Recent reviews by Aleitheo

The only reason I own this is because it was part of an indie bundle that contained some good games I liked the look of. £15 for what amounts to a short novella is a ridiculous price really so even though I am the sort of person who wants to give everything a fair go that initial price barrier is what stopped me.

So I finally got around to seeing what the fuss was about and while I wouldn't call it terrible at all, it's certainly not GOTY material. I started off looking at everything I could (highly recommended to lower mouse sensitivity). Even though I had known about the hidden room with the key to the attic I left it til last since I felt I was going to explore this as intended. Interaction isn't heavy, you can pick up things like cups and specifically placed books but not everything else. There was a letter that lampshaded the whole "spooky flickering lights" trope that could lead you into thinking this is a horror game. It is not. It is much like exploring the ruins of a building in Fallout as you read old notes, follow along the corridors and come across the remains of the people and what happened to them. However since there is no combat, travelling outside the house or interacting with other people they had to ramp up the effort they put into the story and "level design".

The game is teenage lesbian love story with a heavy dose of rebelion. Girl meets girl, girl ends up becoming punk and rebelious like other girl, parents don't like what is going on, other girl has to leave, ect. While the summary may make it seem rather tripe, it's not that bad, it's just not that amazing either. The short story format probably hinders the kind of story they are trying to tell here since you don't get to know the characters long enough for what you find out about them to have much of an impact. While there are a few members of the family the story doesn't touch much on anyone else besides the youngest daughter. In fact you may forget you are playing as the eldest due to how little use of this character is taken. Despite this I actually was disappointed that I heard so little about the mother and father compared to the daughter. Pretty much everything in Gone Hom revolves around the youngest daughter and her girlfriend.

Set design is pretty good for the most part. There are places where thought is put into why certain objects are where they are, you can tell what happened there as a result. There's the rejection letter close to the alchohol, the pillow fort in the TV room, the opened clothes drawers in the parents room and the bottle of hair dye in the bathroom.

The last of which brings me to my next point, the journal entries. As you explore the house you will come across various letters and items. When you pick up certain ones a narrated journal entry of the star of the game is played. I assume that these are all from the book you pick up at the end. Of course the problem with telling the meat of the story through this journal is if you don't tear the pages out and spread them across the house then you have to leave them intact and the player spends most of their time wandering around not knowing much until the end where they spend 5 minutes reading up on a large percentage of the story.

So instead you get this story fed to you though intangible "audiologs" that are attached to what appear to be normal items at first glance until you put them down and cue the narrator. This isn't bad per se but it's clear that the developers had more focus on this being a story told through traditional means than they would have liked. They wanted the story to be told through exploring the house and picking up bits and pieces but they ended up relying a bit too heavily on the audio logs.

I smiled a bit at some points where nostalgia was used for audience hooks. There's a bunch of nostalgia spread around which seems to be one of the things that got critics hooked. The other is the lesbian romance.

Had the star of the show been a boy or the girlfriend switched with a boy then I'm sure people wouldn't have given this anywhere as much praise as it has gotten. While the VA for the star of the story delivered her lines brilliantly and with emotion, she was still voicing an average short story. The story was too short for the characters to properly hook you at all and the plot of it was rather standard life. I wouldn't be surprised if critics praised this because anything less would have possibly risked them being labeled as homophobes.

A book I read, The Lovely Bones, is somewhat similar to this in ways. Besides dealing with mature subjects it essentially features an outsider viewing their family unseen and how they live their lives. However the differences are plentiful. Besides being a written novel it benefits from it's medium and allows you to connect to the characters in the way that Gone Home didn't manage to do. The Lovely Bones also focuses on various family members including that of the outsider rather than mostly on a single one. You get a better sense of relationships as a result too.

Had Gone Home instead had the main character be a ghost viewing their family it could have really told a far more immersive story. You could have the family members actually be in the house interacting with each other rather than reading letters in an empty house. The story could have gone on a lot longer as a result allowing you to connect with the characters more. Why you could even affect at least the progression of the story by interacting with objects to influence the family members to do certain things. Though this would require far more writing, modeling and even animation to do this.

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Gone Home is an average story where the focus is clearly on one character and the others just serve support roles. Exploration is looking around a room, finding objects and letters that trigger story points and finding hidden rooms and passages because spooky inherited house reasons. There is a little thinking at some points to find and uncover certain points of the story but not much else.

All in all it's a risky buy even at 75% off. Not at all deserving of it's praise but it tries some interesting things that will hopefully inspire better people to have a crack at something great. Ask yourself, "Am I the kind of person that is drawn to cheap pandering that it can make me like an average story more than I ever would rather than feel somewhat insulted at the attempt". If Yes you might like Gone Home, if no then think about it before trying this because that teenage lesbian romance and rebellion story is the selling point here, not the exploration aspect.

As a big Tomb Raider fan I was naturally wary when I heard that there was going to be a reboot of the series and even moreso when I saw how the gameplay was different from the originals. The new Lara was also very different from the old Lara and I don't just mean the fully grown up one, Old Lara had experienced the supernatural as a child and was raiding tombs at 14 whereas New Lara had done neither before this game.

Going into the game I noticed that there were a few cinematic sequences, the kind where you have limited control and you are expected to follow an onscreen prompt. Some times the game slows down for you to complete the action that is rushing towards you which despite helping you deal with it can take away the tension.

The game controls really well, I never had an incident where I fell to my death or something because a grab didn't register or I was an inch from a ledge. Platforming is a lot more simple than the older games though it doesn't feel lacking.

There are many ways to gain XP in the game from kills (animals must be looted for it to count), certain boxes that serve no other purpose, collecting collectables (and completing their sets) and progressing through certain parts of the game. Once you gain enough XP you get a skillpoint you can spend on the first tier of skills (the rest you unlock after having X amount of skills). The skills range from melee based skills and recovery (something I didn't often use), looting corpses (getting back arrows as well as higher amounts of ammo and salvage). Some skills have a noticeable effect though some are forgetable.

Puzzles are decently done and can take some thinking, the come at a good pace. I feel they are fairly balanced with the combat for the most part. There is a "survival vision" that turns everything monochrome and important things gold such as enemies, climbable surfaces, loot crates and so on as well as mark where your objective is and custom waypoints. It also marks collectables on the map within range, a fact I didn't discover until quite a way into the game due to intentionally avoiding using the vision mode because I wanted to figure the puzzles out for myself.

Combat itself feels pretty fun and often I felt like the enemies were quite close to killing me. When they can they do try to flank you though a lot of enemies do run right up towards you and don't seem to care much when you put a round in them. This is at least offset by them weaving a bit so getting a headshot isn't that easy. Despite the game having survival be a central theme to the whole thing ammo isn't that hard to come by. It's often lying around the place and enemies can give you more ammo back than you used to take them down if you are decent at doing so anre rarely miss a shot.

Through the story you pick up more weapons and certain upgrades which start off realistic. You have a bow made out a bunch of sticks wrapped together and a length of thin rope, an old WWII automatic rifle, that sort of thing. However you can upgrade these weapons once you collect enough salvage to buy the individual upgrades. At some point you randomly get specific weapon parts which can upgrade your weapon into a more powerful one and unlock a bunch of new upgrades to get. So your old stick bow is switched out for a wooden recurve bow with some ornate carving, at least it looks like it was thrown together out of various parts. However over the course of the game you get certain upgrades that allow you to tackle enemies in new ways as well as get to new areas. Shotguns, grenades and rope arrows can take down certain baricades for example.

Then there is the tomb raiding. It's all optional and there isn't much of it. There are a small handful of tombs and each one is a small bit of platforming or puzzle solving that you should not take more than 10 minutes to finish.

One of the better things that the game has going for it is the semi-open world. You travel from point A to B to C sort of like a traditional Tomb Raider level though some parts are far more open. Once you come across a camp you can fast travel to other ones you have discovered (though not to or from daycamps which are basically checkpoints). This allows you to revist areas and explore them further.

On top of that there are many artifacts, documents and GPS caches to find (the latter of which are only useful for XP until you collect the final one and get some "meta-story" that points to some sequel material). Documents include WWII reports, ancient journals from the first people on the island, journals from the modern day cultists and fellow ship crew. Artifacts range from old pots, coins, knives and so on to military dogtags, photographs of loved ones and other similar things. These are in 3D and you can examine them as you wish, sometimes getting some extra nformation about the object and XP.

The story itself starts off simple enough as you crash on an island after a storm wrecks your ship. Being alone at the time you are forced to fend for yourself and have to kill for food (never required after the first time, even if there is a skill that highlights wildlife). When you make your first human kill Lara is clearly distraught though this doesn't last long at all and by the end of the game I was hearing Lara screaming insults at some of the enemies. Despite being an origin story you are put in the middle of relationships with the other crew members and have to figure out what exactly it is they are. Turns out Lara is on this expedition with her friend who she possibly knows from college but I'm not sure as well as some computer guy, engineer, a famous architect that she appears to be studying under, a possibly hawiian guy as well as two of her father's friends. Through the story stuff happens to them and they end up kidnapped, travelling or killed, most of the time you won't be seeing them outside of cutscenes.

The story progessed at a decent pace though I felt the supernatural stuff which we usually see early on in the previous Tomb Raider games appeared too late into the game and too little until the end where it appeared at the usual rate. You can sort of guess the twists before they happen at times too.

Didn't play the multiplayer, it could be good but things like that just seem tacked on to games like these like Assassin's Creed and Batman for the sake of trying to get people to hang onto the game.

Overall I'd say the game is very good, it's lacking much of the feeling that the old Tomb Raider games had but it has it's own sort of identity which it could work on. It's a pity that they decided to take the Tomb Raider label and apply it to this game rather than invent a new IP at the expense of the old.

My introduction to Magic was through that Microsoft Games with Gold thing, I got the 2013 version with it, tried it and quite enjoyed it.

So I bought this version.

As someone who has next to no experience with TCGs since I had a go with Pokemon all those years ago it's nice to see that the game has a tutorial for those with no knowledge of the series.

The rules are covered nicely enough and there are a bunch of premade matches which grant you extra cards. The lore seems pretty interesting too.

If you are interested somewhat in TCGs I recommend you give this one a go.

Personally I play on Black and White mode with UI prompts disabled. Harder but more fun in my opinion.

This is a game for people who play for the story and don't get put off by having to think seriously.

While it is open world outside of objectives there doesn't seem to be much to do besides finding cars and doing side missions that randomly pop up. You mostly travel while in a police chase. Traveling to locations is entirely optional since you can get in the passenger seat and ask your partner to drive.

Choices matter in this quite a lot from how you judge what people say in response to your questioning to what leads you pick up. Sometimes you will end up arresting someone without having checked all your leads because they appear to be guilty. Reading your report at the end of each case scores you on how you performed and even adds comments on how you could have done better. I've a feeling that my judgement has led a few innocent people behind bars.

How a super hero game should be done, it plays to the strengths of the character involved. While it isn't as open as Arkham City the story feels tighter and has a fun Metroidvainia feel overall.

Gadgets are fun and well used, combat feels real good and exploring the Batman universe from the perspective of someone who knows only of the lore in passing is great.

Personally my favourite of the Arkham series. A fun to traverse open world and a tight combat system. Despite not being a Batman fan I really enjoyed seeing all the characters and reading up their bios. Playing as Catwoman is quite interesting too and has some similarities to Batman yet plays like her own character.

Plenty of things to do in the game and there is even a tonne of challanges to do as Batman, Catwoman and Robin.

Also to take advantage of the costumes without having to beat the game first, when you are on the main menu press "Left, Left, Down, Down, Left, Left, Right, Up, Up, Down". You should hear a swarm of bats and be able to select costumes when selecting continue. you have to do this each time you load up the game.

A pretty fun ARPG with a good amount of content. Feel like an errandboy who becomes the leader of pretty much every group they work for.

The game shines best when modded and if you want to do it properly, get SKSE (Skyrim Script Extender), BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting Software), the Nexus Mod Manager and head to the Skyrim Nexus.

Beautiful music, amazing environments and the dynamic narration makes for a brilliant atmosphere to this game. Gameplay is great and best played with a 360 controller in my opinion (with evade moved to the trigger and the special skill to one of the face buttons)

A somewhat arcadey space combat game with some good humour thrown in. Plenty of upgrades with a ridiculously high level cap, warring factions (not including the zombies) and customisable ships.

A complex and sciency yet satisfying puzzle game where you play around with chemical bonds.