Recent reviews by BinaryMessiah

I love short point-and-click games, but they are hit-and-miss. For these games that are less than two hours, it takes a lot of talent to pull off a good story, something to get attached to, and fun gameplay. Cat Museum nails almost all of this except the story and something to get attached to. The mini-game and puzzle-driven gameplay are more entertaining than pixel hunting, but there's also the fantastic art direction and grotesque nature of the whole game.

See, the story just doesn't make any sense. It's told in abstract story panels. I only gathered that you're possibly dreaming and your dream of a cat museum full of monsters and creatures that need help. You're searching for special eggs and that's all I could gather. It doesn't make a lick of sense. The game isn't confusing or anything like that which is nice. Clicking around moves the boy and you will see eye icons for things to look at and hand icons for interaction. These hand icons advance the game and each interaction is unique and different. Jigsaw puzzles, slider puzzles, timing mini-games, and just weird things like pushing and pulling things to reveal hints. It's hard to get stuck in this game as there's always one object in each room to interact with which will reveal a hint or the puzzle/mini-game will advance the story.

The best part about this game is the insane art style. Lots of grotesque characters, guts, bodily fluids, and crazy monster designs right out of a child's nightmare. However, it's still colorful and full of life. I really liked the atmosphere and world of Cat Museum, but at a 90-minute runtime, the game doesn't allow any type of world-building or anything of that nature. Dialogue is cut down to a couple of lines per character and none of it is meaningful. There are a couple of scenes where you need to run and hide from a monster chasing you, but it's just to the end of the same room so there's no challenge there either.

There's not much to say for a 90-minute game. For a few dollars this is an interesting art exhibit, but not much more. I appreciate the unique puzzles and mini-games, but the monster designs are so cool that I wanted to spend

Here we are again. At least Activision let three go between releases this time and it's been paying off. I had high expectations for Modern Warfare II's campaign as 2019's was pretty damn good. A lot of elements carry over such as the fantastic acting, fun on-screen characters, and bombastic mission design, but there are a couple of new things thrown in borrowed from Black Ops: Cold War and tweaked slightly. You play as various well-known Modern Warfare characters such as Soap McTavish, and Ghost, with Captain Price returning as well as some characters from 2009's Modern Warfare 2. If you hadn't guessed, this is a prequel to that game and a direct sequel to Call of Duty 4. Starting to see a pattern here? 2019's Modern Warfare was a prequel to Call of Duty 4. My guess is Modern Warfare III will be a prequel to Modern Warfare 3. Why are we doing this? Why is there a Call of Duty multiverse?

Sadly, the campaign isn't as good as 2019's and still doesn't learn any lessons. It's a fast-paced rapid-fire campaign that doesn't focus on its strongest points. The story is interesting enough thanks to the fantastic acting and the on-screen characters are interesting and fun to watch, and I wanted more of them. Instead, we're rushed through a bare-bones campaign full of the same stuff we've seen before. On-rails vehicle missions, stealth missions that don't require you to really use stealth, some weird puzzle with a missile laptop that isn't really a puzzle because Infinity Ward thinks every player is dumb. Yeah, the game treats you like you're stupid and does everything for you. I really wish this would stop. Stop being scared of challenging us. Sure, the gunplay is bar none some of the best out there. The weapons feel great, and the animations and various minute things like ADS time, scope switching, and all that jazz feel tweaked and more responsive than ever. It's a blast to shoot things and use various weapons.

The only new thing here is screwed up and the worst part of the game. The final act has you crafting items and sneaking through a city to escape the enemy. Yeah, crafting in Call of Duty. I never thought I'd see the day. It's poorly implemented because the level design is terrible. I constantly got turned around and went in circles causing me to restart numerous times. You get no way to deal with enemies until you find a sharp object which is towards the end of the fist objective. You can craft smoke bombs, pry tools (which are essential to finding a gun and better weapons), and various small traps, but finding these items is a chore. I had to go into every single house and search everywhere just to get enough parts to make a single item.

Getting caught required numerous restarts and seriously halted the game. It's later introduced in an even worse situation in which you are in a single office with no weapons and have to scrounge for a sharp object and make items while also being on a timer to disarm a bomb with that same laptop puzzle thing. It's stupid and not fun. The thing is there are only two enemies in the room. Why would I need to craft all of these objects? Find two glass shards under the tables and duct tape and take them out. In fact, you can just stay under here and disarm the bomb without being seem. What were they thinking?

The campaign is about 5-6 hours long and it ended on a cliffhanger leading to 2009's Modern Warfare 2. So after this go play the remastered campaign of that I guess. I was left wanting more of what there was less of and wanting less of what I got. The beat of the game is well done. I felt entertained enough by the story and characters to keep going but those horrible stealth sections really slowed the game up and it makes me not want to play the campaign again. 2019's campaign is worth replaying. It's fun and varied.

The visuals are fantastic. While only a small step up from 2019's engine it looks amazing and is a well-optimized engine that can run on lower-end hardware. While there's no ray tracing right now, I can't wait to try it out. It's one of the best-looking games out there and is a treat to look at.

This is where I was most excited. I actually really like Call of Duty's multiplayer suite. After 2019 the game just perfected it. It's addictive, and fun and the customization options are pretty large. However, this year's game is a grind. I didn't think 2019 was really bad, but I feel without a Battle Pass you will be grinding a lot here. The biggest complaint is the new UI. It sucks. There are no more notifications (the green dots) on what you have unlocked. I have to quit a match search so I have time to go in and figure out what I unlocked. The armory itself is a bit confusing. I wish they would have just ported the 2019 UI over. It was perfectly fine.

Even the menu where you pick the match type is confusing. It feels like a mobile UI shoved onto a console. With that out of the way, the game plays pretty much the same. Movement is a bit more refined, guns feel even better than before, and there are more of them and a larger variety. You still get your five main classes and can customize your own, which by the way is a confusing mess thanks to that terrible new UI. New perks like strong arm which lets you see the trajectory of a thrown item. There are now perk packages that let you select two base perks and a bonus perk. I found this really felt better than picking separate perks as it forced you to mix things up.

The maps themselves are the star of the show and there are some good ones here. I feel like these are way better than Cold War's maps, but not quite as good as 2019's. Still, there were only one or two maps I didn't care for but they weren't terrible. The same modes and playlists return, but my favorite is always team deathmatch. I do play a few other modes occasionally but TDM never gets old. I didn't really get into Warzone 2.0 or any of the 32v32 maps as I prefer smaller battles in this game.

With that said, Modern Warfare II doesn't take the series in new strides but provides more of what made 2019 work and that's fine. The campaign isn't as good, but the new characters bring a lot of life to the series and they are fun to watch on screen. Sadly, the stealth missions bring the entire campaign down some and hurt the replay value. A new perk and field upgrade system tweaked controls and animations, and all new maps that are pretty good. I just wish the UI wasn't so awful.

LucasArts' SCUMM engine games hold a great fanbase for those who grew up in the 80s computer gaming scene. They were bright and colorful. Revolutionary, for their time, in terms of gameplay and art. They were also later updated with voice acting which was some of the first of its kind. While the games were short (running around 6 hours per game) they were memorable and had a special sense of humor that was considered top of their class. The series got a much-anticipated remake starting with the first game. While not much was really added, the entire game was redrawn from scratch with all new lines of dialog recorded by the original cast.

The game definitely plays like an old point-and-click adventure of yore. Clumsy controls (which were never really fixed), slow pace, obtuse object hunting, and no puzzles. That's not to say the game is bad. While it doesn't feel as modern as The Longest Journey or even David Cage's games with quick-time events and button pressing that's part of the charm. Thankfully the game has a hint system that slowly gives you more specific hints including full-on arrows pointing to the exact spot you need to be. This was really helpful and a must-have for first-time players or those who aren't familiar with this era of adventure games.

The game has two main areas. The first one consists of some small areas, a town, and a large overhead map to get to these areas. Most of the game is gathering items and figuring out where to use them and how. You have multiple commands such as talk to, push, pull, look at, use, open and close. These are used by pulling up an action command menu and then you have your inventory. To use these commands you need to pull up the command menu and then the inventory. This is cumbersome and took a while to figure out. You control Guybrush by clicking around on the ground, but his walk cycle is pretty slow. There's a lot of backtracking in this game and this slowed the progress a bit. One thing I didn't like was the insult for sword fighting. You have to lose to pirates to learn their insults and comebacks. You need to learn enough to defeat the first "boss". There was a lot of trial and error doing this and it got really frustrating.

The star of the show is the characters and the writing. The salesman Stan for example is hilarious. Using overexaggerated arm waving and an obnoxious coat to look like a sleazy salesman. The pirate LeChuck doesn't get much on-screen time, but neither do most of the characters. The main character Guybrush is who you will get to know the most. There is an optional dialog for most characters to get to know their personality more than their backstory. There just isn't enough time to get to know them more. So, it makes up for funny writing and witty humor which the game does solidly.

I liked the visuals in this game. The hand-drawn art is beautiful and still captures the classic LucasArts look. Some of the animations feel a bit stiff still, but again, that all adds to the charm. The voice acting is awesome, there is some funny use of items and small little tidbits of humor thrown in that did make me chuckle. I have to say that this game won't hold everyone's attention. It is slow to build up and takes a while to get going. A lot of people might feel lost clicking on everything and not realize what order to do things in, but the hint system makes this game much more enjoyable. I highly recommend this classic remake, but it won't be to everyone's taste.

I never thought that I would have so much fun with a chore. There are various curated threads online about watching power washing. It’s satisfying to see someone turn an incredibly dirty surface into a sparkling clean one like wiping a window with a squeegee. There are many jokes about missing a spot and everyone in the comments losing their minds. r/powerwashingporn is a popular subreddit dedicated to these videos. FuturLab has done an incredible job of making this chore feel fun and satisfying. There’s even a silly story that’s evolved over the course of the Early Access phase involving gnomes.


Every surface is covered in dirt, rust, mud, or some type of grime. You get a power washing nozzle and you spray things down until they turn clean. You can decide what to spray, what direction, and in what order. That’s part of the fun. Tackling each area in a certain way is satisfying and fun for you. Your tools include various spray nozzles that have different widths as well as spray liquid for getting tough areas, but this stuff is expensive and limited. You also have a spray gun that shoots various distances. These can be bought and unlocked with money by completing levels. You are paid at the end of a level and you can see a sped-up replay of your work. There are also cosmetic items such as your suit and gloves.

Some levels are multi-storied so you get step stools, ladders, and scaffolding that can be moved around and put wherever you need it. There are a few levels that have some frustrating buildings to clean such as the giant shoe level. There is a meter on each surface that shows how complete it is and sometimes it can be hard to find that one dirt spot that’s keeping the surface from dinging. Thankfully there is an illuminate dirt button that turns all dirt a golden yellow for a few seconds so you can see what you’re missing. Getting down the last percent in each level can get annoying as you’re just hunting down that last dirt spot. There is also a list of each surface and the percentage that they’re cleaned, so you can at least eventually narrow it down.


There isn’t any background music. You just get ambient noises like birds chirping or cars driving in the background. It’s a very silent game. You’re best just playing your own music in the background as this is a very zen game where you can veg out and not think about much. I also appreciate the control scheme on a controller too. It’s easy to control and you don’t have to move your aim camera back and forth like you used to in Early Access. You can now press a button to move your sprayer within the frame of the camera. This can reduce motion sickness and overall irritation. It wasn’t a big problem on a PC with a mouse, but it was unbearable with an analog stick. Most levels can take you 1-3 hours to complete depending on how big they are. There are smaller challenges that involve just cleaning a vehicle like an RV, alien spaceship, Mars rover, or bicycle. Levels get more complex as you go on with more small objects and more complicated surfaces. Things like planes, boats, helicopters, and the previously mentioned shoe house can get really busy. I would end up doing some levels in multiple sessions. The longest level I spent time on was nearly five hours.


Again, you have to like this kind of thing to see an appeal to it. The visuals are bright and colorful, but rather basic and simple. There is no raytracing, AI anti-aliasing, or anything complex rendering-wise. The game can technically get very repetitive, but that’s actually the point of this game. I feel many may mistake this game for a business simulator when you only do the power washing and buy upgrades and cosmetics. I had a blast (no pun intended) with this game and FuturLab is still putting out content that I need to catch up on. Overall, PowerWash Simulator is one of the most relaxing and satisfying games I’ve ever played.

I'm not much of a visual novel fan. I love reading books and grew up reading a lot, but visual novels are basically just digital manga, and I prefer traditional manga. I bought VA-11 Hall-A years ago and never got around to it because there's so much reading. What got me interested was the bartending aspect. It seemed like a fun time-management mini-game mixed in and I was completely wrong. However, the strongest point with this game is the fun characters and how invested in their stories I became.

You play Julianne Stingray, a bartender in a cyberpunk world setting nearly 100 years in the future. The bar is close to getting shut down and you're just living life day-to-day until that time comes. The game is pretty slow-paced and takes quite a while to pick up and get interesting. There's a lot of character setup and it takes such a long time so it feels natural and organic rather than rushed. There isn't really any gameplay. I spent more time clicking through dialog than anything else, but I did like all the characters. They were fun, unique, and had great personalities that I got attached to. If I were to say there was an ultimate goal it would be to make amends with your ex-girlfriend who you got into a fight with years ago and need to apologize to, but honestly, this is a slice-of-life type of game. You really only need to just read through everything.

You do earn money at the end of every day and this can be spent on items to keep Jill focused at her job. There will be a hint when you get to your apartment as to what she might want. If you don't buy this item she won't remember what customers order and you have to remember yourself. There are also major bills that have to be paid so you need to spend wisely. There is also an optional phone you can view with various news apps. Just some insight into the world really and nothing that matters towards the main story. There is an option to customize your apartment a bit, but it seemed superfluous in the end and pointless.

As you talk to patrons you have to make their drinks. This seemed fun at first, but it quickly becomes dull and stale by day three in the game. There is a recipe book full of 24 different drinks you can make and you can filter them by flavor and type. Patrons will give hints as to what they want and you sometimes even have to read the descriptions to get cryptic ones correct. Drinks are made with artificial chemicals in this world and you have five. There are squares that fill up with each measurement and you can mix or blend the drink and age it or add ice. That's literally it. I thought you could upgrade the bar and add new flavors and devices, but this is it. You end up cycling through all 24 drinks early on and maybe 10 repeats constantly. It ends up no longer being fun to make these drinks and just interrupts the story. There are also no instructions on the difference between mixing and blending. You need to count how many times the shaker wiggles and if it starts going fast...that's blended. If you mess up a drink you lose a bonus at the end of the day. However, you can't serve messed-up drinks as the game won't let you. Some drinks allow you to add synthetic alcohol as much or as little as you want and this is supposed to change the story somehow...by making characters spill things when they're drunker, but I never saw this happen.

The one game mechanic in an otherwise interactive visual novel is boring and somewhat pointless. If there was a much larger selection of drinks, or if I could add some later, or upgrade equipment, that would be fun, but what's here feels half-assed and tacked on. I also don't like how we never get to know what's going on in the world. The game hints at things happening politically and with various corporations, and even a hacking group, but we get nothing in that regard. It's mostly just what's going on inside the bar and the characters you meet; it stays very local and centralized. I also felt the visuals while artistically beautiful were boring to look at. There isn't any change in scenery and the static anime-style characters just change facial expressions. It's very hard to stare at the same background for nearly a dozen hours and make dozens upon dozens of repeated drinks just to stay invested in a character's story. If it weren't for the great characters this game would be utterly boring nonsense.

With that said, VA-11 Hall-A is only worth getting into if you love anime, visual novels, or just like reading books. The bartending aspect is a poorly throughout afterthought that hinders the progress of the story rather than helps it due to the small recipe size and laughable mechanics. I really liked the characters here, and the story ended on a nice note. I expected some sort of twist ending where the bar would close early, or the hackers would take over all the androids and something interesting would happen, but we just get a slice-of-life anime-style bartending experience.

This is by far one of the most anticipated games in modern gaming history. I know I have been excited since its poorly chosen announcement date in 2012. Sadly, CDPR kind of dug its own grave from that date onward. The game is nothing like how it looked in its early concept videos and a lot of content is cut. Even if you look past all the bugs and launch woes, this is what’s going to stay long after the game has been patched up to a more playable state like it currently is as of this review.

However, if you look underneath all the hype, hate, and sometimes unfair controversy there’s a great game here. The story and the atmosphere are the main reason why I stayed. You play as V. A vigilante/mercenary for hire who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets involved in a corporate terror plot that changes his/her life forever. The entire story revolves around a device you end up acquiring on a job and this device is the key to immortality. This device also has Johnny Silverhands, played by Keanu Reeves, and one of the reasons why the game got so much hype, who is a digital construct that is trying to take over your mind. I don’t want to spoil too much of the main story, but my favorite parts of the game were the side missions with the other characters like Panam, Judy, and Claire. These missions really develop a relationship and strong personality and are one of the shining points in Cyberpunk.


One of the first problems sets in early is with character customization. Ignore all the sexist homophobes who were mad about being able to make your characters transgender. The anatomy is off, first off, and doesn’t look right, and what’s the point? You can only see the genitalia in the player menu, it’s censored in mirrors, and the “sex scenes” are awkward and pointless. One of the core gameplay elements of the game is Brain Dances which are virtual scenes that you can manipulate during missions, or basically a half-assed detective mode. Some Brain Dances are “sex scenes” but I just think these were added to add controversy. On top of all this, you can’t change your character’s looks after the initial start of the game…just why?

The way to get around the game and various missions can be a bit messy, but the open world of Night City is gorgeous and has a fantastic atmosphere. There’s the main city itself, the outskirts which are like a desert-type environment, there are suburbs, and various other locales to actually make it feel like Los Angeles. You can walk, run, hijack cars, and fast travel at certain points once you discover them. Missions are found via random encounters on the street, phone calls, texts, and other means. I never got around to finishing all of them as the ones revolving around the side characters are the most interesting and the rest get kind of repetitive. Driving the actual cars is not my favorite as before the 1.2 patch they were just broken. They look absolutely amazing and have some insanely cool designs, but sadly they just don’t drive very well.


With this being a CDPR game there are RPG elements involved. There’s a skill tree, cyberware implants, and stats on weapons and armor. It’s pretty detailed, especially with all the wearable armor parts on every part of your body, but it’s also one of the most flawed areas. The skill tree is nice with many paths you can take such as melee, various gun types, stealth, and so on, but I felt a lot of abilities were useless and I just got them to unlock an area I needed. Skill trees tend to be very useless in many games these days, and sadly they aren’t any better here. When it comes to weapons they are incredibly unbalanced with sniper rifles doing one-shot kills no matter where you hit the target early on in the game and at low levels. Then you will get a pistol that will barely do any damage at a much higher level even if you have the skills that boost pistols. It’s improved in patches but still remains a problem. The bottom line is Cyberpunk 2077 is incredibly easy. While stealth is fun and is a good option for most missions, blasting through the game isn’t that hard. I rarely ever died as health items are everywhere and so is ammo. While shooting is fun and satisfying and the weapons feel good, the game is just way too easy.

You can then visit Ripper Docs to install implants that add bonuses and unique weapons to your body, but in the end, I rarely ever visited these and never filled all my slots as what’s the point? The game is so easy I never really needed much. Just a shotgun, sniper rifle, and an assault rifle or sub-machine gun of some kind. You can add mods to these weapons like sights, silencers, and various others that modify the stats, but the combat is so unbalanced and easy there’s really no point. Stealth missions mostly rely on your stealth skill tree stats and you can also hack stuff, but I also found this rarely useful as the game is just so easy you don’t need these small advantages that would turn the tide of a battle like in say something like Deus Ex. If I got busted I could easily wipe everyone out with my one-♥♥♥♥ kill sniper rifle and hold onto this gun through the entire game.


That brings me to the other side of Cyberpunk’s gameplay loop. After about 10 hours you will have seen everything the game can do, and you will know whether you want to complete every single side mission and gig call or just plow through the storyline and call it a day. While I love Night City, there’s nothing to do inside of it. Sure, there are various shops, you can visit, and you can look at dildos and sex toys inside of windows, but that’s it. There are no side activities like mini-games, no property you can purchase for player homes, nothing like that. I felt like this large gorgeous city was wasted away as it’s just a conduit between missions. This is not a cyberpunk playground like many of the early trailers suggested.

In the end, don’t go into this game expecting a true “next-gen” title that raises the bar and changes games for how we play them today. A lot of people went into this game expecting some unreal level of detail, and not to mention in the visuals. While the game looks amazing it’s poorly optimized even on the latest PC hardware. Ray-tracing is pretty much pointless even on my 2080 the game would dip well below 30 FPS. The only saving grace for PC gamers is the DLSS option or playing on 1080p resolutions. On my i7 10700 and 1660ti setup, the game played fine in 1080p, but I still got dips here and there. It’s one of the most poorly optimized games I have played in recent years, and while recent patches made the game more stable, it doesn’t fix the crazy dips all over the game. It’s even worse on PS4 and Xbox One base models. So, go in expecting a fun story, fun, albeit easy, combat, interesting vehicles, and a cool cyberpunk city to run around in. Don’t go in expecting something revolutionary.

You play as Ichiban Kasuga. A naive young yakuza member who ends up in politics of his yakuza family and then later the entire country of Japan’s government. The story is incredibly well written and directed, and I was hooked from beginning to end, at least the story and characters. I love the characters here as they have tons of heart, soul, and personality that make you want to see them through to the end of their journey. The first three chapters of the game are pretty much story and character building. In fact, I didn’t really get to do anything outside of watching cut scenes for the first three hours of the game. I just ran to spots that triggered them and I watched this complex web of characters build their story up, and I wasn’t upset as I was glued to my screen the whole time.

This is the first time I’ve finished a Yakuza game and a rare completion of a JRPG. Usually, JRPGs have great stories and characters, but something within the game keeps me from finishing it. Be it unfair and insane difficulty, too much grinding or late-game issues pop up like needing to quest for something very specific and it makes the progression grind to a halt. Like a Dragon is the first in the series to play like a JRPG and not an action game. The story is fantastic and the characters are well written and memorable, but that’s probably the strongest thing going for the game, and it’s the reason why I slumped through the late game issues to see it through to the end.

Once you get past a certain point in the story, honestly I can’t say anything as every little detail could be a major spoiler, you finally get let loose in the world. However, with this being a JRPG let’s talk about combat first. The game is played in a turned-based style, but characters move around on their own in the arenas. Depending on your job you have various skills that can cause major damage, and this is super important and the core of the entire game. While base attacks are fine early on in the game, they don’t do much later on and you start relying on skills that all use MP whether they’re physical or magic-based. Each attack has a type such as magic, slashing, piercing (guns), bashing, or blunt (physical) attacks. Some attacks might have elemental attributes attached to them, but you really must balance your team. You need characters that can heal, do large AoE damage, and lots of damage to single enemies. It’s important you have a class that can do one of each of those things as it’s key to winning battles.

Early on in the game, the difficulty feels perfect. There were some challenges, I had to use strategy, and really focus on ranking up my character’s jobs and learn enemy weaknesses. This is also a key point in the battle system. Like a Dragon mocks or makes fun of other games like Pokemon. Early on you come across someone similar to Professor Oak and the entire scene plays out like the beginning of every Pokemon game. It’s pretty funny. The point of this is you acquire a bestiary of each enemy type and when you fight in battle and discover a weakness it will appear over the character when you select that attack. This is vital to winning boss fights and harder battles late game or just in general.

Ranking up your job is more important than leveling up your character honestly. This determines your max health, how powerful your attacks are, and learning new attacks. You get more powerful attacks as you rank up, but the downside is once you change a job you start from the bottom on that job. So you have to grind that job to level it up, and late-game this is incredibly tedious, but more on the late-game problems later. There are thankfully no random battles, but enemies walk around outside that can be avoided. When you fight enemies the environment is also important as smaller areas are great for attacks that do AoE damage and it allows you to wipe out enemies faster in bigger groups.

Outside of combat, there are a ton of mini-games like in every Yakuza game. Karaoke, classic Sega arcade games in Club Sega, crane games, driving ranges, go-karts, and many others. They’re fun at first, but there’s not really any reason to do these mini-games outside of acquiring items. Items are also an important part to combat as the most powerful armor and weapons are almost unobtainable until you can start raking in serious cash at the Battle Arena in chapter 12 and fighting the more powerful enemies late game. You can also upgrade Ichiban’s weapons (only his weapons can be upgraded) and well as craft new items, but honestly, this is only needed if you can’t afford to buy them. There are no unique weapons or armor that can be crafted exclusively, at least that I noticed, and once I started raking in serious cash in the millions I just bought everything and crafting became pointless towards the end of the game.

As you progress through the first eleven chapters hopping around taxis to fast travel to spots, unraveling the story, ranking up your jobs, leveling characters, acquiring new armor and weapons and items, and all this sounds like a normal JRPG affair, but then chapter twelve comes and knocks you on your ass. This is when most people will probably quit the game as it turns into a completely different beast and the way you play must change. This is the worst part about the game, and I don’t see how this was necessary. The game had a perfect flow and difficulty level leading up to this chapter. The first sign hits you when you must acquire 3 million Yen for a specific reason in the story. By now you probably have a couple hundred thousand yen at the most. How am I going to get this much money as street thugs don’t really payout and I can only sell so much? Well, the first stupid idea was that there are specific things you need to do to get this money and they don’t tell you. First, you have a watch in your inventory that’s worth one million yen. You need to sell that and then there is a specific Hero Quest you must complete that gives you two million yen. You need to take ten photos of a statue hidden throughout the city. What a serious pain in the ass. I knew right here that the game was going to be a chore from here on out. Then to make matters worse, the last statue is hidden behind insanely difficult enemies out of nowhere. They were many 8 levels above me, but that wasn’t a problem before. I had to grind for a couple of hours just to beat them to take that photo. Such nonsense!

It just gets worse from here. Chapter seven had you complete one of two long dungeons in the game. It was challenging, but not impossible. This dungeon is the only way to grind up until now. However, once you get to a new small city you unlock the battle arena, and this is your main way to level grind by climbing floors and beating waves of enemies. You will be here for probably 6-8 hours minimum. At this point in chapter twelve, you come across a boss fight that cranks the difficulty up to nearly unfair and impossible. I had to grind 15 levels just to get a fair advantage. This boss just absorbs so much damage and throwing all my powerful attacks at him still kicked my ass. I died and retried nearly a dozen times before I almost gave up. I’d grind five or six levels and try again until I could finally do it.

The game at least has amazing voice acting (in Japanese of course), and the graphics are pretty good technically, but pretty boring on an artistic level. These are hyper-realistic graphics and the only artistic flair is the enemy designs. I enjoyed the music as well, but in the end, the last few chapters will test your patience. The mini-games are fun, the sub-stories are boring and repetitive, and the post-chapter twelve grinding is an absolute chore and really hurts the game. However, if you can prevail, get through the grinding, and learn the strategy of balancing your parties jobs you will get through an incredible and memorable story with great characters.

Dread X is a fun series of small indie-made games using the Unity engine. Most of them can be finished in 20 minutes or less, but sadly the majority in this collection are neither all that scary nor are incredibly tedious and not very fun. I will go through the list of ten games.

Carthanc: A weird first-person game set in an Aliens-type setting. You’re on a space station with weird hieroglyphs and your goal is to set up your lamp to shine on symbols to open doors. You must complete the mummy statue to run from the final monster. I never made it through the first section. The platforming is horrible and really floaty. The visuals are too murky with too much grain and the overall setting just isn’t scary. Pass.

The Pay is Nice: An interesting tank-style adventure game. You play as a salaried employee of some top-secret government facility. As you make your way through the beginning of your workday you are narrated through how your life and job currently are. It’s a great setup that is sadly stopped right when things get interesting. There’s a single puzzle in this game that seems really complex at first, but after some reading and experimenting it’s solvable. I loved the atmosphere and mood here. Very haunting, very surreal, yet it just ends after 20 minutes. I would have liked to see a full game in this setting. Play.

Summer Night: Easily the scariest game in the bunch. You are a kid playing a Tiger Electronic-style LCD game in your bed. All you see is the LCD game and your hands. It’s a simple game of catching mushrooms that pop up in the four corners of the screen, but after each level, you get a small narrative piece, and the LCD changes over time. I won’t spoil the game, but it really is terrifying and scary. The developers made good use of audio in this game and it’s easily my favorite of the bunch, but only lasts about 10 minutes. Play.

Rotgut: A terrible adventure-style game that’s way too slow and glitchy to even bother with. The visuals are interesting, but it’s not really scary. I felt like I was fighting the controls and just never go past the first five minutes. Pass.

Don’t Go Out: An RPG card-style game that ends in 8 rounds. Your goal is to run from a tentacle monster as its tentacles creep inwards on the map. Most of the map is dark and you can use cards to light up the area, add new characters, or slow the monster down. Sadly, there’s only a single strategy here and that survives outside for four rounds and then heads into the house with the monster during the last three. The door is supposed to shut at the end and keep the monster out. It’s not very fun as there’s tons of trial and error to get the only winning strategy down right. Pass.


Outsiders: This is the longest and most involved game in the collection. It can take a couple of hours to finish as it’s an obtuse P.T.-style game where the house attacks you as time goes on. You get six minutes per “round” and the goal is to activate six buttons in a hidden wall by finding various objects. A hammer, a few keys, a couple of hidden buttons, but there are no clues until you start dying numerous times. There’s also a murderer on the loose that can attack you as well as the ghosts in the house towards the end of each round. I found it tedious, boring, and the fact that you can’t progress much without pixel hunting is beyond boring. Pass.

Mr. Buckett Told Me Not To: A Castaway-style game with some rather polygonal graphics. You must spend three nights “surviving” watching your waste, thirst, hunger, and stamina meter. At the end of each night, you wake up with random effects on your overall meters. However, at night you must sacrifice a survival item. Each day becomes a little more difficult, but the ending is well worth the time. This one takes about 20 minutes to finish. Nice and sweet. Play.

Shatter: A PS1 era-style game with horrendously slow walk speeds and a sprint meter. You are supposed to get a special pupa that belongs to some fly overlords and gain access to a building…I don’t know. It’s so weird and makes no sense, and you’re in some sort of cyberspace? The issue here is that the game is really cryptic and walking around the large area is so boring due to the slow speed. The sprint meter is to make running away from enemies harder, but this is a fraction of the 20-minute game. Pass.


The Pony Factory: The only shooter in the collection. It’s an FPS where you’re in a factory that’s been abandoned. You run through seven levels and the only gun is a bolt gun. You collect ammo and health and shoot pony skeletons. The graphics are really rough and it’s in black and white so even the art style can’t save it. Really dull all around and not really scary. Pass.

Hand of Doom: An FPS that harkens back to the Saturn and Jaguar era of console games. It looks great and feels like Heretic in some ways. You are a wizard who is to beat a grand wizard of sorts. You have to walk around the area opening doors using your spell incantations. These are acquired as you explore each area. The game is really short running about 30 minutes tops. Using the incantations is a lot of fun and you have a journal that tells you what the order is for each spell. Play.

That’s about it! As you can see, the majority of the games aren’t worth playing, but if these game types are for you then you may find some enjoyment. The issue with most of these is either they are slow and boring or just not very scary. My favorite game is the simplest and shortest and it’s also the scariest. For the asking price, you can’t go wrong here and you are bound to find a few hours of fun no matter what games you end up liking.

Dread X Collection games are a great concept. A horror house of mini-games that take 30-60 minutes to finish to unlock a larger narrative. The first game had a lot of duds and a few games that crashed and couldn’t be finished, and the same goes for this collection. There are far better games, but the duds are even worse this time around. At least there’s a larger hub world you can explore and get the games to require solving simple puzzles in a mansion you are locked in. It took me about 20 minutes to solve all the puzzles and find all twelve keys. It really doesn’t take much with some barely even considered puzzles. Each game is on a VHS tape locked in a box in the main room. You put the tape in the VCR and the game will pop up. It’s a neat concept and fun while it lasts, but you will spend the majority of your time with the smaller games. I will go through each one and let you know if they’re worth your time or not.

Charlotte’s Exile: A fun puzzle game based on H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu lore. You stand at a table and have a series of puzzles to solve while a giant eye constantly approaches you. You are standing in a library and you can see the eye every time you look up. It repeats a pattern in which every 3-4 minutes it will appear right in front of you and create a jump scare. It really got me the first couple of times as my skin literally crawled. However, this is all the game has in terms of scares. There is an alphabet you must decipher by reading passages in a book. Then there is a lockbox that has good ending hints and a puzzle box that requires pressing squares in a certain order. It was fun to solve and took around 45 minutes, but having to constantly look up was novel at first then just became annoying because I knew the jump scare was coming. Play.

Squirrel Stapler: A mock on Deer Hunter. The game has PS1-style graphics and you walk around a large forest hunting squirrels. There are five days and with each day a new beast must be hunted. You then staple your squirrels to your “loved one”. This is another Cthulhu mythos story. The actual hunting part is slow and gets boring fast. You have to crouch and stay still for squirrels to appear, but sometimes several minutes would go by with nothing. You can collect bullets and health, but the ending isn’t worth the pay-off. Pass.

The Diving Bell: The graphics are hideous with ugly textures and models, but the atmosphere is creepy. Another Cthulhu mythos game where you play as a crew member of a diving team that is sent to research under the sea. You then mash your keyboard to type up a report and as the days go on, you’ll slowly lose your sanity. As you hallucinate you must take anti-anxiety pills to keep your heart rate down and look away from them. The research facility constantly malfunctions and doors lock so you must find other shortcuts and take long routes around the area. It’s not very fun and the best part was reading the logs and watching yourself slowly go mad. The ending was a poor pay-off and overall it was mostly boring and took nearly an hour to finish. Pass.

Touched By An Outer God: A Doom clone that has you fighting Cthulhu mythos monsters using your hands. When you kill enemies you get parts that can be used to upgrade your hands. This game goes fast and you can finish the entire thing in about 20 minutes. You can’t acquire all upgrades in the first playthrough but the ending was a bad pay-off and after you get halfway through the game is super easy as you quickly become overpowering. The visuals upgrades are nice to see and it’s very fast-paced and fun. Due to the short length, it’s not bad. Play.

To the End of Days: A terrible first-person shooter that kept crashing on me every five minutes. You use your shotgun to kill enemies and that’s it. The game looks awful despite starting out with a fun atmosphere. It’s the end of the world and nuclear weapons are raining down everywhere. The animation is awful, the sound is bad, and the overall shooting is just amateur at best. I didn’t expect Crysis, but this isn’t it, plus the terrible stability issues. Pass.

The Toy Shop: Another game with awful visuals, terrible controls, and super floaty platforming. You play as a toy soldier who is trying to escape a toy shop. You walk around talking to people, pulling levers, escaping enemies, and in the end, you start fighting Terminator-type characters. The shooting is horrendous, worst than the last game, and I couldn’t finish the final boss due to the awful level design and terrible controls. Pass.

Undiscovered: A lost footage game that’s all atmosphere. You are filming your wife in the 1950s as you just discovered a tomb in Spain. The game is super blocky and terrible looking but that’s part of the charm. It’s a silent film so it’s in black and white and there’s lots of static and you just mostly hear the clicking of the camera rolling. As you go deeper into the ruins you only have a torch and pickaxe at your disposal. You can easily dodge enemies by walking around them, but the game has a super creepy atmosphere. It’s another Cthulhu mythos-style game. The collision detection and camera are awful, but I finished it in under 20 minutes and it was pretty cool. Play.

Another Late Night: Not really a game, just a text-based “desktop” simulator. You click around, read messages and articles that are supposed to be happening during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the game is basically a self aware mystery where you are seeing through the eyes of the developer of the game. It’s over in about 15 minutes, but it’s fun as I love desktop simulator games. Play.

Arcadletra: This was the first game I played in this collection. It’s a super weird haunted arcade adventure game. You basically click around on things that have electricity around them and it’s a Layers of Fear-style haunted funhouse. There’s a good and bad ending, but honestly, the short story makes zero sense and I only enjoyed the auditorial atmosphere the game had. It was over in about 15 minutes. Play.

Sucker for Love: This one is super neat. It’s a Japanese visual novel where you summon a female Cthulhu character, but you are in your apartment and have a book of love. Your goal is to try and kiss her before she ends the world and it’s actually quite creepy in spots. Think Corpse Party type creepy. You follow the instructions on each page by clicking on things in the apartment that correspond to them like turning out lights, wearing certain items, etc. It’s over in about 20 minutes, but it was a lot of fun and I wanted it to last longer. Play.

The Thing in the Lake: This is an 8-bit PC-style adventure game where each chapter is super short-lasting maybe a few minutes, but I hated this one a lot. You can run around the screens trying to figure out where to go and there are two killers on the loose. You can’t walk through dry grass and after a few seconds a killer gorilla comes on to screen kind of like Mr. X in Resident Evil 2. You can collect letters throughout the game, but the issue is figuring out where to go and constantly dying from the killers. I repeated each chapter a dozen times before figuring out what to do next. It just felt like a chore with little pay-off. Pass.

Solipsis: This is a short and sweet game. You play as an astronaut in a top-down perspective walking across the moon. You must find a lava tube using a tool, but halfway through the game your partner crashes onto the moon and you must find the lava tube still. You then walk down a long staircase and see parts of a creature. Without spoiling it too much the game ends once you get to the bottom. It’s over in about 15 minutes, but it’s disturbing. Play.

Not as many duds this time around, but the bad ones are super bad and not even worth grudging through. Sadly, this means without finishing all the games you can’t finish the main narrative in the hub, but for the asking price, there’s still a few hours of good entertainment here.

The morals of AI behavior have always been a question. How close should they get to human emotion? Would they be considered people? Should they be considered and treated like machines? What happens if one becomes rogue and starts feeling outside of its programmed emotions? Many games, books, and movies have explored this concept. The movie A.I., Bicentennial Man, I, Robot, Isaac Asimov’s novels, and most recently with Detroit: Become Human. It’s a fascinating concept that becomes closer to reality as technology advances. With cloud-based AIs like Siri, Google, Bixby, and Cortana, and realistic-looking robots that have been created, this could be the future within the next 10-15 years.


Silicon Dreams puts you in the eyes of a robot interrogator for a mega-corporation called Kronos. Kronos creates bots for service and work and must keep a close eye on any that might be considered rogue. The game is mostly basic visually, but you spend 90% of your time on the interrogation screen. You click around on questions and try to gain the responses and information Kronos asks of you. Each case is different and you also interrogate some humans. At first, this will become confusing and you won’t be sure what the strategy is. As time goes on you are contacted by a rogue robot who wants to start a revolution. You end up interviewing robots that have gone rogue, or what Kronos thinks has gone rogue, and it’s your job to get as much information as possible. Some robots are easy to crack and some require trust.

As you go on you will realize that emotions are the main way to get what you want. There’s a wheel pie chart with different emotions and as you talk to the subjects that slice will flash and the graph will adjust. Some robots aren’t supposed to feel certain emotions and Kronos might ask you to observe this and the end report you fill out might ask this question. Of course, your own morals come into play here and it’s one of the few games I’ve played where I was torn between helping out Kronos and wanting to help the robot revolution. Every single interaction will sway you either way as you will be afraid of being decommissioned yourself and get caught if you help and you never know if what you’re doing is correct in either direction. The mystery is good and it’s akin to how you might navigate these situations in real life. Kronos promises private quarters and a more lavish lifestyle if you cooperate, but then you see a news article at the end of each day talking about the robot revolution and you sympathize with the stories and situations of the subjects. You want to just do your job and keep your head down, but you also have a chance to change the world.


This leads to different outcomes as you play. I was so torn between not wanting to help either side that my company points kept dropping to the point where I was interrogated myself. I also screwed up that interview by playing the neutral party and I got a bad ending. There’s tons of replay value here and I intend to be for either side solely so I can see what end I get. However, this also goes for interviews. I would exhaust all my options and be unable to invoke the emotion I needed to get the correct information. I had to choose to either let the subject go, send it to maintenance for a memory wipe, or decommission. This is one of the hardest choices to make and what eventually can piss of Kronos the most. They want to keep a clean image and if you let deviant robots free it makes them look bad. I did eventually get my company points to 60/100 and acquired the ability to invoke and sway the robot’s emotions. You also get to cuff them to invoke fear and anger and sometimes this is the last resort if you end up choosing the wrong responses and wind up not getting everything you need.


Outside of all the interviews, there’s nothing else to do. The visuals are very basic, while not ugly, there’s no voice acting which would have added some character to everyone, and the Blade Runner style Voight-Kampff iris vision is just for show. Same thing with the option to show camera angles. You’re never close enough to see emotion visually which would have added another layer to the overall gameplay. As it is your only indicator is the text itself and the emotion pie chart.

Overall, Silicon Dreams is a fantastic text adventure that pushes the moral boundary of AI as humans and makes you think with every mouse click. I had to make sure I even talked about certain topics in a certain order to open up trust first before talking about the actual reason why the subject was with me. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t, but that’s part of all the fun in this game.