bit a while back, however, this game can get very frustrating due to being a rogue-like where much of your progress is entirely based on RNG.

The story is that nuclear war has happened and now there are mutants and monsters roaming the land and you have to get up to the saftey of a shelter in Canada, however, you only have so much gas so the only way to do this is that as you travel, you make tacos for the people at the different pitstops along the way to buy more gasoline (which increases in price each new and more dangerous zone) but you also need to buy ingredients to actually serve people, otherwise you won't get your money and if you get a taco wrong, you have to refund it, so there's a handy book of recipes to remind you, though I found with most it's fairly easy to guess what each one is from the image as you can usually see the Salsa, Cheese, meat and ect.

As you are travelling, you also have to collect ingredients such as meat from passing creatures. This can be from a harmless farm animal like a cow or chicken or a giant mutant rat or mutated humanoid! However, they aren't helpless and will attempt to smash you apart unless you shoot them down first and if you lose all your health, you have to start the game again, but you've unlocked some cool decals to decorate it next time!

The shop never has ALL the ingredients so sometimes you'll find places that'll have the ingredients that are most common in the tacos (cheese, salsa and such) but other times you might want rarer stuff like beans, and mold but each stop you come to it's random if they even have it or not! I've lost too many times by running out of Salsa and not being able to buy any for too long, getting stuck due to a lack of fuel.

There is another type of pitstop as well, one that sells upgrades for you truck, replacement trucks and even repairs but you can't buy any ingredients and they only accept scrap from any and all destroyed debris you blow apart on your journey there.

thankfully at every stop there's a gas pump, but it ALWAYS takes cash and if you're revisiting a place, the survivors who were there are usually dead by the time you arrive so you can't sell anything, which I feel makes the game ever more difficult and frustriating to play.

That said, I still had fun blowing up monsters and serving their innards to the survivors who seem to not care what it is, as long as it's in a taco, I guess.

Maybe it's something to do with Tacos, I don't know, I've never tried them though I admit the cheese one looks delicious!

I did play this a while back and though the concept really hooked me and the story certainly grabbed my attention, I admit I found it difficult to make "entertaining" to stream and soon got pretty bored of it.

Each time is procedurally generated and rogue-like in how if you die you have to start all over with a whole new map so you can unlock new abilities to use again, however, I did find is very frustrating and, again, difficult to really stream to make it interesting!

The story is where all these monsters have invaded the building and from reading all the different bits of story that I came across, I had a theory that there might've been a twist at the end, but I never got the far. Maybe one day I'll finish it and revisit this page to update my opinion on it.

Old stream of mine: https://youtu.be/_pFEmAkbIE0

've played this game on multiple consoles, so I feel 30 hours is probably roughly correct...

The story of Psychonauts follows the story of Raz. A kid who, in a bit of an odd twist, ran away from the circus to attend a camp for training psychics to join the prestigious elite group of psychic agents that protect the world from impending evil!

So with you stuck at the camp and the ones running it unable to get rid of you, they say you have a few days to learn and so they can measure your skill before your parents arrive to pick you up (but there's no actual time-limit so don't worry. These days only pass in regards to the story) and so Raz is inspired to learn and do as much of his training as possible to in the hopes of getting chosen and passing all the courses!

You do most of this inside the different mental world of the characters that you encounter and this is something that I wish the movie "Inception" did because we are all individuals with our own experiences, inspirations and so on that our minds would look totally different from one another and not like some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ generic city, or hotel or whatever!

Anyway, sorry about that. I always lose track...

Anyway, each world is different, but they all have similar collectables in regards to collecting figments of imagination (often Static, but not anyways, 2D colourful images), cobwebs, collectable cards, emotional baggage and some other fun bits including digging into someone's deep memories where they'd pushed stuff down like trauma and in some cases, you can find clues as to what will happen next, along with new powers and abilities that you can use when revisiting for collectables and getting a completionist run-through.

Soon you learn that something strange is going on and evil individuals are plotting and even removing the brains of the children to be used as part of somekind of nefarious scheme that you have to prevent! You even help unlock some people's memories and in one case, managed to cure someone's anger issues due to a tragic past.

To Be Honest, just talking about this makes me want to play the game again! It's just that fun and I spent countless hours just enjoying the unique different worlds that are inside everyone's minds.

I'd heard some great hype around this game and I have to admit, I did enjoy the difference in visuals I got when around the time I first started playing this I got my old SRT TV replaced with a high-rez flat-screen! Finally, a TV that can take HDMI!

This was years ago, but like any game that left an impression on me, I can accurate recount so much here, but I'll try not to dive into spoilers as, especially these days, you can very easily get this on a sale along with it's sequels which, in case of the second game, I feel failed to live up to in many ways, but that's for a separate review.

Off the bat, the first thing that really interests me in this game was that you have a choice of race and class with some being locked out of eachother due to world-building reasons, but the massive variety is certainly a reason to replay as you often meet people from your past as villains to strike down who may have been interesting mid-bosses when on a different backstory, but if it's one they're involved with then it get's personal! They even have unique dialog too when encountering you again.

Regardless of what happens in your backstory though, all paths lead to you becoming a Grey Warden via the control such wardens have to recruit the chased, condemned or displaced. That familiarity runs deeper with all these origins rubbing up against Duncan, the man who hires you, in one way or another. Often rescuing you from a death sentence in one way or another.

The reason for the recruitment is that the Darkspawn, evil creatures who live underground, have started coming to the surface in an event people all over the country know as a "Blight" where, after these creatures have found and over-powered a Dragon, transforming it into one of their own, make their march up onto the surface to kill and dominate! However, Duncan and the King's plot to stop this Blight ultimately ends in bloodshed and you and your companions retreat and survive, whilst being branded as traitors and framed for the whole thing which is going to make your attempt to bring together the allegiances all the more difficult and a good thing you were able to obtain the ancient documents that speak of how The Dwarves, Elves and Humans are all pledged to defend and fight with the Grey Wardens in an hour of need, but in some situations politics gets in the way or the group themselves are at risk of potentially being wiped out by an outside force.

The choices in this game, though a little binary, are also VERY grey too since you can make choices that will either repeat horrors of the past, but give you some extremely powerful allies for the final battle or do the more ethical thing and end up with more typical soldiers for the battle. The idea that you can side with literal monsters to have them help you in the final battle is certainly an interesting idea for the ethics of the event. Do you let innocent people die to bring in deadly creatures who could spell doom at a much later date or do you save them and get more moderately strong to weak warriors?

I've completed the game multiple times and I love how you can also unlock special classes via stuff you accomplish in-game like by either being taught something, buying a book to read on that class or having someone teach it to you. Once that's unlocked, you can use it in EVERY following playthrough. Really good if you got a bunch of magic classes with a fighter playthrough or similar.

Multiple endings are possible, more so with if you completed the personal quests for your companions and made the best dialog choices as you can have a warrior who values only strength and combat view you with esteem, a paladin turn against his faith to help others and many others! I can't count how many times I have completed this game and my PS3 is currently out of commission so I can't even check what my time played it, but it'd probably in the 100s since I've played every class option and such along with different genders for difference romance options too, though due to the world of video games, the romance shows nothing more than people in their underwear, but that's a personal bias I have for video games in general.

Only thing that drags this game back for me is that as fun and unique as the background is for each different class and/or race situation, at the end of the day you are still doing the same story once you arrive at your initiation and so on, but sometimes you can change outcomes by visiting either places first and be like "Yes, I have that item right here!"

The game was a whole lot of fun and the gameplay was similar to a 3D version of Baldur's gate with the ability to pause, though often I saw no reason to do this apart from spells or dealing with difficult enemies and traps as, much like that game, the AI for a situation like this isn't very good and it's why I prefer grid-based combat with AI because they can often me much easier to program to make them a challenge and an actual deadly encounter.

The DLC was a lot of fun too, completing unlocked all sorts of fun goodies for you to have, which may be a little OP considering.

Before the final battle, I like how after every group you've won over, you can donate items for the cause so that they can build up their army, but often I've been far too stingy with my items and use them for crafting and such instead, but it does make a difference when taking part in the final battle you're going to need as many people as possible to fight off the Darkspawn!

As this one contains three minigames I'll cover each one in turn, each one is quite fun within it's own right and I've certainly been replaying the last one on this list a lot.

21: A sadistic game of Black Jack where the person who is involved is, you guessed it, Lucas. Each section has a different set of rounds where punishment is dealt to the loser each and every time. He even gives you special cards to play to improve your advantage, disadvantage or can raise the stakes against your opponent and making them take a much heavier hit than what they were originally up for. Neither person wants to be stuck in this, but what do you expect? Lucas watches from the screens, shows himself up and modifies it each time for him to have a good laugh at the two flail around.

Daughters: This one I initially played [on steam](https://youtube.com/live/Nzb4deu2ETQ) because it was story based and focuses on the events of the Baker home at the very beginning where you play as Zoe with two separate endings involved. One that is the actual ending and another which is a bad ending.

Jack's 55th Birthday: This is a unique minigame where you have to run around the house, fighting off molded who are all wearing goofy hats and get food to bring back for Jack. It's quite addictive and there's multiple combinations of what you can do with the food and what you can mix it with to improve it, including a secret hidden recipe that makes the best food in the game, takes up only one slot and is also kind of disgusting when you know what it is.

You start out in different areas and the items are in different locations depending on the stage. To make things a little more difficult, certain coloured molded need to be killed to get access to the rooms that have some useful items in, not just rare food but also ammo for your weapons.

The game is heavy on inventory management here as when you unlock different skills, they also take up room in your inventory with the best taking up two slots, but also causing a disadvantage too so you need to be careful with what to choose as each stage is time-limited too, so it is a little stressful at times, however, the more molded you kill and the quicker, the more time you get for each kill and ect.

Certainly worth checking out after you finish the main game and really makes me want to keep returning to RE7 for this reason.

Whilst messing around with the DLCs: https://youtube.com/live/Nzb4deu2ETQ after finishing the main game, I decided to try out these tapes first. I imagined that they would be a bunch of fun experiences like those in the main game, but I found that the first one was actually a horde-mode, but with a rouge-like element of starting with more resources the higher a score you get every time! However, I didn't want to make my stream that entire game so I moved onto the next videos.

Bedroom is primarily a puzzle game where you are cuffed to a bed (same bedroom as the master bedroom in the main game) and Margarette is offering you food to eat. For fun I wanted to see if there was an achievement for just sitting there and eating the food, but no, it just kills you. nvm.

So you have to find a way out by using what you have on you, however, there isn't much. No guns or anything significant enough to decide to blast your way out of here so you need to solve the puzzles in the room, read the clues and try to apply them to everything around you.

However, certain things you do will create noise that'll bring Margarette back and before she gets back you need to set everything back in place, get back in bed and put the cuff back on to make it seem like you weren't attempting to escape, nor that there was anything off in the room!

However, there are a few traps that can't be undone so she will catch you, punish you and you lose a bit of health. Lose too much and you die so again, make certain that you are careful in what you do and reset everything. Especially as she relocks you into your position and you'll have to try and break out again.

I found this one a lot of fun and actually like one of those video tapes you pick up in the game, but once you've figured out the puzzles in that room, you're done with it. Maybe redo it without getting harmed at all or getting her suspicious, however, there's no real reward for that as far as I can see and beyond that there's no point in revisiting it. It was good for what it was though!

After finishing "Not a Hero" I moved right onto this DLC in the same stream!: https://youtube.com/live/J-qPjtVojWk

The story of this one is based on if you make a very specific major story decision (Which I felt was selfish, considering everything Zoe did for you) which always erks me a little when it comes off like they gave you this choice, but you must've chosen this one because you're stupid if you didn't, or something like that I imagine the developer is saying when they made DLC like this to the game. Not a Hero didn't have this issue as all the following events could've happened regardless of what option, but this one they show you make a certain option (not going to spoil) that leads to the events that follow.

Zoe's uncle, Joe Baker, is going through the swamp, wanting to get to the house to find out what happened to his family from a while back (I forget, but it's set about a month or something after the events of Not A Hero) and he finds Zoe, mutated into, what I can only describe as potential sexy crystal tyrant!

Anyway, when he finds her she's surrounded by agents from the rebranded "Blue Umbrella" who you learn more about in the previous DLC, but he instantly distrusts them and beats the crap out of them with his fists, not listening to them when they were saying how they wanted to take her back to base to cure her.

He finds out later from the one be brought back that they wanted to cure her before he got involved and all the while a large humanoid monster is chasing you and Zoe. The damn thing looks like Swamp Thing and considering his origin story, probably not that dissimilar either. He continues to pester you and the final showdown is where he's captured Zoe and you're going to defeat him by, how else? Your fists! Aided by a suped-up Power Glove. Didn't know Nintendo developed anti-material fighting gloves, but there you go!

Regardless, it was a lot of fun, though the boss was annoying in that due to his regeneration you can't keep your distance. You have to keep beating the snot out of him faster than he can regenerate so all my usual combat tactics didn't work until I decided to do that, wailing on him like a man possessed! Was still a hell of a lot of fun though!

Edit: Something I forgot to note, despite being DLC you have to pay for, it is shorter than the previous one and still had a lot of fun content tied to it like I said. Including picking up boxing effigies to increase your punching by a percentage.

So immediately after I finished RE7, I decided to dedicate streaming the DLCs: (https://youtube.com/live/Nzb4deu2ETQ)

The story covered Chris Redfield immediately after the end of Ethan's story where you need to track down the last remaining member of the Baker family and bring them to justice.

You have to keep your wits about you as there are traps everywhere, molded, fat molded with no arms nor head to make them a walking bomb and white molded who can't be harmed normally and you need a special kind of ammo to actually do any harm or in most cases, need only one hit to destroy them, just like normal ones you fire these rounds at.

Your starting weapons are pretty good, being a pistol with decent damage, a combat knife and a pretty powerful semi-auto shotgun that can decapitate molded when they get within, as my friend says, "Bad Breath Distance" (on Normal difficulty, of course) and it ends with a pretty epic boss battle which certainly makes up for the final battle in the main story which was far more scripted.

Still, it was great fun to play as Chris "Boulder-puncher" Redfield who even gets a chance to punch enemies when they're stunned, often taking them out in that single hit, because that's how much of a badass Chris Redfield is!

Edit: Something I forgot to cover, despite my title of the review, is Blue Umbrella.

After all the events we know only TOO well, the company has gone under a restructuring and now they are dedicated to taking their research and using it to clean up any and all BOW incidents that may or may not have involved their own previous R&D mishaps. Obviously, I was very suspicious to find that Chris was working for them and he clearly wasn't happy about it either, but they are trying their best to attempt to turn over a new leaf and by keeping their name and changing the logo, are trying to own up to their own past behaviour and not run from it, which is quite commendable. Can't say I trust that things won't go awry somewhere down the line...