Recent reviews by VIGIL

SPRAWL is a very satisfying retro FPS. The campaign is short but sweet, with a standard variety of weaponry. The horde mode offers the challenge that you might feel is missing.

Gunplay is solid. Movement is fun without overwhelming you with options. Slowmo can be activated at any point and its use is baked into the design well.

Overall, it's great game to pop heads to.

Mods are responsible for some of the greatest advancements in PC gaming. Take Two's cease and desist to try to end modding is a slap in the face to so much of what we as gamers take for granted. It's an insult to the community, to fellow developers, and to the platform itself.

I love Grand Theft Auto, but to continue supporting this in the face of such actions would be hypocritical. Bullying modders is a very, very wrong thing to do.

Don't give your money to a publisher who is trying to fundamentally undermine gaming. Don't buy Grand Theft Auto V.

As I play more and more games increasingly I find myself trying to get at the heart of why I like gaming in the first place. A great story is entertaining and good art direction can really immerse me in a world, but I play games for the mechanics.

For years I've wondered if there were a certain combination of properties that would make an ideal game for me. Difficult, but fair. Enough novelty, but not bloated. Rewarding a good mixture of both strategy and physical skill. Exactly what each category means is something that I probably couldn't articulate without writing a huge amount, but I will say that Furi may be the closest I've ever experienced to that ideal.

I've nominated Furi for the Steam Award "You Could Bounce a Quarter Off These Thumbs" for a reason. It's not an easy game. You, much like The Stranger, will grow into the fights as you master this game. You'll become one with your controller, and you'll become a better gamer for it. The challenge is so worth it, and while I can't play this game all the time because of how exhausting it makes me feel, the times that I do play it feel like the culmination of what my gaming life has led up to.

I absolutely adore the art direction, and synthwave is my favorite genre of music. Carpenter Brut is probably my favorite current musician. But honestly, that's all incidental - the game plays extremely well and you deserve to experience what it has to offer.

I'm the kind of player who comes back every now and then when all the DLC hits a big sale, picks it up, plays for awhile with friends, and then lets it sit while new content comes out.

However, with the latest microtransaction insults by Overkill, I will never be returning to Payday 2 or supporting any products by Overkill, Starbreeze, or 505 Games.

In the face of the awesome community support for the Crimefest update, Overkill pretty much delivered the worst possible insult they could have reasonably done. A straight slap in the face of the fans who've put so much into the game that they loved.

Part of me hopes that this has all been a joke gone haywire, that I'll check it out in a few weeks and see that it was some sort of elaborate prank... but no, people have already spent money on this, and it's been in planning for awhile.

Payday 2 in my eyes has been self-destructing for quite awhile now, with increasingly blatant cash grabs, and this is the threshold that completely seals the deal for me.

Overkill has betrayed its players.

La-Mulana is an exploration based sidescroller platforming Metroidvania that was the inspiration for one of my favorite games, Spelunky, so I knew I had to give it a play.

After a fairly slow start I found the game to be pretty engaging. The controls are very strange, with movement being very jerky and not my usual thing, but I got used to it and was enjoying it despite. I was happily wandering the ruins, solving puzzles, and slaying monsters.

I fought a boss while riding through caves on a cart, Ellmac, which was pretty difficult and frustrating but I figure that was my fault for doing it (probably) so early with such poor gear, so it gets a pass. I die after him though in the new area so I figure I'll come back later.

So far the game was shaping up to be better than I expected! I was wondering where I should go next, so I figured I'd head to the Temple of Moonlight. I'd found it before but always died early inside it, so I was putting it off.

In I go and I get to dungeoneering. Can't attack while inside? Got it. New items, puzzles, and all that jazz... great! But where's the save point? I was very close to death when I finally found it. Phew!

Now how do I get out of this place? I spend maybe an hour or so wandering the areas I'd already been, finding a secret weapon, but can't for the life of me figure out how to escape. I love playing games blind, so I leave the game for a bit to ruminate on the area and see if I can think of something I missed.

When I come back, I explore everything one last time, smacking all the walls and trying my best to find anything I missed. Eventually I break, and I have to look up what the deal is. It shouldn't be so hard to leave the area - after all, I have the map, so I know where all the rooms are...

I'm permanently stuck in the Temple of Moonlight because I didn't pick up the Holy Grail earlier. Apparently there are several locations in the game where this can happen. In a game about exploration, you can get permanently stuck for apparently exploring in the wrong order. The game doesn't indicate that one area should be explored before another, or that you have to have this item before you should continue on. The item is hidden too, a puzzle that I had seen but was unable to solve and put off until later.

How is this acceptable design? I was enjoying the game despite the other flaws, but that crosses a line. Maybe it's a fundamental difference in the way Japanese and Westerners design and enjoy their games, but I don't have the time or want to be forced to restart a long-winded game due to game breaking scenarios that are beyond my control.

If you are new to La-Mulana, get the Holy Grail before you explore anywhere, or your game might just end early... and you'll be left very wanting.

FTL is a realtime strategy simulator where you are the captain of a spaceship fleeing an advancing rebel fleet. With simplistic graphics and incredibly deep gameplay, you scour the galaxy on your flight, upgrading your ship so that you can better deal with the threats ahead.

With 18 different ships to choose from, this pseudorandomly generated roguelike-like is one of my favorite games. I've sunk hours and hours into this, tweaking my strategy and carefully figuring out the best ways to deal with encounters. The pausing mechanic is wondrous.

Having beaten the game on Hard with each ship, I can with confidence say that if you're at all a fan of strategy and sci-fi themes, you will come to love FTL if you give it a chance.

Beat to death countless Miami gangsters in this over the top, top-down, downright action packed game.

Intense.
Brutal.
Fast-paced.
Surprisingly deep mechanics.

These are the main attributes of Hotline Miami. Skeptical as I was at first glance, this game ended up being a quick favorite as I dived further down into the maddening ocean of blood that this is.

It's got a radical soundtrack, to boot!

FORCED is, in my opinion, a masterful execution of skill-based action mechanics.

In ways I feel like it's a natural progression on the Gauntlet sort of hack-and-slash genre, combined with some MOBA/aRPG role elements into a highly skillful experience. The mark system encourages good team strategy and the ability to spec for each mission individually allows you to roll pretty strongly different combos to meet the needs of the levels.

My friend and I stayed up all night for a night and fully completed the game, every moment intense and completely capturing us.

FORCED deserves far more accolade. If fun, strong, and rewarding game mechanics come first in your book like they do for me, this game is right up your alley. It is the alley. It is the quintessential alley! Get it!

How much I liked The Walking Dead (game) was kind of out of left field for me, but its narrative style drew me in like a walker to sirens. The Walking Dead: Season 2 did not disappoint me at all.

The choices in this game are... brutal, to say the least. It's hard to describe the impact of the story without spoiling it. If you liked The Walking Dead you'll absolutely love the sequel!

Ikaruga is such a love/hate affair with me. The game is absurdly punishingly difficult but very satisfying. The polarity swapping mechanic really makes the game sort of in a league of its own when it comes to bullet hells.

Double play, implemented on Steam, is really what makes this shine I feel. It allows you to control both of your ships at once using the two different sticks on your gamepad. It'll fry your brain. It'll put your ego on the chopping block as you struggle to handle even basic encounters...

...but when it starts to click, man is it impressive to knock out levels controlling both ships without dying. If you are a fan of a challenge and yearn for the days of Gradius and the like, give this one a go!