Recent reviews by peek

this game honestly whips. i'm so surprised that obsidian managed to carry over so much of the feeling of the old CRPGs into this one. So much attention to detail. It's not an immersive sim and it's not skyrim. (it's better)

quite possibly the greatest roguelike ever made. i bought this game and bounced off it hard a few times. i'd come back after a few months and give it another go only to not really click and turn it off after a little bit. Eventually, though, after seeing all the glowing things my friends had to say about it, I knuckled down and really decided to give it a good, honest go, learn the systems and strategies, and try to get invested in the game and the world, and boy am I glad I did. There's so, so much here- Qud is a truly engrossing, unique, chaotic, esoteric, and beautiful setting that's both richly detailed and withholds just enough info from you to set your imagination on fire. the mixture of authored and procedural elements is done extremely well, with enough variety to allow wild and unexpected things between different playthroughs while also allowing all the benefits of having carefully designed, human-authored content where it's needed. (one time the six-day silt librarian spawned as a chrome pyramid, meaning I had to very carefully EMP her forcefields if I wanted to chat with her about books.)

I could go on and on about how much I love this game, but I think I'll leave it at this: if you like roguelikes, if you like science fiction, and if you like video games a medium, you owe it to yourself to play Caves of Qud.

no fewer than seven pettable animals, by my count. game of the year every year.

goofs aside, Pentiment is great. I was amazed how strongly I felt for all of the characters and how invested I was in their lives. I love that there's never enough time to do everything you want to do, and there's no "best" path- everything has pros and cons you have to weigh and live with the consequences. I also learned a lot about a period in time I knew very little about. This is a wonderful game for anybody who enjoys RPGs.

Review will contain minor spoilers.

It's tough to review this game when you can just give a thumbs up or down. Ultimately, you can see where I landed- I think this game is competently made and well put together. However, I can't deny that the sum of its parts is less than Subnautica 1.

This game has a much tighter focus on plot, which I appreciate- but it doesn't quite stick the landing. The game is much smaller than the original. The biomes are smaller, the threats are smaller, the tech tree progresses at breakneck speed. Unfortunately, this means that the plot doesn't really have the time or space to develop its characters much. Your protagonist, Robin, has a backstory and motivations which are clear but never particularly relevant to the plot besides telling you why she's on the planet. I don't feel like the game took advantage of the opportunity it had to expand on the Subnautica universe- we get told in the broadest, most general terms that Alterra is evil, but they don't give them any teeth. They never feel particularly threatening- all of their evil deeds are done offscreen, all of their facilities save a single satellite transmission tower are in ruins. Why should I care about what they were maybe trying to do at some point in the past, but demonstrably failed? They should be more of a clear and present danger here.

You also get an alien companion who lives in your brain. I was really excited about this at first- we get to find out more about the architects! But you don't, like, get to chat with him. He doesn't comment on things you do as you explore, or places you visit besides a few scripted architect base locations, and those are mostly just "you're getting close to a base". It was a serious missed opportunity to both trickle out interesting lore for people who care about that, and to just get us to care about this pivotal plot character. Boggles my mind there isn't more idle chat here to fill the exploration time. It feels like you get an alien downloaded into your brain and then you can just kinda forget about it for hours and hours at a time. (Marguerit is a gem, though, and I wish she was in a lot more of the game than she is- she makes a very few, very scant appearances)

That said, due to the smaller biomes, there is a lot less time spent exploring in this game than the previous. Smaller doesn't mean worse, to be clear- but I do think they didn't quite strike the balance here. I could not, for the life of me, find a place to put my base that felt convenient- everywhere felt equally like it was either inconvenient or already occupied, due to the smaller scale of the world.

I agree with everyone about the Seatruck being a very poor substitute for the Cyclops and Seamoth. A modular vehicle sounds amazing on paper- but not when it's incredibly frustrating to drive, and when the modules are all so underwhelming.

Ultimately, this still plays like Subnautica, and Subnautica is good as hell- it's a good game. But it's a sequel that tried to experiment with the formula of the first game and, to my mind, wasn't bold or clear-eyed enough to QUITE make it work. Maybe this had something ot do with the story getting rewritten entirely halfway thoguh- perhaps there was a budget or time crunch on getting the new story complete, I'm not sure- but there's still plenty of promise here, and it's still worth a play if you liked the first one.

Incredible game. If you like Factorio or Satisfactory, you will *love* this. the sci-fi flavor and ESPECIALLY the ability to build logistical networks across multiple plants and multiple star systems adds an extremely fun and rewarding wrinkle to the whole experience. I'm so excited to see where the game goes as they add more content and fix issues in the future.

In all my nearly-100-hours (so far) of playtime, I've experienced basically no technical issues whatsoever besides the occasional frame drop.

I have only one complaint: the translations are ROUGH, bordering on nonsensical a lot of the time. It can be hard to understand the directions and item descriptions. It's especially weird that they hired somebody to do voice acting, but the person they hired apparently didn't go "uh hey this script doesn't make sense". That said, though, I imagine these will be issues that are fixed going forwards, and they weren't so confusing that I wasn't able to play the game.

I'd never played a Supergiant game before this, but wow- I see what all the fuss is about now. Hades is nothing short of a masterpiece. Intuitive, responsive combat with a wide selection of great-feeling weapons, a difficulty curve tuned to be challenging but not overwhelming, unbelievably beautiful art, rock solid performance with zero bugs in almost 50 hours (!) of playtime, a fantastic narrative with a wide cast of characters to get to know that I'm still not done with fifty hours in, and an incredible soundtrack- all for $25!

There's so much to love about Hades- what are you waiting for? It's worth your money several times over! The entire team at Supergiant Games should be immensely proud of their accomplishment with this game.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is not Dark Souls. It has a lot of the same DNA, but it demands so much more from you. There's no gaming the system here, for better- you can't leave and grind for some experience, you can't try a new weapon. There's no stats to level up, even- just your health and vitality and your attack power. It's just you and the boss and your fingers.

But hoo boy does it work. It's unforgiving, but the depth to the combat- and its consummate fairness- keep it from getting frustrating. The game allows you to truly embody a Shinobi, complete with all the things you'd expect from a ninja- stealth, acrobatics, and deadly swordplay. The discourse around difficulty has been, at the time of writing, pretty exhausting (an easy mode is fine, y'all, not everybody plays these games for the challenge, and not everybody *can*, don't @ me) but the game really is as hard as you've heard. I spent probably ten hours on the final boss before I finally overcame him. However, it's also intensely gratifying. I spent the first 10 hours or so not sure if I was doing it right, struggling along, not sure if I enjoyed the game or not- until I hit a boss that basically said "you are not getting past me until you master the combat, so either sit down and get to practicing or leave". After that fight, suddenly, I was a ninja- I had mastered the combat. Even in other fromsoft games, I haven't felt the feeling of mastery and achievement I got when I broke through to the next challenge. So, if you're here for the challenge- this will deliver, in spades.

As for the story, I think this is the best story in a Fromsoft game yet. It's delivered much more directly than any previous game- there's living NPCs, who talk to you. There's an *antagonist*, something noticeably absent from other fromsoft games. I won't spoil it, but it's top tier fromsoft storytelling- a meditation on a lot of the same sort of themes of immortality and death as their other titles, but a much different lens than the Souls series.

Overall, I really can't overstate how much I enjoyed Sekiro- exploring its intricate levels, delving its secrets, mastering every new fight it threw my way. I didn't want to end. I could have played another 60 hours, happily.

This game isn't for everybody- but I think it deserves finding out for yourself. Unlike other Fromsoft games, I couldn't get this out of my head- even after throwing myself against a boss for hours, I was just daydreaming about it the next day at work, of strategies, and of the world I had been so intently exploring. It's gonna be real hard to knock this from my GOTY 2019.

It's a fun game. A very fun game. The developers are absolute scumbags though. I wouldn't buy this game if I knew what I know now about their behavior. Check it out before you decide to buy.

UPDATE: okay, i feel morally obligated to clarify a bit here- it looks like it was just the sound design person, who has since been fired. I had mistakenly thought it was the lead developer. The developers seem to have acted swiftly once this was brought to their attention. Switched to recommend!

What Remains of Edith Finch is hands down one of the best games of 2017. The story is told as a series of vignettes set in a mysterious, secret-passage filled mansion on Orcas Island in northwestern Washington, exploring the mysterious and ironic misfortunes of the Finch family. Each story plays with the game's structure in fun and interesting ways you have to play to see- and one story in particular brought me to tears. It also avoids the pitfalls of many similar walk-around-and-look-at-stuff games in that you're an active participant in the game and its story instead of just wandering around having a story told to you.

All in all, a fantastic game. Buy it!

Slime Rancher is one of the most surprising games I've played. I picked it up while it was still in early access after seeing a youtube video that piqued my interest, and played through the content that was there at the time. It was fun, but there wasn't too much to do. I made a note to come back and check it out again after it came out.

And boy, they did not disappoint. Monomi Park are a shining example of how early Access can- and should- be. Every single gameplay concept was explored deeply. Gameplay loops were complicated and intertwined. And there was a huge amount of content- and it even felt paced just right, making sure I was always interested and plannign ahead for how I'd get past that locked door, or what paths I still had to explore. The map feature, which was not present when I first played, have also done a fantastic job of helping you navigate some of the rather complex, branching paths.

After nearly 40 hours of gameplay, I can only think of one complaint- the requirements for extractions for treasure crackers is ridiculously too high. But that's such a minor complain that it barely even registers. Slime Rancher is one of the most pure, innocent, and entertaining experiences I've had in gaming, period. This game helped soothe me when I felt stressed.

Another huge plus- without giving too much away, there's a bit of a romance story in this game, and it's queer as hell, and it's wonderful. I truly appreciate the work of the writers in crafting this story.

All in all, I would not hesitate to give Slime Rancher my endorsement. It's worth it at any price.