Recent reviews by Skye

This game is quite the trip. As most have said, this is best played blind.

I wish I could say much without spoiling it but "Psychological Horror" is the first tag in the game (though one I feel is slightly misused.) Also chances are by this point you already know that is is only a cutesy visual novel on the surface by reputation alone.

Here's my take:

This game starts off as a cutesy visual novel of the most cliched possible variety. The characters are little more than cookie-cutter archetypes who so obviously stumble over each other for the protagonist's affections that it's almost insulting. For those of you who enjoy the harem-comedy guilty pleasure of visual novels, the first part is actually pretty enjoyable in a saccharine way. However, that's where it stops and it suberts your expectations a few ways.

First, it makes it seem like the "psychological horror" elements have to do with the fact that each of the girls has a major personal issue. Sayori battles depression and suicicidal tendencies, Natsuki is heavily implied to be from an abusive family, and Yuri has problems with cutting stemming from heavy personal image issues. This is only the beginning. There's a bigger reason behind these things and the player is strung along trying to find it out.

This is the part of the game behind why I enjoyed DDLC so much but it's a HUGE spoiler even moreso than the rest of what I've already talked about so don't read this part if you don't want it to be ruined. This is my full thoughts AFTER playing the game.

The game takes a "haunted game" creepypasta approach to how it tells the story. As you play, the game's files will change, add/delete things, and distort randomly depending on how you played the "normal" part of the game up to and including binary, text-image files, and base64 codes hidden in several files. This serves to give a slight ARG bent to the games and is a huge level of subtle effort that people not thinking to look for it will miss it entirely.

The game also does the classic "Haunted game" cliche of digging into your computer, breaking the fourth wall and addressing you by your computer's User ID to address the player by name rather than the character but DDLC manages to do it in a way that makes you buy into it and I always appreciate something that can take something that's normally tired and cliche and make it work!

The actual experience was an emotional rollercoaster. If you're not as easily engaged in stuff as I am you might not feel as strongly about certain things but I'm the type who can get emotionally invested in a story and its characters easier than most- moreso when I feel like I'm being addressed directly. (One of the reasons I do enjoy the VN genre in the first place.) I felt warm and fuzzy from all the cutesy cliched attention, concern over the girls' problems and deteriorating state, anger at Monika for playing with their coding to make them that way, and strangely enough a bit of tired acceptance at her trapping the player and her in their own little world with the comfort that all the crazy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was finally over. I played this at 3AM and by the time the mess was all said and done and I got to Monika's end I felt relieved that I had a bit of rest. I sat there just watching the screen for a bit and listening to the ambient sounds to relax myself. I was still upset at her for what she did but at the same time I felt sorry for her- like if she was just a romance option like the others none of this would have happened and we could have just had our nice happy save files.

I didn't wind up feeling like I needed to get to the true ending but I seriously enjoyed what I experienced for the rest of the game.

I don't think I've ever played a game more irreverent and wacky in its humor and design while also keeping to one of the most accurate and precise physics engines I've seen in a while.

Worms Reloaded is actually an updated rerelease of Worms 2: Armageddon (Do not confuse this with Worms: Armageddon. They're actually two totally different games) released in 2009 and while it's one of the older titles in the Worms franchise, it is definintely the one with the most features, gameplay modes, options, and overall fun out of the games I've played.

Up to four teams each control a squad of four worms with customizable names, voices, and hats (in fact the Steam version has TF2-themed hats just for this occasion) and an arsenal of weapons ranging from rocket launchers, grenades, flamethrowers, and air strikes to ninja ropes, teleporters, and magnets to a variety of exploding wildlife and grandmas to the mighty meteorific field-wide death of Armageddon. These worms will use said weapons to blow the living hell out of each other in a manner befitting old-school Looney Toons designed by Michael Bay. Each worm only has a finite amount of time to make a move, inch across the battlefield, use whatever weapon or item they wish and end their turn. A surprsing amount of things can get done during this time, but moves must be planned very carefully as just about any situation can be used against you somehow if your opponent is creative enough.

The controls on the weapons are all fairly simplistic but at the same time surprisingly complicated. The physics engine is very in depth taking into account, angle, power put behind the shot or throw, wind power and direction, and the presence of any obstacles. The precision in which things can be done is fairly impressive and a competent player can do things that might not even seem possible. It is worthy to note while keyboard controls are present, a controller is generally recommended for this game due to how strange buttons are mapped originally, but this can be changed. Gravity effects everything BUT the terrain you're standing on. The randomly generated maps and backgrounds will stay put no matter how many pieces are blown apart until you're either sitting in a crater, traverssing tunnels, or recreating Bastion. However, even a remaining pixel can be the difference between a hit or a miss in some cases so keeping track of what was destroyed how can sometimes work to your advantage but freak accidents can always happen.

One thing that's consistent throughout any worms game, especially in multiplayer, is that no matter how good one side is compared to the other, random chain reactions and other assorted problems can show up as a result of anything happening. A grenade could be thrown and throw an enemy worm into a mine, which detonates a nearby gas canister that lights an area on fire that eats through the ground and frees up a hole for someone else to fall into- right onto a health crate that fell down previously. But by no means is this a luck-based game. Freak happenings aside, the mechanics, complex physics, and sheer creativity allowed in the vast arsenal of weapons and tools requires quick reflexes, careful planning, and a good knowledge of how the game works and mastering these can take quite a bit of practice.

While this game is best played with friends, the single-player campaign is long and full of missions ranging from puzzles to challenges, to simply difficult missions and the AI at later levels is surprsingly advanced given how complex the rest of the game is. Unfortunately, the campaign isn't really worth playing more than once as each mission has a special 'trick' to it that can render it fairly easy in the hands of a skilled player. The actual multiplayer is where most of the action is. Randomly generated landscapes of a variety of colors, themes and backgrounds from ancient Egypt to Hell to outer space never makes for the same game twice and customizable maps and game modes allow for more exacting factors to be controlled ahead of time should you wish it. Due to the antics of how the game works, I recommend you play with actual friends either in person (It's worth noting that local multiplayer only needs a single controller) or online, but online multiplayer is also a perfectly viable option. Fair warning to those who care, however: There is no word censor in this game and enemy team or word names you come across online can be inappropriate.

Overall this is a fantastic multiplayer game that, if plugged into a large monitor, projector, or TV can make a fantastic couch party game that doesn't rely heavily on the RNG, but has just enough chance to allow laughs at a chain of explosions due to a misplaced land mine. There's enough customization to keep games from getting boring or samey and custom teams are always fun to deal with and it's very easy to personify the little guys and give each of your team a distinct personality or strategy type in your head. The single-player allows for a lot of time invested and makes for good practice and a rewarding experience by itself. Still, only get this game if you plan on playing it with friends.

Civilization has always been one of the premier turn-based strategy games in the genre and Civ V is no different. Sporting a large array of playable nations, tons of options for building your nation, robust and unique AI rulers, and multiple different ways to achieve global dominance, there's really no wrong way to play and fans of strategy games will definitely want it.

NOTE: This review assumes you have either all the game-altering DLC or the Complete Edition. Due to the sheer amount of content it provides, I highly recommend you get it over simply the base game.

The game starts you off as wandering cavemen just on the cusp of the Agricultural Revolution and ready to found your first city. This is literally the first thing you do and oftentimes you'll just plop down right on your starting zone, but if you don't mind taking a little time you can also explore and find a spot you might like better. Once you found your first city is where the real game begins. You'll likely start off pretty much the same as everyone else with a few small changes but over the course of the game you start developing niches and specializations based on the special properties of your Civ, the terrain you're on, the resources you have, how you're choosing to advance and what you're building, your unique buildings and military units, and your relations with other nations. To keep you in a sort of thinking mood, the game has a subdued, but varied and lively soundtrack hailing from all parts of the world.

International politics is one of the biggest aspects of Civlization. As no nation is totally isolationist, you will make friends and enemies, sign agreements, form alliances, go to war, and compete with friend and foe alike for supremacy. Each Civ leader has its own flavor and tendencies that you will learn as you play that will help you learn to work diplomacy better. George Washington is friendly and forgiving of small slights but also expansionist and resource-hungry, Napoleon is conniving and disloyal, Gandhi is soft-spoken and religious but also perfectly willing to nuke you off the planet if you bother him, Montezuma is a blood-thirsty conquerer, etc. This can change up a little with certain random factors but once you learn how each of them works and how the AI in general operates, you can mold your trades and political deals to your advantage.

What makes Civ a little unique in its single player, however, is the fact that your failure or a botching of something diplomatically is never automatically pointed out to you. In fact, half the time it's NEVER pointed out to you. You are not the 'protagonist' of the game- you are just another upstart would-be world leader just like everyone else and the game will treat you as such. You will never know the entirety of what your neighbors think of you, what they're planning, or whether an action you took angered them. You can check diplomacy screens to see what they are openly upset or happy about with you and who they like/dislike but this can change if you make the wrong move. Sometimes it can be factors beyond your scope of control. It all depends on what kind of game you play, who is with you, and whether or not you saw something coming. (Though you can always choose to play with random personalities for an element of surprise.)

In multiplayer all bets are off as there are no patterns or tendencies to be able to predict or manipulate. It's you, your friends, and the ensuing chaos that will inevitably follow. This can be pretty fun as you only know what a particular Civ can do rather than how it will act beyond what you know about a particular player's playstyle.

All in all Civ is never the same game twice and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Though if you do get it, get the Complete Edition.

Bastion combines a wonderful mix of story, art, music, and gameplay all in a way that feels unique to itself. The game starts you off with little direction but the narrator's voice as you get used to the controls, combat system, level flow, and most importantly the signature level design. Every environment is Bastion "builds" itself from the ground up around you creating a very unique take on the "fog of war" style exploration you commonly see in strategy games. Story-wise all of this is the result of some far-flung calamity that literally destroyed a good chunk of the world. This puts the story's focus half on keeping up the progress of the Bastion's buildings and exploration of what's left around you.

The graphics are wonderfully rendered and everything looks like a mix of semi-realistic 3D and hand-drawn sprites similar to a sort of top-down version of Braid. Despite the bleak undertones, the colors are vibrant even in the darker levels and every place feels both desolate yet full of life as you see what's become of the world around you. All of these are explored via your home base- the titular Bastion which acts both as a hub for missions, power ups, weapons, and side-quests, but also serves to both tell and fill in the holes of the story you missed through the narration that goes on throughout the levels.

There are only four named characters in the game counting the protagonist, but all of them are surprisingly well-developed for how little any of them actually speak. All of them have special reactions to pretty much everything you bring back with you on each trip and each has a backstory to explore through special bonus levels. While interaction with them is minimalistic at best, you really grow to know who they are and care about their well being just as much as in games where you spend most of the story talking to them, which is quite the accomplishment on part of the frankly stellar narration.

For how much of the game you're going to spend in combat, it sometimes feels like it takes a back seat to everything going on around you. However, you'll never get distracted from it and each of the game's unique weapons has its own bonuses and downsides making no combination (you can take two with you, plus one special move of your choice) a bad call. It really calls to create your own fighting style and do what suits you best. Due to how you can upgrade any weapons in a variety of ways, there's really no wrong way to go into battle and it's always fun. What makes things more interesting is that depending on what weapons you pick, how you choose to go about a level, and even how well you're doing or whether you decide to simply derp about, the narrator has a response to pretty much EVERYTHING you do, which adds a bit of flavor and life to the game that feels a lot more like you're actually being watched and having your story told.

The soundtrack of the game is just as varied as everything else in it and always manages to hit the perfect mood, particularly with the wonderfully done vocal songs. Many levels or situations have their own music and no two songs really feel the same or reused whenever they appear.

Overall Bastion is a wonderful experience that takes roughly seven to ten hours to complete in one playthrough. It's not a long game, but at the same time it's not any longer or shorter than it needs to be. But you'll be thankful for that because it means you can easily play it again. If you ever see it appear in sales or the Humble Bundle as it's often wont to, I highly suggest picking it up if it even sounds remotely interesting to you.

Team Fortress 2 is pretty much what happens when Counterstrike meets Loony Tunes somewhere in the mid 1900s and really feels like a free-to-play game done right. The game is showcased as a team-based multiplayer team-based online tactical shooter that heavily stresses cooperation and planning while at the same time allowing for some of the most absurd and random antics I've ever seen in games that at least pretend to take themselves seriously. Your objective is simple, one team has an objective. The other team has to prevent the first team from completing said objective. Sometimes this can go both ways as classic shooter game types like King of the Hill and Capture the Flag are popular choices for many maps. However there is also a special kind of co-op only variant where you and five others compete in a horde-style set up where you fight wave after wave of oncoming robots. Moreso than other gametypes, this is best done with friends.

One of the game's biggest defining features is the nine distinct classes each with their own strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and roles to play in the team. No one class can do the same thing as another and that makes variety truly shine in the gameplay as you have to constantly adapt to get used to not only how your chosen class plays but how they interact with the others and how this will affect your strategy. Each class has access to a very large amount of weapons and customization that allow for a lot of various ways to handle each class which further adds to the aspect of thinking on your feet at all times. Gameplay is fast-paced and hectic and almost no one can go through a game without dying multiple times. However, these weapons are all significantly balanced to the point where using the original guns you came with is just as viable a tactic as setting up a custom loadout.

The game's innumberable servers are a testament to the sheer widespread kinds of ways you can play TF2. Everyone from the hardcore tournment players, the casual fun-havers, and even just the outright silly trolls can find a niche in the communities. That being said, the servers are not without the standard pitfalls of online gameplay. There are always those who seek to belittle, cheat, steal, annoy, and otherwise just be genuine problems. The experience you have will usually vary depending on who you seek to play with.

One thing that seems to set TF2 apart a bit moreso than other free to play games is the fact that there is almost no "pay to win" factor at all. The only things you can purchase from the shops are cosmetic items or simple weapons that can be obtained via free play easily. The only thing that you will lose out on if you do not ever pay into the game are more frequent drops of weapons and crates (which require a real-world purchase of in-game keys to open, but they only ever contain cosmetic items or special variants of weapons already obtainable in-game) and a larger backpack to hold more weapons, but since the stock weapons are just as good as most of the alternates, this is unecessary. However, in order to get all this, you only ever need to buy a single thing from the TF2 store, which will likely be a key so you can open a crate anyway. After that, you can choose to never buy a single thing again and reap all the benefits of being a "Premium" player.

Because this is one of Valve's biggest franchises, it's updated and patched constantly so there's never a real lack of anything new to experience. Anyone who appreciates a good multiplayer game that really IS free to play ought to check this out. But remember that I always stand by my biggest rule of online multiplayer games just as much for a gem like TF2 than I do others: It's more fun the more of your actual friends you play with. If you've never tried it before, I highly suggest you do so and you do so with a group of your buddies so everyone can join in on the fun.

World of Goo was unique, cheeky, seemed to look at the world in its own little way. Little Inferno seeks to recapture that spirit and feel to solidify how 2D Boy games are like. Unfortunately it just doesn't leave the same lasting impression.

The game starts off innocently enough just like World of Goo does. You have a fireplace and a cutesy, but loomingly sinister setting about snow that never stops falling and that you bought a fireplace to burn things in to stay warm. You burn things, get money, and buy more things to burn. These objects come in themes with increasingly tongue-in-cheek jabs at consumerism in general. There is a surprising amount of little details in pretty much everything but at the same time, it really loses that luster and subtle humor after the first few times you burn something and it starts screaming. However, as you keep playing, you realize about half-way through that this is all the game is and it quickly overstays its welcome. Unlocking things is an incredibly lengthy process and finding all the various combos, that range from obvious to clever to straight up random, can sometimes be an exercise in straight guesswork.

The visuals and sounds are highly reminiscent of World of Goo which from I figure seems to be the developers' attempt at a unique style which does suit the game rather well. It's fairly easy to get absorbed in the atmosphere but it's also very easy to break said atmosphere. The nods to World of Goo are ever present, but it almost feels like they draw too much from their past success to remind you how artsy and anti-establishment they are- almost to the point of tedium.

The biggest problem with Little Inferno is that unlike World of Goo, you have to not only push yourself to finish it but there's absolutely no value in playing it more than once. If you've done everything the first go around, the only thing you can do differently is not burn a single item you get early on that changes a single passing line of dialogue at the end. It set itself up almost to feel like a spiritual successor to the beloved little puzzle game that I still highly recommend to anyone who would want to play it, but it wound up being too similar to World of Goo to stand out on its own, and too different from it to really hold my attention.

It's been a while since I uninstalled and forgot about the game, and in hindsight, I kind of regret paying the full $15 for this one when it came out. Fans of World of Goo or artsy indie stuff in general will still find something to enjoy from it, though. It's not a bad game in its own right, but its lack of lasting presence really hurts it in the end. You'll play it once and forget about it.

I found that the best way to approach Goat Simulator is to not really expect anything. It's nothing more and nothing less than what the developers sent this out to be- a bug-ridden, irreverent sandbox that looks and feels like it was compiled on Garry's Mod in a couple of weeks.

The game's single map is just large enough to contain a decent variety of content, but small enough where you'll become familiar with it very quickly. The idea of this game is not the usual exploration of your classical sandbox. The idea is to take your goat, wreck a bunch of things, then do it again after you unlock and/or find some upgrades and morphs to see just how to possibly break the buggy as hell physics engine this time. (The "tall goat" is particularly prone to this, but I recommend you only try it out after becoming familiar with the game and its happenings.) It only takes an hour or so to fully explore the map and see all the major sights so most of the game will be spent doing things like this. Controls are admittedly slippery and will take a while to get used to, but once you understand just how wigged out this game can be, you won't have it any other way. There's a surprising amount of different things you can do to change your goat up and some require literally jumping through hoops. The gags are just as random as the game itself and you get points for pretty much everything you do so go ahead and try out EVERYTHING. Headbut a car. Walk through a tunnel. Lick a baseball. Sacrifice peasants to your demonic overlords. Much like Minecraft or Garry's Mod, you have to make your own fun. The game is less that and more a set of tools and a physics box to mod and toy with to your heart's content, though I've personally found my greatest times with the game playing with a group of friends laughing at whatever shennanigans we can get the goat into. (Hint: It's best that the person most knowledgable about the game do the driving.) The soundtrack is just as weird and random as the game itself and isn't really something you'll find yourself downloading to listen to in your car, but it's hard to really put this game to any other music.

Strangely enough, the most accurate, workable, and in-depth function of this game is the "Baaaaaa" button of all things. Push it and your goat makes one of roughly a half-dozen or so different noises that sound like they just put a microphone to a goat's face and had it scream at it. (This gets both amusing and terrifying when you start mixing it with the slo-mo toggle.)

That said, there's a surprising amount of content in the Steam Workshop such as new maps, new goat skins/morphs, new random crap to be strewn about, etc. This sort of addition is what might keep this game from becoming a one-hit-wonder novelty that everyone will forget about next month and forever brand Coffee Stain Studios as "Those guys who did Goat Simulator." If you get tired of the initial content quickly but want more of the game, check it out.

To the point: Is it worth $10? That's entirely up to you. There's no demo as there's not enough content to splice into one and still capture the essense of the game so you /have/ to purchase it or play a friend's copy to figure out if you'll enjoy it. I'm hard-pressed to say whether or not I actually recommend the game soley on the idea that this is a niche game with a niche market. Fans of the 'lolrandom' type experiences will have endless hours of fun while someone who gets bored easily will find this provides entertainment for a grand total of fifteen-minutes before deciding to do something more productive. It's incredibly difficult to write a serious review for something that refuses to take itself seriously so whether Goat Simulator is a good game or not is a case-by-case basis.

At best it's a wacky time to be had for however long you can enjoy something like this. At worst it's a dull, overhyped joke that you'll watch your favorite "Let's Play"er jump on a few times and forget about it. Though I must say that watching Goat Simulator and PLAYING Goat Simulator are two entirely different things. If you're skeptical, best wait for it to go on sale. But for those who watch the gameplay videos and say "I need this in my life." you won't be disappointed.