Recent reviews by Pup

Windward Horizon is the long-awaited follow-up to 2015's Windward, which itself drew inspiration from the classic Sid Meier's Pirates!

You begin as a new captain in a small sloop, dropped into a procedurally generated world where you're free to chart your own path. You can choose to trade goods or craft them into more valuable products. A variety of missions are available, such as dealing with pirates or troublesome traders. Mini-games allow you to fish, dive for underwater treasure, or search for hidden chests on land. You can even create and help grow your own provinces and towns. Along the way, you'll encounter a diverse cast of NPCs who offer multi-part quests and special rewards. All the while, you'll build your wealth, improve your ship, and upgrade to larger, more role-oriented vessels.

The items you can add to your ship and talents you choose play a significant role in defining your preferred playing style, with item and crew skill synergies that support classic tank, damage, and healer roles, as well as various hybrid builds. There are also different factions you can join, each providing buffs to further assist your chosen playstyle. Eventually, you'll want to group up with other players for tougher co-op missions, which can be done on hosted servers or by inviting friends to your own locally hosted game.

For new players, there's much to discover, and the initial experience might seem confusing. However, the game possesses a lot of hidden depth that becomes apparent as you delve deeper and progress to larger ships with more customization options. Experienced Windward players will find many familiar elements, alongside numerous new mechanics that keep the experience fresh and engaging.

Insane that this didn't feature even as a nomination in any of the yearly game award shows. Amazing soundtrack that adds so much to the game, and also great to listen to while working/studying.

In my review for the base game I put 'Hopefully we will see a DLC with some more challenging puzzles in them', and that is exactly what we have got.

Harder puzzles, amazing environments, plenty of easter eggs, more great music & voice acting, more evolution of the story and insight to previous events.

Having just completed it, I already want more!

Can be frustrating and infuriating at times, but is a great little time waster for the Steam Deck.

Great little puzzle game. Lovely art style with great audio to match. Is quite short though, probably about 3-4 hours to get to get to the ending, then another hour or so to 100% the achievements. The puzzles aren't particularly taxing, the game does a good job at leading you along the right path to take without being too obvious about it. Yes, I nominated this game in the Steam Awards :)

Had been waiting a long time in anticipation of this game, after the first game and its DLC being one of my favourite games, and it has not disappointed. The game looks and plays great. It has amazing, beautiful, varied landscapes, great audio with lots of voice acting throughout. Performance was good for me (RTX3080 / 1440p - 70-80fps), and they managed to sort the vast majority of the Unreal Engine stuttering that I experienced in the demo, by adding a shader caching step on first startup (which does make the intro run at 1-2fps the first time you launch the game, but it's worth it).

Having just completed this to 100%, I would say that the puzzles are slightly easier than those of TTP1 (and certainly compared to the Road to Gehenna DLC), plus this game provides a mechanic to skip some if you find yourself stuck. They have added a few new items/mechanics (and removed one that perhaps frustrated some from the first game) to freshen the puzzle designs, which certainly allows for more variety. Hopefully we will see a DLC with some more challenging puzzles in them.

The story element comes more to the fore too, with this game continuing on from the revelations made in the first game. You don't have to interact with all of it though, and there are options to skip dialog if you just want to crack on with the puzzles, but what makes The Talos Principle more than just a puzzle game is the thought provoking themes that drive the narrative of both games, and I really enjoyed learning more about this world and the people in it.

Thoroughly recommended, great job Croteam! Really great value, considering the price of this compared to other games of today. Hopefully the success of this one leads to more in this series in future.

Fun and chill puzzle game, and they keep adding new content for free so gets a recommend for that.

My only criticism about this puzzle style is that when they get harder they do tend to just get a bit trial and error, keep trying various things until something works, but more often than not you can use some intuition to make good choices around that.

Plays like Rocket League on huge crazy golf courses, lots of fun! Cars can be upgraded using a selection of Power Cores which affect gameplay in various ways, which will suit some holes more than others. No micro-transactions either, there is a seasonal battle-pass like system that is unlocked for everyone where you can unlock various cosmetic items, as well as an in-game shop using currency you earn from playing.

Game is currently in early access, and the devs have been very active in their discord, taking on feedback and looking into bug reports as well as adding new holes and items into the game.

Perfect game to pick up and play when you have a few spare minutes, as each game of 3 holes generally lasts around 6-10 minutes.

Great follow on from the original game. Keeps many of the same elements from before in terms of exploration and base building, with similar but slight variations on the creatures you encounter and the tools you can find, plus a bunch of new additions suited to this new colder environment. This one has more of a consistent story narrative than the first game in a slightly smaller game world, which for me was no bad thing, as much as I enjoyed exploring everything in the first game. It does have a few nods back to the original although I don't think you need to have played that to enjoy this, but I would still recommend doing so.

What I wished for in a Flight Sim for years in terms of visuals, and it's the whole world bundled in from the start! It may not yet have had the time to evolve its aero fidelity like xplane has, or the super detailed aircraft, it is certainly improving all the time with free content updates. Plus there are plenty of 3rd parties adding in new scenery and more functional aircraft if that's your thing.

Microsoft has attempted to make a Flight Sim platform which can be enjoyed by casual players and enthusiast simmers and I think they have succeeded on that front with the options available in the base game, with more on the horizon.