Recent reviews by Jebadiah

Despite having yet to be fully released, Hades II has somehow topped it's predecessor. The characters, gameplay combinations, weapons, and narrative are a step up. Particularly keepsakes, ability design, and area design are highlights, and somehow this game only has up to go.

Insanely well polished and narratively fleshed out. You could probably spend 100 hours and still have unseen dialogue. Not to mention the gameplay is amazingly fun and well tuned difficulty-wise. Once you improve, once-insurmountable challenges seem simple.

Jusant is really incredible experience. The controls fully enhance the experience of the difficulty of climbing and having proper holds on walls, even if those controls often become grading on the hands to continuously do. I wouldn't recommend long play sessions if you get hand pain easily. The level design that accommodates these controls is excellent though, allowing you room to breathe and make your own "checkpoints" essentially. The navigation and ease of finding direction was a great part of the level design, as were new challenges added to traversal. The music, sound design, and art on display in Jusant are also just amazing, with the music in difficult climb sections heightening tension, and the beautiful vistas asking you to stop and look. Overall, Jusant is a great pickup if you can get used to the controls.

Infinite dopamine generator

Chants of Sennaar absolutely blew me away. It has so much more emotional breadth and depth of design than it initially seems, and the ways it leads the player to conclusions is so masterfully done. Some of the puzzles and symbol meanings are pretty difficult to make out, but it really got my gears turning which made figuring things out so rewarding. This game is about language, and once you understand how all of those languages work, how they're different, and how they're similar, it's so satisfying to just have everything click together in your brain easily. Truly didn't expect for this to become one of my favorite games of the year.

To preface, this game is definitely cringe, at least narrative-wise. However, I personally found it cringe in a way that seemed intentional as a reference to classic anime and visual novel tropes, and admittedly it grew on me as the game went along. However, most of the reason I so heavily enjoyed Neon White was the gameplay, missions, and speedrun structure. The gunplay is tight and the weapon abilities mixed with movement makes for a really engaging speed game and fps game. The level design complements the movement and weapons extremely well, and missions are plentiful, making for an experience much longer than I initially expected. The speedrunning nature of this game also fueled me to chase all of the Ace medals on every level, and getting a Developer medal on some here and there. This game is a super great overall package, if you have the strength to understand the initially offputting charm of the narrative.

SOMA is profound and terrifying. The stealth sequences elicit genuine fear, and send you running for the nearest dark corner to hole yourself in. The level design seems perfectly created to push you in the right direction, and the environments inspire awe and deep terror. The story and voice acting are also spectacular here, with so many twists and turns which leave an incredibly impactful ending and full package to sit with you for a long time.

A short but really enjoyable experience. This game is major flow state and if you enjoy that kind of thing this is one of the best I've seen. Chaining targets and gliding for movement feels so stellar when you get it right. The chase sequences are the best part of the game in my opinion as they are pure adrenaline the whole way through. There's some jank present in the boss fights in terms of an awkward camera and such, as well as I experienced a lot of unresponsiveness with my bow just not charging up a shot despite having a target focused, but these issues ultimately did not damage this product for me in terms of experience and definitely not in terms of fun.

Sable is unbelievably beautiful, engaging, and comfortable. The art style and art design are some of the best I've seen in ages. Sable is about the all-encompassing search for purpose, and the sake of adventuring itself, and personally, I think it does a particularly amazing job of it.

Outer Wilds and how it makes you feel is so hard to describe in words. It's a game I would recommend to anyone and tell nothing about it. It is without a doubt in my opinion one of the best games ever made.