Recent reviews by Cat Lord

Through its amazingly beautiful artworks, The Banner Saga unfolds its story before your eyes like a good book: It doesn't explain you everything firsthand, or spoil its world with "explanations for dummies" of why this story and where is what.
No, it treats you as an intelligent reader (rather, gamer) and only leads you by hints, letting your imagination to fill the gaps between the narrative, like in a proper novel. Although you are not quite sure where the story is going, you know it's epic, desperate, and at the same time, contains enough rays of hope that let you long for your characters to reach peace and a better day.

True, from a pure gaming perspective, although clever, its mechanics stay very simple, and could be seen as repetitive. But you don't want to win every battle out of cleverness, to "beat the game". You want to win them so that maybe, hopefully, this will save more of your clansmen, fighters and varls. Because the story infuses you with empathy for its likeable and complex characters, offers you few but tough choices, you end up really carring for them, not because you have level them up, but because of who they are: Rook, Alette, Iver, and all the others, struggling to survive, being doubtfull about their (yours !) decisions, hoping they will reach a happy ending.

The Banner Saga is quite a unique game, because it manages something very hard to reach with this media: It conveys emotions.

I can understand it's not a journey for everyone, but it definitely transported me...

Torchlight II is actually not an RPG. It's a Diablo-like game, with different way of leveling up one of the four classes available. It's well done, nicely drawn, quite easy in normal mode, and the amount of loot (and variety of available objects) is just ludicrous. The pet are a Kawaii addition to this style of game, and I am sure pretty useful further down the game, to not go back selling your loot (to be honest, they seem indestructible to me as well). If you are an old timer gamer like me, you can probably pass it. If you are looking for a game for your young kids or nephews, given the price, it's a good gift to make.

A magnificient reboot from the 1994 Edition. Granted, it's not the same game, it has its differences, some are frustrating, but the gameplay is more fluid, and the glam-cam is awesome. The general mood is very dark, and well rended throughout the game. At long last, this game is the true heir of a long battered franchise, from which many previous "sequel" were total failures in both features and gameplay. Well done 2K.

Believe it or not, I hate football. Nevertheless, Football Manager keeps being one of the most interesting strategy & management game on the market, with a definitely engrossing One More Turn (or rather One More Match) syndrom, alongside Sid Meier's Civilization or Heroes of Might and Magic franchises.