Recent reviews by Fourvel

Riven has been one of my favorite games for a very long time, but I was skeptical about this remake after playing the last Myst remake a bit in VR, and also Firmament which was supposed to be a VR-first game and yet the VR version somehow felt less interactive than the 2D version.

So I'm pleasantly surprised to be enjoying Riven in VR so much. Graphics look great in VR. There are some bugs with the shadows, but if I turn them to low it's better. But wow, being in this world that I love has never felt better. Exploring is so much fun. And the lever and buttons and switches all feel great to grab and pull and twist.

But the best part? I was really feeling the nostalgia as I pushed a button I remembered. But then something different happened and... wait, I don't remember this area. Oh wow! There's new stuff! And this new stuff is really cool! I hadn't read up on the development, so I had no idea they added new elements and puzzles to the game. So far all the new stuff has fit really well, and it has all been welcome additions. And now I can finally try and redeem the 10 year old me that couldn't figure out the puzzles without looking up the answers by beating these new puzzles without googling anything. I hope.

This game is great so far! My wife and I have a particular genre that doesn't have many options: couch co-op rouge-likes. Our favorite is probably Children of Morta. Nine Parchments is a lot of fun, but it's not a rouge-like so it gets a little repetitive. Rotwood hits our niche perfectly. Combat is fun, and it doesn't bog the flow down with too much story, just enough to keep things interesting. The art is great too. We're 9 hours in and just unlocked the 4th map. We've gotten our butts kicked plenty of times, and we appreciate the challenge.

Short, but I really enjoyed the art and the atmosphere.

This is my favorite VR game. I'm not a boxer, and I hate the gym. But this is an amazing workout. I've become so much stronger, and greatly increased my stamina, just from this game.

What I did not expect was how much motivation you get from having an opponent. They don't naturally have much personality. They have a poster and a name, and that's pretty much it. But I end up creating stories about our fights in my head, and now I have strong opinions about all of them. I love hating Money Maker. He's such a tough bastard.

I have very slowly worked my way up to 12 round matches against Money Maker on a custom difficulty that's between Endurance and Outclassed. Yes, I'm bragging, but that's because I've worked so hard to get there. I've poured so much literal sweat into it, and I'm proud. That's what this game is so good at. It's quite a sense of accomplishment when you succeed, especially after failing a few times.

What an amazing experience. There is so much that could be said about Hellblade. The visuals are amazing. Everything about the sound design is superb, from the voice actors to the mixing to the sound effects. While the puzzles and the combat are simple, they fit so well into the story that I didn't find myself wanting anything more. Making the puzzles more difficult would have ruined the flow of the story.

The story also does a good job of not hitting you over the head. It's comprehensible, but it's not shoved in your face when one character represents something else, for example. It's obscure enough to be engaging.

I also respect Ninja Theory's treatment of mental illness. It is not represented as a super power, but it is also not entirely negative. Sometimes it's horrifying, but other times it's helpful. And Ninja Theory gets a bunch of points for being able to create all this without a publisher. I hope others appreciate it as much as I have.

Picked up The Vanishing of Ethan Carter for real cheap on Steam. Wow, what a great game. It's short, but it doesn't want to be any longer. The story is great, and slowly revealed at a perfect pace. And it's bleeding beautiful to boot.

I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll be kind of cryptic. But I really like the crime scene gameplay mechanic. It really makes you feel like you're helping solve it, instead of just wandering around until you find all the designated clues like you do Arkham, for example.

Highly recommended if you like games like Dear Eshter or SOMA.

Nominated this for the 'Most Child Endangerment' Steam Award. One of my favorite games, so I sure hope it wins!

I backed on Kickstarter, and I couldn't be happier with the end product. It's longer than I expected, and just as deep a world as Myst. The game is beautiful, and the puzzles are logical and engaging.

The load times can be a little rough, and you do have do to a bit of back tracking, but the scenery is pretty enough where I didn't mind.

I highly recommend this game, especially to any fans of Myst.

Neon Drive is a rhythm game with a great retro aesthetic. The difficulty is also very reminiscent of the games from my childhood, because there used to be only one type of challenge: pattern memorization. You play it again and again until the pattern starts to stick in your head, and your subconscious can start pressing the buttons faster than you can processes the visual information. It feels difficult because I takes a comparatively long time for a pattern to sink into most people's brains, but finally completing a level is all the more rewarding for it.

Though there's a design choice to some levels in these types of games that I hate, which is the long, tedious first half of a level. It doesn't require much memorization and learning, as it's pretty much just the same thing over and over again. But it does require me to execute it perfectly every time, otherwise I die. So once I finally get past it and reach the more mentally stimulating second half of the level that requires learning complex patterns, my brain gets distracted and I then die repeatedly on the tedious portion. This happens over and over, making the learning of the interesting second half take forever as I slowly memorize piece by piece after repeated early failures. And then parts I thought I had down give me trouble, and by that time I've played the level 193 times.

I'm enjoying the nostalgia despite all the expletives I've hurled at the screen. But I'm glad that this isn't the only type of difficulty in games any more. Learning a skill, for example the skill it takes to play a game like Rocket League, is much more fun, in my opinion, if slightly less rewarding. It makes the journey the entertaining part of the game, instead of just the end goal of completion. But I'm having nice addictive fun all the same.

I've spent nearly 70 hours with the game now, and I'm still addicted. I remember thinking these exact words to myself "I wish there was a game like Harvest Moon on the PC". But instead of receiving a crappy rip off with micro transactions and missing features from an evil genie that would force someone to say 'be careful what you wish for', Stardew Valley is BETTER than what I wished for.

I love the Harvest Moon games I've played, but this tops them all. I recommend anyone who enjoys the genre to try it out. No need to wait for a sale, it's that good.