On: PC/Windows

Oh what the hell, come on! I could see this having some potential, even if it's hinting at stealing from Amnesia: The Bunker outright. But then the monster doesn't show up until the very end and it's just a face floating in the sky? There's nothing to this game, nothing to worry about, nothing interesting to be collected, nothing by way of actual gameplay mechanics until wonky gun controls introduced near the end just to allow you to feel like you have a bit of control. Bad.

On: PC/Windows

What if your OS let you break open your 3D maze screensaver and delve into a nightmare world of puzzle solving and hidden spirits? The mystique and nostalgic worldbuilding of this one do a lot of the heavy lifting, as the puzzles mostly consist of wall panels similarly to "The Witness", but they're much more convoluted. And someone chained up Clippy in a dungeon? What is going on here?!

On: PC/Windows

"Yooka-Laylee" is back, and they improved a few things, made some odd choices that I don't think work, and also just left some problems there because perhaps they're too embedded into the game itself? A mixed bag to be sure, I can at least tell that they put their all into trying to provide an experience that should've been what was given to backers at launch, but they also took different lessons from the feedback than I think was intended? At least in some respects. For example, some of the enemies were completely redesigned or deleted from the game. The brutes are gone and replaced with these spiky ball monsters, and the bees were done up to look uglier and not at all like bees. But hey, you don't need to pay to expand the worlds and the Rextro mini-games were VASTLY improved. The variety of those mini-games isn't present, as they're now just different levels of the same mini-game. But it's, you know, GOOD, which is important. Q.U.I.D.S. is a new currency that was added as well, so you can buy some upgrades and costumes, I don't know if the game needed MORE collectables in general. But hey, is this an improved version of the original game? Absolutely.

On: PC/Windows

I have no idea what this game is supposed to be about, and I kinda feel like that's the point. But there's a segment near the end of the game where the world folds in on itself and it's a beautifully confusing, mind-bending maze. Also, there are pigs marching on their hind legs like in "Animal Farm". What's not to like?

On: PlayStation

Three years in a row I've been taking out the original Crash trilogy, and with this year I've finally wrapped it up. Very happy to have been able to do this, I'm certainly not done with Crash as a franchise, because there's tons of games (including a couple of GameCube releases that I need to do blogs on), but I finally got this done and am proud. I'm surprised that the original Crash doesn't have anything for platinum relics, but I'm not complaining. Just collecting all the relics in order to get the final percentage towards endgame is more than enough for me!

On: Nintendo GameCube

I'll be writing a blog post about this soon!

On: PC/Windows

Going back into the Midnight Scenes franchise, and this was a depressing revisit! That "Highway" entry I played was a short, scary fare that was fun to play. This is a bit longer, can dawdle a bit with very little of interest happening, and the scares weren't as prominent, at least for me. But that end was so upsettingly sad to me that I couldn't help but walk away thinking more and more about it. Weird instance of a game I didn't really care for, but dug the ending of? Don't think I can describe another one of those unless I spent more time thinking about it.

On: PC/Windows

A great platformer with some unfortunately poorly-supported controller... controls. Given the nature of the box hosting this game, any button press on a controller that isn't one of the core mapped controls leads to the terminal of the box popping up. Then, you need to type resume to continue where you left off. At least it doesn't restart the whole game or anything, but controller is pretty ideal for this game. Hell, the game itself says that its recommended! Even still, I eventually made my way past this by using a third-party mapping tool to redirect these buttons elsewhere, to the Square button, which didn't do anything but surprisingly also was immune to this little programming issue. Once I did this, it only took me three tries through to get the secret speedrunning ending with all bones collected. What a joy!

On: PlayStation 4

So bad, so very very bad. The game isn't really good, which is a shame because I like SOME of the play elements and all of the designs really. But it's frustratingly broken and strange throughout, with three chapters that have next to nothing to do with one another mechanically, and it even breaks every now and then which is even more fun. I picked up a lawn gnome and threw it at another to break them both, and the game crashed. Regularly. This is something you allegedly are able to do, but I'd advise against it because it always bricked the game and led to a relaunch. Surprisingly Jack Black is actually voicing Stine in this, it isn't a sound alike as I had thought. Oh, and also, that "Expert" mode with a special trophy that they introduced as free DLC? Garbage. It's pretty easy, which isn't much of a complaint, but those awful gummy bears running faster alongside a grid of electric floor panels and a gun with an insane cooldown makes for a very bad time. I wouldn't recommend to anyone really.