Recent reviews by lamuella

A quiet, thoughtful meditation, wrapped up in a cyberpunk delivery game. While the game mechanics aren't the most complex, the character in this game shines like a beacon. Rania and Camus and Control and the others have a level of depth and humanity lacking from a lot of games by higher budget studios. It's a short story of a game rather than a novel (all the events take place in a single night) and as such the plot is rather linear, but sometimes that's what you need. A moving, exceptional experience to let wash over you.

A delightful, compelling building game. This provides a fresh take on the Harvest Moon / Stardew Valley genre by focusing on building instead of farming (although you can still farm) and having a much stronger mission-related central story.

My Time At Portia is a game where you succeed not by being the richest or the strongest but by being the most useful to people. You develop friendships, maybe even find love, and build more and more elaborate things along the way. And when you're not building you're mining, farming, fighting, foraging and f- and developing friendships (romantic and otherwise) with a town of endearing characters.

The setting (a cosy postapocalyptic world rebuilding itself after a catastrophe) is a delight, and the graphic style can't be faulted. Combat is simple but not unenjoyable, and there are a few rtfully done puzzle sections to complement the major gather-and-build gameplay dynamic.

I've spent 93 hours in this game and I wish there had been 93 hours more story to follow after this. Highly recommended.

Very enjoyable, if slightly short, game. Dreadful puns, lots of fun parodies, and game mechanics that made you identify with and care for your little potato workers. Great for killing a few hours making weapons.

Delightful, funny, adventurous action RPG. Cute and fun to play.

Gentle humour backs up a decently put together comedic JRPG. One of the better examples of the genre.

This is, from what I've played of it so far, a cute and infinitely extensible user driven platformer.

However, I hate Episode IV of the story missions so much I may never actually play it again. It combines my least favourite things in a mission (stealth, instant failure, no waypoints) in a form that has me swearing at pixellated ninjas.

THe rest of the game is wonderful, but I hate that mission so so so so much.

The good news is that everything that worked with the previous title in the series works with this game. The combat is fun, the explorable mazey landscapes are interesting, the world is beautiful and the overall quality of the game is very high. New added features like the side missions mean you can always find something to do and a new weapon to craft.

The bad news is that everything that didn't quite work about the previous title doesn't quite work with this game. The disjoint between play style and storytelling is still there. This Lara is harder and more seasoned, but the story scenes still don't portray the cold blooded murderhobo you become during play. Narrative disconnect also comes at points where the story is calling for urgency but the gameplay rewards going back and exploring. That's more of an overall fault of the genre than of this game in particular though.

All in all, a fun game and a compelling story. The fact that the two elements don't match perfectly is regrettable but can be ignored.

Multiple playthroughs later, this is still a fun, silly masterpiece of a sandbox game. The central story is compelling enough, the city, while a little dull, is a great playground of your super-powers, and they've pitched the comedy just right.

It's not a great leap forward from Saints Row The Third, but it's a huge amount of fun.

it's way too early to post an in-depth review of this, but I seem to have lucked out and missed out on a lot of the problems people have been having. Game runs great on a fairly old and clunky computer, and thus far the experience is beautiful and the gameplay emergent. Having to repair the ship before it got moving was a good way of making sure I didn't skip or miss the planetside part of this game, and that's been the miost fun so far: wandering around beautiful landscapes with new strangeness all around me.

I've only just met the members of Daft Punk (sorry, can't think of them any other way) so I'm sure the rest of the game is going to open up soon, but thus far I've had a hassle free few hours of shooting plutonium crystals and selling beads to aliens. Even at this point I get a feeling of the scope of this game. There's so much around me, so many places I could just choose to go, and a thankful lack of the usual "don't screw up or you'll die horribly" hard edge that you often find in crafting/survival games.

It's Frontier in a world that lets you get out of the ship. It's billions of worlds at my fingertips. It's No man's Sky.

EDIT: many more hours in now. I can see why this game isn't for everyone, but it's definitely for me. THe emergent story elements are just the right combination of strange and tantalising. THe scattered puzzles and language elements help to stop this being just "land here, mine for things, take off". However it's decidedly not an action game. It's slow paced, rewarding exploration and contemplation more than rushing. It may not be for you. Watch a few videos of actual gameplay (not trailers) and see if you find something that intrigues you. If you do, and you have the cash, you'll get a lot out of it. If you don't, don't think of it as a rip-off. It just might not be the game for you.

Sincerely the best RPG I've ever played. So much to do, such a depth and density of content. Combat is a little simple but the sheer amount of stuff and skills and places means it's almost impossible to get bored in this game. The central story is compelling, but what will keep you coming back is the massive branching range of sidequests, the politics of the different areas, and just the sheer *fun* of running around in this massive, beautiful country.

Everyone already knows how good a game this is. You don't need me to tell you.