Review: Little Nightmares
Recommended: I loved this game without a doubt. It has some of the best art design I've seen and mixes it with a fantastic story to give you a nightmare right out of your childhood. Sound and level design take a close second to the art and story. Multiple levels, and glimpses into the horrors of the Maw give you the feel that there are terrible things ahead. My only real complaint is the game is too short. Almost too short for the money. If it were not so good I'd have a hard time recommending it because of that.
Review: Blood & Gold - Caribbean
Neutral: There's a lot to love in Blood & Gold: Caribbean, but there's a mite too many rough edges to be able to recommend it. Interesting new systems that are perhaps a bit too deep and not really well tutorialized could use some attention, and the production values are uneven and questionable, but at the heart of Caribbean, the roleplaying aspects and the sea combat, are done well. With some TLC this could be a great pirate sim. The strong sea combat mechanics coupled with the roleplaying aspect will likely carry it for many people with a strong interest in the niche of pirate sims, but otherwise, the many rough edges will probably put off less enthusiastic fans. With some TLC, this could be the pirate sim game, but as is, I'd only really be able to recommend it to someone really into the pirate theme or a huge Mount & Blade fan who wants more but in a different scene.
Review: Elder Sign - Omens
Recommended: This is a game made true to the spirit of the series from which it derives its name - a delight stymied by the heavy RNG factor. Where looser interpretations might have dampened the random nature of the dice game that Elder Sign inherits from, this adaptation is warts and all, and as such some games are just going to go much better than others and it's as much down to fate and a roll of those proverbial dice as it is up to any player skill. Looking beyond the obvious failings of the dice game mechanics, however, you will find a moody, atmospheric game with a brilliant attention to thematic details. If there's any game that the feeling of a loss of control created by that random nature is at home in, its a Lovecraftian horror game, and as such, if you can see past that heavy RNG, you'll probably much enjoy this game.
Review: Knights of the Fallen Empire
Neutral: There's flashes of genuine brilliance and good writing in Knights of the Fallen Empire, that never really seem to get properly capitalized on and ended up cut short. When one combines this with an over-reliance on gimmicks, an oppressive feeling of linearity, and a series of grand "choices" that end up being meaningless to the grand scheme of the expansion, KotFE fails to deliver on a promise of a single-player-centric expansion of meaningful choices and interactions. While several of the companions are interesting, many others are simply annoying, and none of them really get a proper character arc. The single-player focus is ultimately what moved it from a weak recommendation to neutral to me, because I wasn't even offered the solace of being able to play through most of this with my wife. Ultimately KotFE promises many things and half-delivers on all of them, leaving a blanketly mediocre experience all-around. It's worth playing if you already have a subscription, but I wouldn't get one just to play it.
Tabletop Review: Iron & Ale
Recommended: Iron & Ale is a fun game that's simple to play and easy to learn. Players won't find a lot of complicated rules that are hard to remember while also drinking, and it can be adapted for your group's personal preferences when it comes to libations. We even had a DD playing the game, and drinking his energy drinks, and still had a blast. There was some repetition but those cards can be removed if desired. Overall it's a lot of fun to play, and a good bang for your buck.
Review: World of Warcraft - Warlords of Draenor
Neutral: There's a lot of fun to be had in Warlords of Draenor, but particularly once the main story arc has been exhausted, the many fun and interesting bits of lore fall away to the constant nuisances that are the expansion and following patches' design decisions. Classes have seen a major overhaul that gutted several of them, to even get a flying mount to work in Draenor involves grinding yourself silly, and the top tier content such as dungeons and raids have very sparse drops and thus poor returns for the amount of work one puts into them. It's worth getting if you are at all into the venerable MMO, but it is not something that's going to sell anyone who has been skeptical of it and avoided it until now. It is, essentially, an expansion with interesting story to tell and a beautiful world, let down considerably by mechanical changes and new mechanics that either are not really capitalized on well, later neutered (like the garrison), or detrimental to the game.
Review: Rogue State
Neutral: There's an interesting enough core series of mechanics to Rogue State, but once the humour stops carrying the game so much, the negatives bog it down significantly. In particular, the animation delays of going to various screens makes the game pace slow and stodgy, and turns completing the thing start to finish a chore. There's some fun to be had here, but I could only recommend it on a sale given formulaic mechanics and a narrative that loses its luster fairly quickly, as well as some fairly crippling bugs and lack of replay value.
Early Access Review: Rimworld
Neutral: RimWorld is one of those games I dread writing a review for, because I really want to like it a lot more than I ultimately did. There is a compelling and intricately-detailed colony builder in the vein of a science fiction adaptation of DwarfFortress just struggling to break out of its limitations here, but it feels like it doesn't quite do that, at least not yet. A lack of proper tutorializing and random events that can severely handicap and even even abruptly a scenario that's going well otherwise, without any easy option to restart such as DwarfFortress' embarkment mechanic, lead to many a rage-quit. While it's true to say that the appeal in the difficult city-builders such as DwarfFortress, Banished, and so forth, is in being able to scrape by when things go wrong, there's a feeling that I could not escape that even doing things 100% correct, there's going to be times the game just pushes my shit in, and without an easy way to get back into the action, that unfortunately means I could only recommend it in its current state to those fans of this "hardcore" builder genre that have an especially high tolerance for "Fun" as it so sarcastically gets called in said circles. With some more time in the over to even out its idiosyncrasies and smooth the rough edges, this could easily be one of my favourite builders, but as stands right now, it's just not there.
