Recent reviews by Arsene Lupin

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#523 out of 1000+)... it's time for GUNDAM EVOLUTION.

Lemme tell y'all about a game called Gundam Senki. Or if you're feelin' mouthy, Mobile Said Gundam Battlefield Record U.C. 0081. It came out many years ago, way back on the PlayStation 3 -- back in the days of yore when mech games were abundant, and Gundam games were good. And Senki? It wasn't just good, it was great -- easily the best Gundam game ever made. Featuring a sprawling single-player campaign with lavishly-produced cut-scenes and all your favorite Gundam tropes (monster prototypes, badass, grunts, corrupt politicians, war crimes and traitor-villains!) as well as an incredible engaging cooperative multiplayer mode.

Gundam Senki excelled for several reason. First and foremost, the gameplay was really solid: featuring an enormous roster of playable mobile suits alongside fairly deep parts customization and a near-perfect performance curve. See, mobile suits are big, hulking, impossibly huge robots -- and Senki works well to drive that scale home by making the entry-level suits big, clodding, clumsy beasts. When you start out, you're slow, can't maneuver very well, barely have any boosting capacity, and the limited array of weapons at your disposable don't too much damage. Unlocking new mobile suits, weapons and customization parts takes time, but as you slowly progress, your mobile suit's performance (potentially) increases -- along a curve. With the right parts, even those entry-level grunts can be truly monstrous -- and a top-tier suit with a decent build? You'll be (literally) flying from one end of the giant maps to the other in the blink of an eye, like something out of Zone of the Enders.

The progression curve seamlessly guides you from the (relatively) primitive and plodding mobile suits of the One Year War to the fast, flying, far superior suits of the Gryps Conflict -- and it is glorious.

You might be wondering why I'm talking so much about Gundam Senki in what is, ostensibly, a review for Gundam Evolution. Well, simply put, it's because Gundam Evolution is NOT Gundam Senki. The latter is one of the all-time greats, a brilliantly shining little gem of a game whose best years are long gone; the former is a disposable free-to-play PVP arena shooter so forgettable the developers can't even be bothered to keep the servers online for more than a single year. The Zeon War for Independence lasted longer! (Though the Gundam geek in me would be remiss were I not to point out the the One Year War technically lasted several years -- and arguably didn't have a proper end date, ultimately petering out sometime in late 0081 or early 0082.)

That's right, Gundam Evolution's servers are due to be shut down in the end of November, 2023 -- just a few days from when I wrote this. And let's be honest, if you're reading this review (and I harbor no illusions about anyone reading this, don't worry, gentle phantoms: I view this mostly as an exercise in soliloquy) to decide whether or not you should give Evolution a try not knowing of its imminent erasure, all of your interest in ever playing the game just evaporated into nothing. Funny, that.

And, let's be clear, it's no great loss. The free-to-play PVP arena shooter is a saturated genre, and few games are ever going to have the capacity to compete with the current king, Overwatch 2, despite its many, many, (many) issues. And as a genre, we'll, let's just say it's a very poor fit for a Gundam game, where a limited roster of balanced mobile suits to play with is the LAST thing you want. In a Gundam game, balance is bad! We can all agree on that, right? You want the titular Gundam suits to feel overpowered, curb-stomping foes through sheer, overwhelming power -- one lone machine capable of taking on multiple enemies simultaneously without breaking a sweat (as machines do). And, far more appealing to me, personally, the grunt suits should be weak -- perpetually disadvantaged, forced to be the underdog in nearly every situation. Where Gundams brute-force their way to victory, grunts can and must rely on pure skill to compensate for what their hardware lacks. This imbalance is, fundamentally, central to every Gundam narrative since 1979 and absolutely essential to making a "good Gundam game."

As an arena shooter, Evolution is fine, if far from exciting. It's fine. It's fine. It feels well-polished, the visuals, animations and effects are all quite solid, and it's hard to argue against a product that's free. Sure, it's also overloaded with scummy microtransactions and once you've fought one match, you won't experience anything new in any further matches, but that's pretty par for the course for the genre, so there's little need to comment on it. It's certain,y very unfortunate that the game will be erased from the face of the Earth so quickly, and the developers have my sympathies, but as a player and as a Gundam fan it will not be a loss I expect to mourn. C'est l'vie.

So let's get back to Gundam Senki, because -- while still very playable, if you happen to have a PS3 -- there is a loss I can and DO mourn. Thing is, Gundam Senki has two big problems: the hardware it's on, on the community. The PS3 console is two generations out-of-date, and will only ever become harder to find secondhand as time thunders on. And, as is the case with so many games of that era, Senki is a game with some performance issues -- most significantly the long loading times you have to wade through getting into and out of combat each time. That's unfortunate, but what really kills me? (Yea, I am dead; forsooth, murdered. Watch as I crumble to dust, amounting to naught but air and detritus, as all mortals do.) Further, Free Mission Mode was the real heart of the game, and it was balanced ENTIRELY on multiplayer: though you can still play it offline, the missions are much harder (expect no aid from your AI teammates), making the grind for money (to buy more mobile suits) exponentially more tedious; and you cannot even grind for the better customization parts and weapons as they are only obtainable in the higher difficulty versions of each mission, which are limited to online play.

So what's my angle here? What's been the point of all this pontificating about an entirely different game, you might ask? It all boils down to one thing, really: come on, Bandai, stop with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ already. Just port some of your old games to new hardware, already. Sure, you have the (very unrealistic) potential to make fat wads of dough off of aggressively-monetized free-to-play games, but those are also far more expensive to produce and riskier to release. Why not spend a fraction of that on ports? Hell, I'm not even talking remasters, though that would be nice -- obviously beggars can't be choosers, Bandai, and you've certainly given us so little that Gundam fans are currently beggared.

Just. Port. The. Old. Games.

Give us Gundam Senki. Give us Unicorn; Side Stories; Another Century's Episodes; Zeonic Front; Alliance vs ZAFT II+; Gundam vs Zeta Gundam; Battle Universe; Project Pegasus; Gihren's Greed. There're plenty to choose from. But Senki, Senki most of all. You already had a fantastic multiplayer Gundam game out there, Bandai -- one that's already endured for years and years and years (and years) -- you didn't need to make a new one, nevermind one so generic, only to abandon and erase it soon after.

Clearly, if we want to see good Gundam games, we cannot look to the future, but must instead look to the past. And don't get me wrong, folks -- that sucks. I, more than anyone,would dearly love to see a Gundam game come out someday that surpasses

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#522 out of 1000+)... it's time for Star Wars: Starfighter.


Before I get to the review proper, allow me to briefly discuss something totally unrelated. Did you know that Playstation 2 emulation is really, really good right now? Even fairly low-end machines can get pretty good performance out of most PS2 games. And, further, the latest PCSX2 clients feature an entire launcher app, collecting all of your games in one place, with spiffy cover art and playtime-tracking and the ability to customize all of the emulator's settings on a per-game basis. You can even set it up to automatically-apply widescreen hacks and cheats when you launch a game. It is fantastic.

Well, that doesn't really have anything to do with why we're here. Not really sure why I felt the need to so say all that, but as they say – the deed is done.

So let's talk about Star Wars: Starfighter then – a game that's not just a relic from a bygone age when Star Wars games were good and abundant, but also a relic from a bygone age when flight combat games were good and abundant. That both ages have ended is, I think, lamentable.

Starfighter carries on the legacy of the Rogue Squadron games (originally developed for the Nintendo 64 console), featuring fast-paced arcade-style flight combat. Built to tie in to the then-new Prequel Trilogy, Starfighter is set in and around the events of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. You play as a member of the Naboo Royal Guard in an N-1 starfighter (also known as the coolest Star Wars starfighter this side of an X-Wing) as well as a pair of mercenaries, piloting a heavy bomber and light scout ship, respectively. Each of the three playable characters/ships has a slightly different playstyle better suited for different types of missions. The heavy bomber has a ton of firepower but is slow and not very maneuverable, the light scout is fast and nimble but doesn't pack much of a punch, and the classic N-1 is balanced in-between those two extremes.

Combat tends to be fast-paced and frenetic, and althoug you can play the game through either the first-person (HUD) view or a third-person view, the latter feels a bit clumsy – you can definitely tell this was an early-era PS2 game. Visually, Starfighter adopts a stylized, almost cartoony aesthetic that was pretty impressive for its time and still holds up rather well today – so even though this PC port uses the same low-resolution assets as the PS2 release, everything still looks pretty good. The story is a bit more of a mixed bag: it's simple and serviceable, and fails to stick into the memory well – I'm not sure whether or not we should be thankful that the writing fails to be either good or bad enough to be memorable.

A few years after Starfighter released came its sequel, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, set durring the second prequel movie. Jedi Starfighter is a massive improvement over Starfighter in every concievable way, so if you have the option to play it instead, please do so. But that's not to say that Starfighter is entirely without merit – it's a solid, fun game. And a pleassant reminder of a forgotten time and place when your average Star Wars game was more likely than not to be good, and capable of being constructed around more genres than just the shooter.

Lamentably the PC port here is quite, quite rough. The only real praise I can offer is that the game runs with minimal graphical or performance issues. Otherwise... we're looking at a port with only very minimal options for display resolution and aspect ratio, as well as seriously compromised controls. As you might expect from a PS2 games, Starfighter is going to be best-played with a gamepad. Unfortunately Starfighter does not allow you to re-bind the controls, and the default controller buttom map is severely lacking in options, meaning that if you choose to play with a gamepad, you'll also have to keep a keyboard handy, otherwise several missions will be impossible to clear.

If you really want to play Starfighter – and you should! – your best course of action would be to play the original PS2 version. The only real value the Steam port has is in its purchase indicating a demand for similar games, but I suspect that's not a message likely to be properly conveyed to anyone with the power to produce them. Unlikely but not, perhaps, impossible, so maybe it's a hope worth holding on to.

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#521 out of 1000+)... it's time for Red Faction: Guerilla Re-Mars-tered.


Ostensibly a remaster of the third Red Faction game, Red Faction: Guerilla Re-Mars-tered (what a tortured pun that is) is virtually indistinguisable from the original. Few, if any, noticable improvements have been made to the visuals, mechanics or UI. If you're trying to decide which version to play, I simply recommend going with whichever one provides you with the fasted, smoothest framerate. Otherwise I don't really think it matters.

Now let's dive into the review proper.

Red Faction: Guerilla is a game that practically screams "I am a generic mid-00s action game." It has all the hallmarks of that crude era: grizzled, deep-voiced space marines; bland, desaturated environments filled with rubble; extremely condensed open-world environmental design that ensures players and seldom more than a few seconds away from the nearest points of interest; multiple driveably vehicles with very questionable driving physics; lots of bald heads because the tech for decent-looking 3D hair just wasn't quite there yet; and a bog-standard, utterly uninspired narrative that's very vaguely about fighting fascism, populated by characters with less depth than those of your average childrens' cartoon.

There are really only two areas where Red Faction: Guerilla can claim any unique appeal: its setting and the environmental destruction mechanics. The former quickly loses its luster once you realize that the Martian setting seems to exist primarily so that the game developers wouldn't have to render detailed environments – it's all rocks and rubble and dust, without even a single plant in sight. Everything is also rendered in rust-colored hues of red, because Mars is the "red planet," nevermind the fact that the Martian surface is no more red than the Earth's is blue. The environmental destruction, however, is pretty cool, and gives Red Faction: Guerilla a significant advantage over other shooters.

While not quite as robust as in previous games, whever virtually everything could be destroyed, Red Faction: Guerilla still provides plenty of targets for demolation. This time around you're essentially limited to only being able to destroy man-made objects, but the underlying physics are a bit more complex and engaging. Want to take out a large building? Blow up the supports and watch it collapse. Or take a bit longer to dismantle the whole thing from the top-down. It's safe to say that even as the actual assets you're destroying are recycled again and again (and again and again), you'll very seldom see any two destroyed in precisely the same manner.

To aid you in your quest to blow a lot of crap to smithereens is a delightful arsenal of explosive weapons. There's nothing too imaginative here, but remote mines, rocket launchers and grenades are always fun, so I don't see that as much of a deficiency. The combat feels punchy and responsive, and the sheer chaos you can unleash as you obliterate the battlefields around you make Red: Faction: Guerilla well-worth playing a decade later, even as almost all of its contemporaries are forgotten.

Worth playing but not, perhaps, worth finishing. As engaging as the minute-to-minute combat can be, the rest of the game is more annoying than anything else. The narrative framing your adventure is as dull as they come, and the player character has all the personality of a rotting tree stump. The combat loop also takes several cues from Grand Theft Auto, so you'll often have to balance a "wanted level" that sends increasingly powerful waves of enemies at you the more you make a nuissance of ourself. Which wouldn't be too bad if Red Faction: Guerilla could at least be bothered to clearly indicate which NPCs are freinds and which are foes, but it does not. Friendly miner NPCs (who, by the way, are universally supportive of your indiscriminate terrorism) look almost exactly like the fascistic Mars cops you're fighting – and when combat breaks out, you'll almost always have a swarm of friendy miners running up to help you, shooting off their guns willy-nilly, penalizing you for any friendly-fire they might happen to catch.

And they're gonna catch a lot of friendly fire.

It's hard not to look at Red Faction: Guerilla and not wonder at what might could have been. It could so easily have been a cult-classic if only the protagonist had even a smidgen of charisma, the supporting cast even on iota of personality, the visuals just a touch of color, the level design just a bit more expansive and dynamic. Playing the game now, 14 years after its original release, it's immediately clear both why the Red Faction series was as popular as it used to be, and why that's no longer the case. The core gameplay loop is very solid: blowing stuff up is always great fun – but everything else just kind of sucks.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

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In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#520 out of 1000+)... it's time for Red Faction: Guerilla Steam Edition.


First and foremost: be aware that Red Faction: Guerilla has a remastered edition available, with (arguably) superior visuals and performance that – theoretically – ought to be played instead of the Steam Edition. In practice, however, I noticed very little difference (in any respect) between the remaster and the original, so I suspect it matters very little which version you choose to play. I would therefore recommend that decision based entirely on what kind of performance you're getting, and going with whichever version provides you with the fastest, smoothest framerate.

Now let's dive into the review proper.

Red Faction: Guerilla is a game that practically screams "I am a generic mid-00s action game." It has all the hallmarks of that crude era: grizzled, deep-voiced space marines; bland, desaturated environments filled with rubble; extremely condensed open-world environmental design that ensures players and seldom more than a few seconds away from the nearest points of interest; multiple driveably vehicles with very questionable driving physics; lots of bald heads because the tech for decent-looking 3D hair just wasn't quite there yet; and a bog-standard, utterly uninspired narrative that's very vaguely about fighting fascism, populated by characters with less depth than those of your average childrens' cartoon.

There are really only two areas where Red Faction: Guerilla can claim any unique appeal: its setting and the environmental destruction mechanics. The former quickly loses its luster once you realize that the Martian setting seems to exist primarily so that the game developers wouldn't have to render detailed environments – it's all rocks and rubble and dust, without even a single plant in sight. Everything is also rendered in rust-colored hues of red, because Mars is the "red planet," nevermind the fact that the Martian surface is no more red than the Earth's is blue. The environmental destruction, however, is pretty cool, and gives Red Faction: Guerilla a significant advantage over other shooters.

While not quite as robust as in previous games, whever virtually everything could be destroyed, Red Faction: Guerilla still provides plenty of targets for demolation. This time around you're essentially limited to only being able to destroy man-made objects, but the underlying physics are a bit more complex and engaging. Want to take out a large building? Blow up the supports and watch it collapse. Or take a bit longer to dismantle the whole thing from the top-down. It's safe to say that even as the actual assets you're destroying are recycled again and again (and again and again), you'll very seldom see any two destroyed in precisely the same manner.

To aid you in your quest to blow a lot of crap to smithereens is a delightful arsenal of explosive weapons. There's nothing too imaginative here, but remote mines, rocket launchers and grenades are always fun, so I don't see that as much of a deficiency. The combat feels punchy and responsive, and the sheer chaos you can unleash as you obliterate the battlefields around you make Red: Faction: Guerilla well-worth playing a decade later, even as almost all of its contemporaries are forgotten.

Worth playing but not, perhaps, worth finishing. As engaging as the minute-to-minute combat can be, the rest of the game is more annoying than anything else. The narrative framing your adventure is as dull as they come, and the player character has all the personality of a rotting tree stump. The combat loop also takes several cues from Grand Theft Auto, so you'll often have to balance a "wanted level" that sends increasingly powerful waves of enemies at you the more you make a nuissance of ourself. Which wouldn't be too bad if Red Faction: Guerilla could at least be bothered to clearly indicate which NPCs are freinds and which are foes, but it does not. Friendly miner NPCs (who, by the way, are universally supportive of your indiscriminate terrorism) look almost exactly like the fascistic Mars cops you're fighting – and when combat breaks out, you'll almost always have a swarm of friendy miners running up to help you, shooting off their guns willy-nilly, penalizing you for any friendly-fire they might happen to catch.

And they're gonna catch a lot of friendly fire.

It's hard not to look at Red Faction: Guerilla and not wonder at what might could have been. It could so easily have been a cult-classic if only the protagonist had even a smidgen of charisma, the supporting cast even on iota of personality, the visuals just a touch of color, the level design just a bit more expansive and dynamic. Playing the game now, 14 years after its original release, it's immediately clear both why the Red Faction series was as popular as it used to be, and why that's no longer the case. The core gameplay loop is very solid: blowing stuff up is always great fun – but everything else just kind of sucks.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

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In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#519 out of 1000+)... it's time for Kingdom Under Fire: A War of Heroes (Gold Edition).


The future is here, and it sucks.

Kingdom Under Fire is -- or was -- a Korean RTS/RPG hybrid the launched in 2001, beating Warcraft III to the punch by a good year and a half. Unlike Warcraft III there's little to commend it today. Kingdom Under Fire is a relic of a lost era in PC gaming history, and not a particularly interesting one. But for the people out there with fond childhood memories of playing this game, or those like myself with a keen historical interest in RPGs (especially forgotten ones) I am very glad to see it come to Steam.

Or, rather, I wish I was.

Right away, you'll notice a few oddities about Kingdom Under Fire's Steam page: The game is free; it's in Early Access despite having been released more than 22 years ago; the product description is eager to vaguely allude to plans for a remaster, with no specific improvements or even a timeframe mentioned. And then, maybe, if you're feeling a bit inquisitive you'll check out the Steam Forums, and see the developer speaking about a plan to start charging for the game once the Early Access period is over, and if you're of a charitable disposition you might be inclined to assume that maybe something was lost in translation, and that the developers don't fully understand how Early Access works, and that once a game is in a user's library, it's there forever, regardless of whether they paid or not.

But then, maybe, you dig a little deeper. Maybe you notice that while you run the game, a new application starts running on your PC without your knowledge or consent. It calls itself "Locus Game Chain," and presents exactly zero information on what it is while feverishly sending data off to an unknown server.

And then, perhaps, you think to check your Windows Task Manager. And there you see that this 22+ year old game is somehow demanding 80-100% of your CPU.

At this point you'd probably want to ask, "What the heck is going on?

Good question. Here's what I've been able to find out.

Locus Chain is a Seoul-based bockchain company that claims to have been founded in 1994. This is remarkably prescient of them as this was more than a decade before blockchains would be invented by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. They claim their blockchain network is, "Ideal for any industries, including AI, Smart City and Gaming projects, that require large-scale data processing. Now which one of those fits a 2D strategy game from 2002, I wonder. Locus Chain is also involved in NFTs, because of course they are.

Kingdom Under Fire's developers had this to say about their involvement in Locus Chain:

"Kingdom Under Fire: War of Heroes utilizes Locus Game Chain to provide online multiplayer capability without the need of an online game server. The game does not support cryptocurrencies or NFTs, and has complied with all Steam's guidelines and regulations."

Now if you don't know anything about blockchain, you might wonder why multiplayer functionality would require secondary app that is so fully integrated with the game that you cannot launch the one without the other. And if you do know a few things about blockhain, you might wonder just how, exactly, one is supposed to function as a substitute for a server.

And, further, if you've any passing familiarity with archaic multiplayer PC games, you might also wonder why Kingdom Under Fire needs a dedicated server in the first place, instead of simply using standard peer-to-peer networking.

UPDATE: Additionally it appears that several of the positive reviews left for Kingdom Under Fire on Steam are from very new Steam accounts, created around November 2022, with no reviews for any other products. At least one of these accounts is clearly affiliated with the Locus Game Chain company. So: another red flag.

It's certainly not clear what, exactly, is going on with this game... nor what, exactly this Locus Game Chain application is meant to do, nor what information it retrieving from your PC. Are the developers mere innocents, making mistakes without understanding what they're doing or why? Or is there something more nefarious here – is this spyware, or an attempt to illegally outsource crypto-currency mining to unwitting fans of old RTS or roleplaying games? Is that the future we get to look forward to, shady companies hijacking classic games to scam unsuspecting players? God, I hope not.

But we all know that truism, right? If the produce is free, then YOU are the product.

Or: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck -- it probably is a duck.

So what exactly is going on with this rerelease of Kingdom Under Fire?[i/]I don't know for certain. But I've seen enough to ask you this: is it really worth the risk trying to find out? There ain't nothin' to see here but a whole heaping' pile of screaming red flags. Spare yourself some future headaches and anxiety and avoid Kingdom Under Fire at all costs.

UPDATE: Kingdom Under Fire's developers have issued a statement/explanation for their use of a blockchain app with the game, which they have posted in several places, including in response to this review. I encourage you to read it for yourself and decide whether or not you believe you should give them the benefit of the doubt here. Personally, I remain skeptical. Even assuming their stated reasoning is valid (and I'm far from convinced it is), I think it's highly unethical to install middleware software of any kind on users' computers without informing them and giving them the opportunity to consent (or not). Doubly so when said middleware is a blockchain app from a company eager to dive into the NFT market, which is about as shady as these things get. That the developers have taken pains to respond to users bringing up these issues but have not seen fit to update the Steam product page to fully disclose their activities strikes me as the behavior or people who would very much like to keep their shenanigans secret – or at least silent.

FINAL UPDATE: Since posting this review I've been contacted by at least four different low-level Steam accounts urging me to change it. I think I've laid out my reasoning clearly here, and those urgings all left the impression that they hadn't actually read the review, as they amounted to little more than paltry defenses of blockchain technology in general. "But crypto good actually" isn't persuasive outside of cryptobro circles, I'm afraid. Well, okay, maybe they're not crytpobros – maybe they're just affiliated with the Locus Game Chain campany. Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool.

In either case, just to make it (even more) explicit, allow me to state in no uncertain terms that I would only be willing to change this review under one of two circumstances: either the blockchain app is removed from the installation package; or the Kingdom Under Fire game page is updated to disclose its presence upfront to new players. That's it.

The Developers have made it quite clear that this release if Kingdom Under Fire is being distributed for free in order to disseminate their blockchain app to "test the techology" – and their actions have indicated that they would very much prefer this testing to be done in secret. Without our knowledge or consent. Do I even have to say it? This is fundamentally unetheical behavior. I was reticent to call this a scam before, but no longer: this is a scam.

Arbitrary Rating: 0/10

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🚩🚩 AVOID 🚩🚩

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#518 out of 1000+)... it's time for Contradiction: The All-Video Murder Mystery Adventure.


The FMV adventure game is a subgenre that you probably think died out in the early 1990s. Well, it not quite be fully dead today, but it's definitely got more than one foot into the grave, and Contradiction isn't exactly a persuasive argument for its survival. It's a weird, wonky mess of a game. It's also pretty fun to play in a way that, I suspect, would be far less entertaining if it was presented in more conventional 2D or 3D animation.

First and foremost is just the incredible incongruity you get from seeing an actual flesh-and-blood human being walking around while acting like an adventure game protagonist -- there are so many genre conventions that we just take for granted that, in reality, are just kind of bizarre. It's like watching an alien pretend to be human, walking about a small town while picking up and pocketing various completely random objects, just because they seem vaguely interesting or might be useful in the future. Where are these found treasures kept? Don't you worry your pretty little head about that.

And then there's the accidental comedy of the totally-not-an-alient-in-a-human-suit stealing a screwdriver off of someone's front porch, going into their house, and interrogating them about their opinion on screwdrivers. It's incredible. Detective Insector E.T. Klepto, reporting for duty!

As you might guess from the title, Contradiction is a pretty boilerplate criminal investigation mystery game, where you spend the bulk of your time examining environemnts (that are only sometimes actual crime scenes) and interrogating potential susepcts and witnesses. The acting is generally very serviceable, as is the directing -- though in close-ups the actors tend to emote far too much, with a great many over-exaggerated facial expressions and gratuitous hand-movements. And if I can notice that, it'd probably be incredibly distracting for allistic players. Otherwise most scenes are shot in a fairly accessible, low-key, realtive realistic style.

Though it must be noted that Contradiction currently lacks any options for captions/subtitles, which... you'd think... would be an absolute necessity in an FMV game, and a top priority. Evidently not this time.

In terms of gameplay, there's not a lot of challenge here. The puzzles are seldom require much thought, and seldom diverge from the usual "Use X item in Location Y to access Z" format. And, quantity-wise, there really aren't that many puzzles or items to juggle, owing to the fact that every action you can take needed to be filmed. This simplicity is works both to the games advantage and disadvantage, I think. It keeps the game fairly accessible, but also rather mindless.

Where Contradiction really stumbles, though, is the narrative. And, as we all know, adventure games will live or die by their writing. The main issue here is that Contradiction is not content to be a mundane murder-mystery – no, it has philosophical ambitions.

Which is to say that the story rapidly degenerates into a stream nonsense about satanists and cults that brainwash people into slavery, who are then sold to politicians, in a cavalcade of escalating absurdity that constantly begs the question: WTF is happening here? And then when you get to the core ideological premise of the villains, it ulimately amounts to no more than, "What if morality was bad, actually."

Ripped straight from the pages of Ayn Rand. How fun.

And there are still more pervasive issues. For a game titles Contradiction, it sure doesn't do a great job of accounting for witnesses who make contradictory statements. EG one character will say he doesn't recognize a very specific hallucinogenic one moment, and then another talk about having ingested it before, and the game fails to present that discrepancy as contradictory.

Similarly, contradictions can only be explored within the narrative at the most immediate level: you can notice and follow-up on contradiction that ocur within one scene, but when the person your currently speaking to says something that contradicts the testimony of someone else, there's nothing you can say – the detective just ignores it.

Further, much like the (fantastic) Ace Attorney adventure games, Contradiction allows you to present the items (trinkets) you collect (steal) to the other characters, to see if they have anything to say on the subject. Only the detective will often just assume that they won't have anything to say, and refrain from asking any questions. Which, you'd think, is anathema to to job.

That incuriousity, mixed with the kleptomania, makes for a very accidentally-hilarous protagonist, who no matter what just cannot pull off a convincing perofrmance of "being a human." It's great, especially (or perhaps only) if you're fond of camp.

Doubly so in the scenes where you're forced to "call the chief" and report on the progress of your investigation. Each time you do so, the protagonist briefly summarizes everything he has learned and inevitably recieves the same advice in return: keep asking questions!

And maybe this would all be forgiveable if there was a fun mystery here to tease out, that players could focus on solving by piecing together clues and testimony even if the protagonist isn't as interesting. Only, unfortunately, the story doesn't really do anything but give you the runaround for several hours before the final suspect just spontaneously confesses after you point out a (minor) contradiction. That this leads directly to a big, conspicuous sequel hook makes it feel like you've only really played half of a game by the time the credits roll.

But the thing about this is, you know, that if a game can't be bothered to properly finish the first part of its story, why would we give a sequel a second chance? They've already taken our money once and failed to deliver, there's no reason to think they won't do so again.

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#517 out of 1000+)... it's time for Friday the 13th Killer Puzzle.


Confession time: I've never watched a Friday the 13th movie. Not even part of one. I have, in fact, yet to see any film in the so-called "slasher" genre. Not my thing. Why'd I pick up this game, then? Well, three reasons: first, it was recommended to me; second, it's due to be delisted from Steam by the end of the week, so if I'm ever to play it, it's either now or never; and perhaps most importantly – it's free.

Never understimate the appeal of a game that doesn't cost a dime.

Killer Puzzle is, fundamentally, a very simple sliding-tile puzzle game. Yeah, you read that correctly. You control Jason, the serial killer, as he goes about murdering teenagers (as one is wont to do) in various locales, both exotic and mundane. Each puzzle plays out on a small grid: Jason can slide in any direction until he hits something, and must collide with the teenagers in order to slay them. Fundamentally it's exactly what you'd expect to see from a sliding-tile puzzle game.

Fortunately, Killer Puzzle spices up the gameplay in a number of ways. Most immediately by way of customization: as you play, you'll unlock new weapons and costumes, and each weapon (of which there are many) will have several different animations, most of these animations are generic (EG bludgeoning, stabbling, smashing, etc.) but each also has at least one unique animation. The whole game is rendered in a very simplistic, cartoony style, and the over-the-top comical violence of these animations is generally pretty entertaining. Especially the longer animations that play out when you kill the final survivor, which spawns once all of the other teens in the level have been successfully dealt with. Unlike the other victims, the final survivor has a chance to, well, survive – and, presumably, flee – should you fail a brief QTE.

Beyond that, as you progress through the game the puzzles will gradually increase in complexity, with different terrain effects and AI behaviors you can manipulate. In general, I found the difficulty curve to be just right, and never really felt as though I were being forced to wade through excessive padding.

In an ideal world, I might be able to just shut up here and give Killer Puzzle an unequivocal recommendation. But, surely you've noticed, that ain't the world we live in. I suspect Killer Puzzle began as a mobile game, as there are a number of issues with the game that (presumably) would not exist in something developed primarily for the PC market. First and most apparent is the progression system, wherein you unlock new items by way of smashing open loot crates.

Then there are the microtransactions. Which can mostly be ignored, but you'll still have to deal with the occassional, annoying pop-up advertisement. Oof. But, in the grand scheme of things, these are merely minor annoyances.

More frustrating is the lack of support for a singular input device. You'll have to use a mouse alongside another device (either keyboard or gamepad) to play the game properly – if you want to be able to only play using a gamepad, or only a mouse, or (heavens forfend) only a keyboard – you're outta luck.

Final vertdict: it ain't bad. Killer Puzzle is definitely a better game than I expected it to be, even if it isn't really in my wheelhouse. I doubt I'll ever look twice at it after today, but I'm glad I took an hour or so to check it out. Unfortunately, likely due to expiring licenseing agreements, Killer Puzzle is set to be delisted from Steam next week (28. January 2023). That's a bit of a shame, I think. If you have the opportunity to grab a copy before then, there's no reason to hesitate. Killer Puzzle may not rank among the best games out there, but it's a solid addition to any library.

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#516 out of 1000+)... it's time for Psychonauts 2.


Released in 2005 on the original Xbox console, the first Psychonauts was a brilliantly imaginative game that no one played, stuck on a platform that no one owned. As such, despite critical accalim, it was a commercial failure -- one of many missteps that would plague Double Fine Productions in the years to follow. Fortunately, subsequent digital re-releases on Steam and the Xbox 360 introduced Psychonauts to a new, wider audience. And, over time, it matured into its status as a cult classic. It took a lot of time and even more love to reach the point where Double Fine would be willing and able to produce a sequel, and now that it's here I am absolutely delighted to proclaim that Psychonauts 2 is a absolutely worthy follow-up to the original.

If you haven't played the first game, you should do so immediately. Don't read any further -- it will do you no good. Likewise, if you have already played Psychonauts then you, too, need read no further: you already know what you should be doing now -- installing Psychonauts 2.

But if you're still with me, let's dive a bit into some of the specifics here. The triumphant return of a beloved cult classic it may be, but Psychonauts 2 is not a game without flaws.

First, know that Psychonauts 2 takes place immediate after the events of theVR-only game Psychonauts: Rhombus of Ruin. Fortunately only one thing of consequence seems to have happened there, so if you skipped the VR game, you'll be caught up on everything you missed within a few seconds. After he left the psychic summer camp at the end of the last game, our protagonist Raz sees his dreams come true as he is brought to the "prestigious" Psychonauts Headquarters... to work as an (unpaid) intern.

The lion's share of the game's narrative is about looking for a mole within the oganization, who is feeding information to a nebulously-defined terrorist organization at odds with our heroes. This investigation mostly involves talking to people and diving inside their brains in order to get them to unlock more areas to explore, often filled with more people to talk to and minds to dive in. It's the same basic narrative structure as the first game, and it mostly works well. The mental worlds you explore are brilliantly imaginative, full of vigrant colors, bizarre architecture, and fun (if not always terribly inventive) platforming possibilities. The combat and traversal mechanics are deeply satsifying, feeling closer to the near-perfect game feel of a modern Mario game than the clunky, somewhat finnicky mechanics of the first Psychonauts, from so very long ago.

Despite all of this, however, Psychonauts falls short of its predecessor in a few key areas. First and perhaps most importantly, the scope and scale of the game is weirdly small. Most environments are tiny and restrictive -- little more than rooms -- and not much bigger than what the first game managed more than a decade ago. These rooms are largely connected to each other by animated sequences, which are often a joy to behold (there's some really next-level animation going on here), but are omitted from those levels when replaying them via the Collective Unconsciousness. Replaying levels without these sequences breakes the illusion, revealing just how limited and restrictive the game design is, as you have very little space to explore, and can only travel to other parts of the level via teleportation. It quickly comes apparent that beyond the resolution, postprocessing effects and lighting, there's nothing here that couldn't have been done two decades ago on the original Xbox. One can only wonder how much more impressive Psychonauts 2 would be with more modern-feeling, broader, more expansive levels.

The second significant issue lies with a lack of thematic synergy (I am so sorry for using that expression) between the internal mental worlds of the characters and their personalities in the "real world." In the first game, each mental world was designed to be representative of the owner's mind-set. Their mental worlds were literal manifestations of how they viewed the world. In Psychnoauts 2, however, there's a disconnec -- the theming of the mental worlds is more abstract and divorced from the characters dreaming them up. It very much seems as though Double Fine first came up with ideas for cool mental worlds to explore, and then just assigned them to the various characters at random. Exploring these mental worlds, therefore, offers little insight into the characters or their perspectives. This becomes an increasingly annoying problem as the game proceeds, and the disconnect heightens. By the time you get to the final mental world, you're not even playing the game properly, but are rather set on a mostly on-rails theme park ride that carries you from one exposition dump to the other. Where the original game trusted players to be able to deduce certain things about its characters from the state of their mental world, the sequel literally straps the player in place so that they can be told these things directly. It's a clunky, clumsy approach that leaves the narrative feeling a bit haphazard and (especially near the end) unfortunately rushed.

And because of this hamhanded exposition, Psychonauts 2's main villain winds up feeling sadly underdeveloped, and lacking in substance, despite grappling with a fair number of potentially (very) interesting themes.

And then there are some weird design issues that seem evocative of a troubled development. Early on in the game, you're introduced to a generally fun (and necessary) mechanic where you can adjust a person's mental connections to subtly change how they think. In other words, it's a mechanic that allows you to (theoretically) help people by granting them new perspectives. In a game that purports to be about mental illness, you'd think this kind of soft-touch mental medicine would be crucial to the ultimate resolution of the story, or at least factor into the plot in some way going forward, but instead these mechanics disappear entirely from the game shortly after they're introduced in the tutorial, never to return.

Instead, Raz winds up spending most of the game solving people's various mental problems with plain, old-fashioned violence. It's a pretty conspicuous missed opportunity.

But these flaws, significant though they may be, pale in comparison to the sheer humor and delight and joy imbued in nearly every moment with the game. Psychonauts 2 is a towering achievement, warts and all. A genuinely great game, make no mistake, regardless of how hard it might be to not notice how much better it could have been -- how much better it might be in another, better timeline. But, at the end of the day, the world is as the world is, and we should count ourselves lucky to see Psychonauts 2 exist at all. It is is an astonishingly magnificent experience, full of humor and charm and optimism and eccentricities that make every moment -- every single moment -- spent playing an absolute delight.

This is the kind of game where you can't help but smile, constantly, from beginning to end. It easily ranks among the best titles in the genre, and is certainly the best 3D platformer you can currently play on Steam, and I cannot wait to see just how much further the Psychnoauts series might be able to go in the future.

Here's just hoping we don't have to wait another generation or three to see Psychonauts 3.

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#515 out of 1000+)... it's time for Carto.


First impressions? Carto is an absolutely gorgeous, delightfully comfy game and I love it death.

Carto is one of those games that doesn't sound too interesting when you describe it, but when its in your hands, you can't help but smile at how charmingly everything fits together. One of those special, rare games that manages to mine greatness out of deceptively simple systems and mechanics. Put simply, Carto is built around a very simple puzzle gimmick. For fans of classic RPGs, it's a gimmick not dissimilar to Dark Cloud's city building mechanic: the world is in disarray, and it is up to you restore the land (and perhaps make a few improvement) but arranging landscape tiles on a map grid. Each tile possess different terrain that can potentially affect adjacent tiles, and how you shape the landscape -- and how you place landmarks in relation to each other -- has a drastic and immediate affect on the world and the people who live in it. Sometimes you'll be rearranging the world simply to find your way through it, other times -- well, most of the time -- you'll be modifying the world to suit the interests of NPCs. In thanks they will often reward you with additional map tiles, which you will then use to further manipulate the landscape, creating increasingly complex continental layouts as you juggle the desires of more and more people making more and more demands of your cartographic contortions.

Story-wise, Carto is fundamentally a puzzle game first and foremost, and an adventure game only a distant second. The premise is fairly loose, and though there are characters and dialog and plot, they mostly serve only as vehicles to direct you from one problem to solve to the next. You play as some kind of deity -- or at least the mischievous child of one -- on an adventure to restore the world to its correct form in the wake of an accidental almost-apocalypse. The people you meet typically have little to say that lamenting whatever problem they have with the world when you meet, and later celebrating the serendipity of your solution. Occasionally you'll get a bit more characterization or world-building -- especially from the more prominent NPCs that shuttle you from one region (or chapter) of the world to the next -- but, while flavorful, the story is only really an excuse. It works just as well as it could, maintaining a laid-back atmosphere that meshes well with the lighthearted, casual nature of the puzzles that will occupy most of your time and focus.

And -- though I speak now as someone who was once a very strange child who spent an inordinate amount of time playing with globes and drawing countless maps (based both on reality and imagination) on incalculable sheets of paper -- I find this whole experience -- from concept to execution -- utterly delightful. The only complaint I can think to offer is simply that I want more! And, I must admit, I'm not sure this is an appetite that could ever fully be satiated. But, if nothing else, I would greatly appreciate something like a sandbox mode w/ randomized quests and/or something like a "free build" mode. Carto's core campaign is certainly engaging and surprisingly charming, but it's dreadfully brief and over far too soon. And, tragically, far too linear. A second playthrough, sadly, will resemble the first far too closely.

Last but also least: there's the issue of the bugs. Which were... well, not as infrequent as I would've hoped. Most annoying are the recurring issues with input devices -- my gamepad would randomly stop working, suddenly, and when the gamepad disconnects there's nothing to be done as the game refuses to recognize a mouse. The only solution is to use the keyboard to manually exit and do a forced shut-down via the Windows Task Manager. That this occurred on more than just one or two occasions proved an unfortunate blight on an otherwise thoroughly delightful game.


But, insofar as these things go, these issues are, I think, very easy to forgive.

The ultimate appeal of Carto boils down to a single question: do you love maps and cartography? If not, Carto will very likely bore you to tears. But if not, if you're at all like myself and have spent far more time than you'd ever care to admit scribbling out your own maps by pen or pencil for as long as you can remember -- well, then, in that case I can all but promise that you will discover in Carto a new (if brief) obsession.

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a review for every game in my Steam library (#514 out of 1000+)... it's time for Batman: The Telltale Series.


Fully half of the main menu is occupied with an advertisement for DLC. And, look, listen: if you really want me to loathe a game, this is all you really have to do. Nice and easy, right? Just plaster a bunch of giant ads all over something I've already bought. Yeesh.

But, right. The game. That's what I'm supposed to be talking about, right? And, well... it's a Telltale Batman game. Everything you need to know is kind of contained right there within those two words, yeah? The most interesting thing going on here is that the game's equally interested in Bruce Wayne as the Bat, which allows for slightly more nuanced storytelling than you'd usually get from the Caped Crusader.

As Batman, beat up desperate poor people; as Bruce, give a homeless man a few coins. Doing good!

Your time will be pretty evenly split between Batman and Bruce Wayne, and at certain points you even have to option of choosing which 'character' you want to send off into the next scene. This juxtaposition makes one thing remarkably clear: Bruce Wayne is infinitely more engaging than the bat. As Batman, you punch things and glower; as Bruce, you have opportunities to charm, persuade, investigate and deflect. When the opportunity arises, it's always more interesting to remove the cowl.

The big flaw of Telltale's episodic release structure is that decisions made in one,episode cannot have much impact on subsequent episodes. It's also difficult to really tease out much character development or nuance when each episode is so short and needs to feel unique to the others. This forcibly reduces how compelling the story can be, because every plot thread feels a bit undercooked. That said, there are enough good ideas baked into the narrative to give the story some nice momentum and keep players engaged. Which is especially important as this game offers yet another take on the very-overdone Batman origin story.

Of particular note is that this game tries to examine the origins of Bruce's wealth. Rich people do not earn their billions by being decent, after all. It's a bit unfortunate that the game doesn't quite have the gumption to explore this premise as much as it could--Gotham City is very much a stand-in for New York City, and the old money in NYC was mostly derived from a very particular and exceptionally abominable industry. Instead, the Wayne fortune is attributed, deductively, to generic "crimes." Which I suppose is a hair better than the usual vague hand-waving of the Wayne's being "industrialists," but not by much.

Ultimately, though, it's a pretty fun, if casual, popcorn game. You'll probably forget about all of the story details a few weeks after finishing the game (I sure did), but while playing you'll never be bored.