Recent reviews by BinarySplit

Amazing old-school FPS. The level design is like Duke3D on drugs, and the gunplay feels like Rainbow Six (the original). It's so much fun, I hope there's more.

Ignore my playtime, I watched the excellent Let's Play by Sobata92 and enjoyed it so much I came here to buy the game and support the dev.

I love the Axolotls! I can't really comment on the story without spoiling the mystery and deep use of metaphors, but the character development was what had me hooked until the end. Their interactions, the way they learn and grow from each other, and learn to cope with the many many things that go wrong, was an absolute delight to read.

The depiction of health issues in the game was incredibly well done. As someone who has dealt with long-term illness, it really resonated with me and I felt like I had been seen for the first time in any video game I've played.

Overall, I loved it, but if you're like me and the idea of 9 hours of reading is too daunting, I really recommend Sobata92's Let's Play, as the voice acting makes it a lot easier to watch. Just remember to buy the game if you enjoyed it.

Compared to other AAA games, Death Stranding is a masterpiece. It's a Kojima game, so expect unbelievably high production values - hours of cutscenes, beautiful graphics, great music and ambiance. It's really well optimized for PC as well - probably the prettiest game my GTX 970 has ever been able to render at 1440p. If you still enjoy AAA games and just want something that will keep you happy for 40-60 hours, I 100% recommend Death Stranding.

However, if you're already used to games with smaller budgets, which sacrifice polish for gameplay and take bigger risks, or if you're just really picky about how you spend your money, then honestly it doesn't break free from the AAA curse - it feels like it's padded to fit the price and time expectations of an AAA game, and it often sacrifices interactivity and gameplay for being cinematic and these things are pretty annoying if you've already experienced games that aren't trying to fit the high-budget mold. There are many smaller games that could add up to being much more worthy of your time/energy/money. For less than the price of Death Stranding you could instead buy e.g. Undertale, Outer Wilds, and a Dark Souls game and you'd have an overall more fun and memorable experience.

Basically, it's worth playing if you've already played everything else. It's good, but it's not life-changingly good, and at such a high price there are quite a few smaller games that you should give priority to.

Yogurt Commercial 3 is truly a hidden gem. It's criminal that it has had so little attention. It's hilarious. I couldn't stop playing until I finished it. I recommend it even at full price.

I really like the premise. There's a lot that could be fun here. The execution of this game ruins it though.

Main problem: The game revolves around trial and error - but failure is too punishing, and retrying things is too slow. You try something, make a mistake, and it's basically unrecoverable - either you have to restart the day, or miss out on this playthrough. You'll be restarting the day often, and every time re-doing several minutes of busywork before you can make another attempt at whatever you were doing.

Second problem: a lot of stuff isn't obvious and you'll miss a lot or be unable to figure stuff out. You'll probably need to read forums/guides to actually progress. Hardly anything has any in-game hints to direct you to where to find it. I never even managed to get fishing or gardening to work, or figure out where to use half the items.

Lastly: it's full of bugs. Characters get frozen ALL THE TIME. Multiple times per playthrough. Inventory items will occasionally just disappear, characters will be stuck in "butterfly mode", or unable to talk to you. Sometimes they'll teleport on the minimap. Sometimes they'll instantly notice a dead body even though they have no line-of-sight.

Hopefully Lakeview Valley 2 is better, because this would have been really fun if the game design was more forgiving.

It's like Gone Home in space. There are a few puzzles here and there, but most of the game will be spent exploring the ship, listening to audio logs, speculating about what has happened, and admiring the awesome level of detail in all the various objects scattered around the living quarters, etc.

If you enjoy experiencing settings that actually feel "lived in", where culture and technology has clearly left its mark on the world, even though it's not vital to the gameplay, then you'll enjoy The Station.

The one downside - the undiscounted price is really expensive for what it is. I beat it in 90 minutes, and I feel like I experienced everything it had to offer. Wait for a sale.

I didn't enjoy it, but you might. The Eyes of Ara is incredibly well made, and is full of amazing puzzle design. It's very similar to Myst, Riven, URU, etc. but has modern production values and a lot of polish. If you have enjoyed the Myst series, buy this. You'll love it.

Why didn't I enjoy it? For the same reason I didn't enjoy Myst or Riven, and had trouble with Uru. It's brutally hard. It's not a game for the impatient or attention-deficient. The puzzles are well designed, but the clues for the puzzles are hidden throughout the environment, and some of them are really hard to find. In a couple cases, I spent over 15 minutes searching for something even though I knew exactly what it was and what room to look in (thanks to the walkthrough). I ultimately found that the excellent puzzles weren't enough to make up for the tedious clue-finding aspect.

Why do I still recommend it? Because it's clear it was an absolute gem of a game. It wasn't to my liking, but there were so many things about it that stood out as being exceptional within the genre. From the many hidden areas and optional side-puzzles to the extra Halloween and Christmas content, it's clear how much effort and love has been put into this game.

Generally well put together, good puzzle design, interesting story, good graphics. If you've enjoyed puzzle games that look like this, you'll certainly enjoy this too.

Caveat: I wouldn't recommend this to beginners in the puzzle genre - at time of writing there's no hint system and no walkthroughs, so it's easy to get stuck. I'd recommend starting with The House of Da Vinci or The Room 1, and coming back to Machinika Museum later.

I had to refund this. IDK what most of the game is like, but the cube puzzles didn't seem particularly interesting and two things were really ruining my enjoyment:

1. The head bobbing while walking is really exaggerated, can't be turned off and quickly gave me a headache. Other people reported this in the forums 9 months ago but the developer hasn't responded at all.

2. The story is told to you through voice clips, but if you want to listen to them you have to sit patiently and wait for them to play out. If you start walking toward the next puzzle, they'll end and you might miss part of the story. This is just unnecessarily tedious when there are ~3 voice clips per puzzle, you have to stop and wait for each one, and they speak unnaturally slowly.

Interesting, challenging, satisfying puzzles.

If you've played The Room, you already know what the gameplay is like. The House of Da Vinci gives you even more of it. I finished it in 6.5 hours, which means it's ~3x as long as The Room 1, or ~2x as long as The Room 2.