Recent reviews by THE RTN

For some, the hardest part of playing The Dark Ages will be letting go of Eternal. I see this game as an overcorrection from Eternal. DOOM is one of the most respected franchises ever, and while each entry has its own camp, nearly all of them are beloved by the majority of players. That said, there’s always an inevitable clash between industry trends and player expectations. Sometimes, pushing a franchise forward is necessary. I respect the fact id keeps trying but it's not always as easy to appreciate a work for what it is, though I still appreciate it's fresh.

If you thought Eternal was too "gamified," guess what? Dark Ages is also too gamified just in a different way. Sure, it’s more grounded and rounded across the board. I don’t know why people label this as a "stand and fight" game because, believe me, it’s not. It still has the DOOM run-and-gun mayhem at its core; it’s just not as rhythmically demanding as Eternal, where optimal play required using every weapon in your arsenal while platforming like a madman. I loved Eternal, but Dark Ages is more of an all-rounder. It’s still rhythmic in terms of parrying (the timing window is forgiving, so you’ll get it naturally), but you have more freedom in weapon choice. If you preferred 2016, this might address some of your issues though I doubt the 2016 camp will inherently fully embrace it.

Grenades are gone, replaced by a trusty shield that’s just as eager to chop enemies apart. Melee and close-quarters are better than ever. The weapons are creative enough to keep the flow engaging, and the BFG has been swapped for a BFC (a crossbow, obviously), which fits the theme quite well. I miss the Crucible already, there’s no equivalent here but it is what it is. Unfortunately, glory kills feel downgraded. I get why, but unless you approach enemies from specific angles, you’ll see the same few animations repeatedly. After Eternal’s variety, this left a sour taste.

I finished my Nightmare playthrough in about 18 hours, collecting around 3/4 of the upgrades and secrets. And that’s where my biggest gripe lies. Collectibles aren’t just codexes and toys they’re tied to upgrades, too. This baffles me. We’re drowning in soulslikes and RPGs, open worlds packed with busywork. I do that every month. Now I am doing more of the same in DOOM? I don’t see the necessity. If it were just a few levels, fine but most are sprawling, encouraging free-roaming exploration. At first, I welcomed it, but it got old fast. I lost focus and grew bored, the worst possible outcome in a DOOM game. Regardless, I still appreciate how some missions lets you take them at your own pace and do objectives in any order.

The levels themselves are monotonous and lack dynamism. This is another consequence of stepping back from Eternal, where some accused the game of turning into Mario Galaxy with its platforming. Fine, keeping traversal grounded is certainly a choice but the levels also lack distinction. Most look and play the same, with some elevation but nothing like Eternal’s verticality. You’ll mostly run circles in arenas.

Dark Ages is more accessible than Eternal, which some found demanding. In fact, it might be the most accessible DOOM yet. Achievements are easy to 100%, and Nightmare was rather easy until the final missions, where the game unapologetically spams enemies. The challenge wasn’t playing "Simon Says" with the parry cues but constantly getting hit from off-screen. It’s still tailored for hardcore players but is not an exact ''sweaty palms'' game like 2016 either. Dark Ages itself plays like a mediator between two different DOOM entries.

The mech (Atlan) and dragon sections are disappointingly shallow. The Atlan feels clunky, with little room for mastery—mostly just perfect dodges and button-mashing. The dragon is underwhelming, requiring lock-on attacks and more of the perfect dodges. You can’t park your dragon and freely explore; landing zones are predetermined. The only real interaction is chasing fleeing ships (loot goblins, essentially) to be rewarded by the mission challanges. It’s bland.

If you wanted cinematic presentation in DOOM for whatever reason, you’re in luck. Dark Ages has the most presentation in the series. Funny, considering 2016 initially prided itself on anti-narrative (though even it had unskippable cutscenes). Eternal drowned in convoluted lore dump, while The Dark Ages goes for a straightforward, cinematic approach. It’s easy to follow, and I don’t mind it being there but do I care? Honestly, hard to give a ♥♥♥♥.

The Slayer is still the dude. He rips, tears, and makes folk run for their life. But the rest of the cast? Generic military tropes, Sentinel war councils, and bits of outsider-vs.-locals perspective. It was interesting to see how the Slayer earned his place, but the storytelling relies on tired, overused set pieces. I don’t care about Sentinels war plans or whatsoever, just let me shoot something in the face.

The pacing also feels stretched. Unique bosses are unevenly spaced (you fight all in the last 3 chapters), and the only rune, Rage, is introduced late for gimmicky fights. I missed traditional power ups, this type of gameplay could have benefited greatly from them.

The guns still feel punchy, but mastery challenges only reward skins. I didn’t feel compelled to upgrade everything, sticking to one or two favorites. Each weapon has two mods (switchable anytime), and upgrades grant perks like the classic flame flares (armor on hit) for the shotgun its often associated with.

I recently revisited DOOM 3. Love it or hate it, it was a bold departure. Made during an era of industry experimentation, took risks. Newer DOOMs feel more like Painkiller than DOOM 3 in an ironic way. Players clearly love weapon-juggling, fast-paced combat, and arena shooters hence the indie boom of "retro-feel boomer shooters," many of which are even faster than this trilogy. Most aren’t true to DOOM's (or Duke 3D's) roots either, but that’s just how trends go.

I never opened the map until I hit a breaking point. Constantly checking the map isn’t something I associate with DOOM. If you love exploring every corner of given levels, more power to you. But this isn’t my idea of an FPS sandbox. I expect something more calculated and focused; Dark Ages sacrifices that precision of the former two for openness. Still thrilling, but its highs are lower due to design restrictions.

The new remix of the main theme (the one that greets you in the menu) is cool and all, but the rest of the BGM... If you could ask the soundtrack itself, it would agree that it misses Mick Gordon. At some point, Gordon had to move on, but it’s a shame how he departed. I don’t think the new tracks are as memorable as those in the former two. Must be a part of why I got bored. The music has the similar tunes, sure, but is not as vibrant, intense and energetic. Instead it's more flat and obviously far less experimental although some might still find it catchy. The mixing needs some serious help however.

DOOM strangely followed Tomb Raider's path so far, a beloved franchise from '90s making a strong comeback with arguably a great reboot debut, followed by a more divisive sequel and finishes up with a messier entry. That's just how I interpret it. What's next? Another reboot? That I don't know but I do know this: Dark Ages is still a good game. It's just not my type of jam. Each to their own, I don't feel apologetic as I hated both RAGEs hence feel like id sometimes do miss the mark but the ongoing theme here is clear enough. It's what you prefer. To me, Dark Ages will remain the weakest link of the new trio. Maybe it should take a longer break but whatever's next, I want to believe it'll be always good to play more of DOOM. The lack of multiplayer is saddening actually.


[Turn on auto sprint on btw]

★★★½☆☆
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A holy-grail-worthy, holy-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-boring installment to the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring franchise.

Rage inducing in its own rights.

SPOILER İÇERİR.

Bir süredir Türkçe bir şeyler karalamıyordum. Zaten şu saatten sonra TLOU2'yi incelemenin lüzumu yok. Herkes aşağı yukarı fikirlerini oluşturmuş ve onlara saplanmış durumda. Ancak TR Twitter'ının stanlerinin kurduğu dörtler ittifakının (GOW-RDR2-Witcher 3-TLOU) bir üyesinin devamı olması, sevilsin ya da sevilmesin, TLOU2'yi devamlı gündeme getiriyor. Hem PC portu hem de HBO dizisinin yeni sezonuyla birlikte TLOU2'yi tekrar ziyaret etmek için uygun bir vakit olduğunu düşünüyorum.

Öncelikle, TLOU'nun anlattığı şeyle değil, nasıl anlattığıyla problemim var. Öyle ki her ne kadar birazdan bahsedeceğim şeyler "TLOU hakkında fark etmediğiniz 40 detay!!!" gibi gözükse de, bağlamına göre değerlendirdiğinizde bu nüanslar TLOU'nun hikaye anlatıcılığının oynanış ve karakter etkileşimi bazında aslında hiç de fena olmadığını gösteriyor. Ve hayır, bu bilgiler RDR2'deki gibi sadece atların soğukta taşaklarının büzüşebildiğini nitelendiren detaylar değil. TLOU2 hala baştan sona ludonaratif uyumsuzluk dolu, orayı geçtik. O kadar derinleşecek olsak bu sefer Uncharted 4 tüm blockbuster aksiyonunu ve karizmatik ana karakterini kaybediyor olurdu.

Eğer TLOU2'nin film yapımının iyi olmadığı söyleniyorsa, muhtemelen sizi sikiyorlar. Evet, karakterizasyon ve tempodan ciddi sıkıntı yaşıyor ve bunlar da sürecin bir parçası. Hepi topu 5 yıllık bir oyun olmasına rağmen, Ellie ve Abby'e doğrudan bağlanan birkaç karakter hariç (Dina-Lev-Owen, zorlarsak Jesse) kimseyi hatırlamıyordum bile. Bu ilk oyunda bir problem olmaktan çıkıyor zira ilk oyun klasik 4 mevsim hikayesi olduğu için ikilimizin yolculukları esnasında karşılaştıkları enstantaneleri anlatıyor. TLOU2 ise kendini belirli bir kadro etrafında biçimlendiren ve onlara bel bağlayan bir yapım. Druckmann da bir şeyi yazamadığı için maalesef 'narrative' götü başı dağıtıyor. Siz de günün sonunda bir avuç önemseyemediğiniz karakterler ile baş başa bırakılıyorsunuz. Oyunun ''dual'' perspektifi ise maalesef sürekli artmakta olan gerilimi zedeliyor. Zira Ellie ile devamında başınıza ne geleceğini bilmediğiniz bir serüvene atılırken ve bir cliffhanger ile biterken Abby ile aynı yerlerden geçiyor ve o noktaya ulaşmak için 10 küsür saat harcıyorsunuz. Ancak bunun karşılığında sürekli karakter geçişi yapılsa muhtemelen oynanış babında daha da yorucu ve karmaşık olacaktı, karakterler arası istediğin zaman geçiş yapsan bu da TLOU2'nin anlatımıyla uyuşmayacaktı. Tam bir sakal-bıyık durumu.

Ha narrative ve onun üzerinden karakterler ne kadar sekteye uğrarsa uğrasın (FF7, Metaphor ve Expedition33 gibi ekip odaklı oyunlar TLOU'yu felaket utandırır) 'play script' yine hiç fena değil. TLOU2 sahne sahne ele alınsa ortada en azından tiyatrik, kulağa ve göze hitap eden bir görsel ortaya çıkıyor. Aynı zamanda oyun formatında olmanın verdiği avantajları da başarıyla kullanıyor.

Bunlardan en barizi bir objektifi yerine getirirken gerçekleşen karakterler arası küçük atışmalar ve sohbetler. Bu 'chit-chat' tarzı ayaküstü konuşmalar eğer doğrudan senaryoya hizmet etmiyorsa genelde TV gibi pasif tüketici olup eliniz sikinizde beklediğiniz medyalarda sıkıcı olabiliyor. Ancak oyunda zaten belirli bir hedefle ilgilenirken arkaplanda kulağınıza bir şeyler çalması genelde karakterizasyon için iyi bir fırsat oluyor (ilk oyunda Ellie'nin şaka kitabından yaptığı esprileri düşünün).

Birçok ayna sahne mevcut. Bu tarz sahnelerin daha önceden aşina olduğunuz benzer sahneleri yansıtması bir bakıma bilinçaltınızda bağdaştırma yapmanızı sağlarken aynı zamanda o zamanki duygu ve düşüncelerinizi provoke ederek yeni sahneye aktarmak için akıllıca bir yöntem. Bunlardan bariz ikisi: İlk oyunda Ellie, David tarafından avlanırken çaresiz ve güçsüz hissederken bunu Abby gibi Ellie'ye karşı hem stratejik (askeri eğitimini hesaba katarsak) hem de fiziksel üstünlüğü olan bir karakter üzerinden kurgulamak kolay olmamasına rağmen yine de bir şekilde başarıyor. Bunun çoğunluğu Abby'nin o an silahsız ve dolayısıyla kısmen savunmasız olmasıyla beraber, bir zamanlar av olan Ellie'nin avcı rolüne bürünmesi ve Abby'i sürekli tehdit etmesiyle sağlanıyor. Bir diğeri ise zamanında Ellie&Riley üzerinden kurulan ilişki dinamiğinin (iki genç görevlerini aksatır, olmaması gereken bir yerdedir, sonrasında büyük bir trajedi yaşanır) yine Dina üzerinden kurulmaya çalışılması.

Dina demişken, ilk oynanışta fark etmesi zor olsa da Seattle 1. günde bazı sahnelerde karnını ovuşturuyor (o noktada Dina'nın hamile olduğunu bilmiyoruz). Bu Dina'nın iç dünyasını dışa vurduğu kadar Ellie'nin dikkat ayırmadığını da gösteriyor. Aynı zamanda yolculuk esnasında beslediği eski kedilerden bahsederken Ellie ile beraber küçük bir yaratık yetiştirmek istediğinden bahsediyor. Orada neyi kastettiği bizim açımızdan belli olsa da Ellie anlamadığı için Bill tarzı 'loner' bir cevap veriyor. Tabii Ellie'nin daha önceki repliklerine bakarsak Bill kadar üzerinde Tess'in de nüfuzu var. Tanıştığı karakterlerin Ellie üzerinde kalıcı bir etki bırakması fazla kredi verilmeyen bir değer.

Joel flashbackleri yine buna benzer bir dinamiğe sahip. Hemen göze çarpmayan, incelikli bir detay var: Ellie bağışık olmasına rağmen Joel (Ellie'yi bir yeri açtırmak için önden yolladığı durumlar hariç) HER ZAMAN önden gidiyor. Ellie ise Dina ve Jesse ile beraberken daha eşit bir dinamik sergiliyor ve genelde önden gitmek için inisiyatif alıyor. Joel-Ellie dinamiği oynanış üzerinden doğrudan Lev-Abby ile paralellik gösteriyor ki oyunu bir kere bitiren herkes finalin nasıl şekillendiğinden ötürü bunun farkındadır.

Çatışmalarda Mel'in arkada kalması (hamile) ve köpeğinin son çare olarak onun yanını terk etmemesi, Abby'nin yükseklik korkusundan ötürü vertigosunun tetiklenmesi ve uzaklık algısının bozulması, nefes nefese kalması, postür değişimi veyahut Ellie'nin WLF askerlerinden kaçarken nefes alış verişinin düzensizleşmesinin Abby ile karşılaşacağını bildiği sahnede tekrar edilmesi. Oynanış sekanslarına yansıtılan tatlı, önemli detaylar.

Ölümlerin çok ani ve soğuk yaşanması gibi bir durum var ki normalde güçlü bir taraf olabilecekken maalesef karakterlerin zayıf yazılmasından ötürü vuruculuğunu kaybediyor. Yine her ne kadar insanlar Joel'un "uncerenomious" öldüğünü düşünse de tüm aniliği ve şiddetine rağmen Joel öldüğünde ona odaklanan bir kamera ve arkada çalan bir parça vardı. Jesse ve Manny'de ise zerresi yok. Bir anda suratlarına patlatıyorlar. Manny'nin ölümü muhtemelen daha da iyi zira Abby ile bir kapıyı açmaya çalışırkenki sahne geçişinde öldürüyorlar ve geçiş oldukça pürüzsüz. Buna rağmen Manny benim için "pendejo diyen herif" olmaktan öteye gidemediği için (ki o zaman da mizahi değerini çıkardığımızda zaten karakterden geriye hiçbir şey kalmıyor) pek bir önem taşımıyor.

TLOU'nun anlattığı şeyi sevdiğimden bahsetmiştim. Özünde bir "bırakma" hikayesi. Bağışlamayı öğrenmekle ilgili. Altını çiziyorum "öğrenmekle" ilgili. Druckmann nedense konu nefret ve şiddet döngüsüne geldiğinde bunun daha evrensel olduğunu düşünüyor. Ve HBO dizisini izledikten sonra bu adamın gerçekten buna inandığına ikna oldum (tabii oraya gelene kadar İsrail-Filistin çatışmasındaki yorumlarının sertliği de bir ipucu olabilir. Yanlılık demiyorum, o ayrı hatta anlaşılabilir). Bu tarz bir hikayeyi böylesine zor bir soru sorarken anlatmak, bunun köküne inmek ve nasıl öğrenildiğini irdelemek demektir. Bunu yapmazsan pekala şiddet pornosu olursun.

Dizi? Ömür törpüsü amk. Konseyde, Ellie'nin gittiği yolun yol olmadığını nitelemek için ona arkan çıkan hararetli ''don't tread on me'' konuşmasıyla ona arka çıkan yobaz sandviçcisi mi dersin, Joel'in doğuştan şiddete meyilli olduğunu düşünen psikoterapist mi dersin yoksa Dina'nın sürekli makyajlı gezmesi mi? Mazin ve Druckmann ortaklaşa sikiyor bu sefer.

Yakında 1&2 için komple bir sürüm çıkacağı gerçeğini de bir kenara bırakırsak, asla ama asla devamını istemiyorum. TLOU'yu öyle bir sağdılar ki ömürlük soğudum. Zaten kimse ne yapacağını biliyormuş gibi durmuyor.

Roguelike modu fena değilmiş bu arada...

Expedition 33 needs not any introduction like its relentless protagonists. As the word-of-mouth did its job, Clair Obscur did hit 129k concurrent players as I was typing this. It's now (to my knowledge) #3 JRPG on Steam.

Expedition 33 are the ones who continue when one falls. To speak of Expedition 33 is to speak of persistence and human tenacity, the unyielding march forward. Congratulations to Sandfall on becoming the newest darling of a studio, progressing the industry and giving people a sense of hope. From its first reveal, its Belle Époque-infused world delighted me and I had a gut feeling that its narrative would shape up to be something unique and special, I was desperately trying to find an early copy. Little did I know how it would completely consume me and check all the boxes. An instant classic...

Though, I must admit I am not as surprised it came from an AA budget project compared to AAA behemoths. Alan Wake II was a declaration already, a $50 million incantation made by around 130 folk with a 4 years of dev time? Immediately became a beacon in survival horror’s renaissance. It dared to step up and differ, and for that, it forever earned my respect. And the JRPG landscape, though still fertile with remasters and remakes, had grown complacent. Yet here, a studio who 'dares to try' emerges. It's no less audacious than AW2. It's not only a statement it's a whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ testament. A scripture. Of what can be achieved with humble beginnings. For that alone, it deserves all the reverence.

Speaking of humble beginnings, let's revisit KCD that had one. Also recall Split Fiction that still offers twin copies for only $50. Two GOTY frontrunners of 2025. Now, Clair Obscur makes a devestating debut. Perhaps this is just how should you be treating a new IP after all. The AA revival itself truly feels like a vindication. And Clair Obscur, priced at a generous $50 (further chastened by launch discounts), has already slipped the bonds of expectation. Physical copies vanish around the world including JP and the USA, the collectors edition is already a relic in auction houses, in span of a week!

Statistics are mere footnotes. What is Clair Obscur, truly?

It is the razor’s edge between life and death. It is grief and obsession ossified into ritual, trying to cling to ghosts, to illusions, to the fragile beauty of fantasy. Loss calcified into addiction. Its narrative is a blade-sharp, deliberate, cutting deep within the very first hour. Never lets you lose your interest. From top to bottom, start to finish the narration is incredible. So is the worldbuilding, the twists, characterization and the backstories. The little shared moments at the camp through relationship levels and are damn well done. It manages to tell a classic tale with such a fresh way. That's such a strength that gives whole another life to a work. It wields the macabre with such a precision, yet leavens its sorrow with humor, with fleeting beauty. Even its comedy-relief characters are more fleshed than the hollow protagonists of today's releases.

Its genius is not confined to storytelling. Its filmmaking stands shoulder-to-shoulder with TLOU Part II and AW2. Each frame, each colour, each set piece is a monument to intentionality. I have not been so grabbed since FF7/X injected their spells into my youth. The score, too, is a revelation: original compositions that each and every one of them do matter, each of the 33 collectible records (that you can play at your camp just like Lies of P) a vial of distilled emotion. Metaphor was robbed of its Best Soundtrack crown at the TGA, but here, you MUST NOT go wrong.

The voice cast is stellar. It was already making noises with Charlie Cox’s Gustave, Andy Serkis’s Renoir (great great stuff), Ben Starr’s Verso, Jennifer English’s Maelle but everyone else does equally matter. Even the optional expedition journals, voiced like tragic epistles, add layers to the world.

As someone who crowned Metaphor last year’s GOTY, I now must bow to Clair Obscur. Where Metaphor honored JRPG traditions, this feels like the genre’s platonic ideal. It surely borrows popular systems and mechanics though smartly: checkpoint expedition flags, respawning enemies, a parry/dodge system that demands mastery. The turn-based core remains familiar. Buff-stacking, weakness exploitation but the parry mechanic adds a thrilling edge even though it's a bit too rewarding to a point that it would make everything secondary. It's still tough to master parry to a such perfection so I can give that a pass. Regardless, I'd believe the parry (perfect dodges if you can't afford parries) is the bone of the game.

Balancing can clearly be tough but I can’t ignore that it perhaps might be Clair Obscur’s weakest aspect. Act 3 stumbles slightly. Overleveling trivializes the finale, draining its weight. So if you plan to see everything before the ending: please don’t.

I love breaking games, pushing the limits. Exploiting, trivializing, abusing systems. I despise scaling (none here). My issue isn’t with Clair Obscur’s philosophy, categorically I am not opposed to it, but with its structure: the endgame plays like post-game content. You should save it for after the credits (something I didn’t realize at the time). Though it also makes sense (in-game explanation) why your state is reversed back to the final boss after beating the game.

Aside from Simon, I steamrolled the late-game. Quite unintentionally. His fight is the exception. A brutal skill check demanding perfection. On paper, he’s the pinnacle of design: a test of survival and optimized damage output. In practice? I couldn’t beat him fairly and resorted to cheese. The rest of the bosses? Often so easy you’re forced to hold back to baby them. I don't know what's the regular player experience here but something feels off.

I know these are all player choice but the Pictos (equippable perks that grant game-breaking power) are both a blessing and a curse. Double turns, resurrections, damage-cap removal. They enable absurd builds but obliterate balance. My goal in any first playthrough is simple: crush foes as efficiently as possible. If you prefer restraint, you can self-limit, but would most players?

And no, this isn’t just about Maelle’s 100m one-shots. Verso demands precision, while Maelle (especially /w Lune) melts bosses risk-free via stacked multipliers. The damage cap til Act 3 also feels off, why use ‘extreme dmg’ moves when multi-hit spam outperforms them? It’s a system at odds with itself.

The overworld has too minor frustrations. No minimap, compass or markers. Occasional janky traversal (you can get stuck but easily reload a previous save, no biggies there) until Esquie (a truly godlike entity and the most influential philosopher alive) grants flight. Landmarks eventually orient you as you familiarize them, but early on, the map becomes a crutch, opened and closed in a cycle. The UI is clean but unremarkable. Movement can feel janky, though it adds annoying fun to parkour challenges like Gestral's 'Only Up' minigame. Animations, however, are consistently excellent.

It's mostly optimized well with occasional drops. Don't let that fact disrupt you from realizing it does work well in spite of UE5. It's a budget game so I do understand using built-in options like Lumen but it's messy. And here we are still tweaking '.ini'.

Clair Obscur is that rare complete package, a true all-rounder. Great pacing, never a dull moment. Its few flaws pale against its triumphs, making forgiveness effortless. In an era of compromised releases, it doesn't just deserve leniency it makes the case for why we should still believe in ambitious games. Few recent releases demand such generosity; fewer still so thoroughly earn it. And, I like to honour those who dares.

Tomorrow comes.
★★★★★

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Karma is not an easy game to describe nor to address. As a narrative-heavy experience, it feels almost immaculate in its refusal to yield to articulate, spoiler-free critique.

You play as Daniel McGovern, a roam agent for the Thought Bureau, a department under Leviathan Corp. in an alternate 1984 where Germany remains divided. Leviathan is, of course, a direct allusion to Thomas Hobbes, though it also evokes Lovecraftian undertones an association the game never fully embraces, much to its detriment I believe because it would so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fit in. I remain convinced that had Kardema flirted more boldly with cosmic horror, it might have reached greater heights. But there’s little merit in demanding a work conform to desires it never claimed it was intended to fulfill. It's just me and my little fantasy.

The Leviathan’s omnipresent overseer, MOTHER, functions as this world’s Big Brother. Your task is to "dive" into suspects' minds, reliving their memories as a form of interrogation. Act 1 excels at propelling the player seamlessly between story beats. You unravel a suspect’s motivations through environmental details and texts —in this case, a daughter’s diary— slowly piecing together their humanity while questioning your own role in the system. Realizing you might have done more harm than good along the way.

Act 2 takes a sharper yet more intimate turn, delving into the trauma of a suspect abused by their parents. What initially begins as classic psychological horror morphs into something grittier, sadder, and yet strangely hopeful and humane. The art direction and the gameplay shifts dramatically: at one point, you bloom flowers in the suspect’s memory, evoking ''Flower'', or soar through the air clutching a lover’s ribbon as if you meant to play ''Entwined''. Some may find this tonal detour jarring, but for me, it worked. A bold, if not entirely cohesive, reinvention.

Karma understands horror as an internal phenomenon, a malignancy of the mind shaped by external control. It grasps, however incompletely, the invasive reach of the state (or corporate if you will) into private lives. And then just as these themes crystallize, Act 3 unravels them with what can only be described as anime-tier ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Yet, I suspect this was always the intent. Contrary to what some reviewers claim, the game doesn’t leave you bewildered. You’ll grasp the what and why of its climax, even if the how feels rushed (let's say you'll need to come terms with how things should end up because you were said so). Those craving deeper worldbuilding or a more nuanced exploration of identity and control may walk away disappointed. Still, there’s something refreshing in its emotional audacity, even when execution falters. That also has something to do with the plot taking a ''Stranger Things'' turn meaning there are experiments and some sorts of unknown perhaps paranatural substance that drives those experiments. The matter in question is called ''Dasein'' of all words (I really don't know why) and is indeed physical. It has an ability to reduce entropy. You know that much but it really doesn't mean ♥♥♥♥. It's more used as a Deus X Machina where it serves as a copout.

"If you're trapped in the dream of the Other, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥!"

This quote of Deleuze's (one so decontextualized even Žižek got lost), is the one you'd see before (or after, memories are fragile things, I forgot) an act and feels deliberately placed. In psychoanalysis, the Other is the vast web of language, desire, and norms that shape an individual. In Karma, you are ensnared in MOTHER’s framework, a structure that colonizes Daniel’s unconscious. The game’s core lies in his struggle to unearth the "secret" buried in his repressed memories through a journey to his unconscious. The true horror here is the dream itself, replicating hidden mechanisms of control. A worker may obey outwardly while their unconscious rebels or vice versa. As dreams are capable of replicating the means of oppression we'd also, very broadly put, consider what regiments the behavior. And that is, what would Deleuze say, ''order-words''. Ideas might not be inherently oppresive even if they seemingly are radical or disruptive but how it structurilized in language does matter. You'll see a bunch of them in Karma, to a point where workers' leisure time also becomes a work time. Toying with such concepts and feeling like you have something to say is often a nasty yet incredibly easy trap to fall into. As far as my reading allows me, I feel like Karma (and hopefully neither do I) doesn’t exactly suffer from this.

As an artsy experiment, Karma thrives on intentional obscurity. Environments are meticulously crafted; every NPC wears a TV for a head, while key figures appear as ordinary humans. The game never explains why, but the consistency sells the illusion. Its aesthetic is equal parts Lynchian surrealism and Hitchcockian voyeurism: you invade minds, inhabiting memories rather than passively observing and consuming them (the closest example I can give is Remember Me's memory remixes). Reside in a place where you don't belong to. You tapping into minds also means their struggles are your struggles, their horrors are your horrors. Reality crumbles beneath you, you are reshaped, and the art direction sells this disintegration masterfully. The minutiae is not only an important aspect of the narrative but also the art itself.

The puzzles are serviceable but unremarkable: book riddles (SH3 anyone?), clock puzzles, loops... Nothing groundbreaking, but satisfying in their execution. There’s no combat, and fail states are rare, though the chase sequences feel half-baked they nevertheless feel tense. The main puzzles are forgiving, but the optional MENSA-esque challenges? Some of them are quite tripping. I completely suck at those types of puzzles and immediately feel pressure of getting lost in unnecessary detail compared to getting the bigger picture however since there is no timer you are in good hands. They are one-shot puzzles meaning if you fail them your only chance is to reload a previous save.

Voice acting is phenomenal. Sean, in particular, delivers a standout performance. The soundscape keeps tension coiled throughout. That said, gameplay is too basic and watered down for a mystery thriller. Objectives rarely overlap; solutions often present themselves and you rarely keep one item at a time. It’s also paradoxical as the game leaves many questions unanswered, yet it tells more than it shows, violating the sacred "show, don’t tell" rule to ensure you grasp its core truths. But I would say it's better than leaving empty handed.

I suspect the heavy inspiration from Observer as soon as I compare and contrast any two screenshots of these games, though lacking firsthand experience of Observer, I can’t really compare. Psychological horror still struggles to produce strong, unpretentious entries, and Karma occasionally stumbles into indulgence. Yet for a debut title, this is an admirable effort. Flawed but ambitious, and lingering in the mind like a half-remembered dream. A game that tries to figure out its own identity and comes up with something. I guess.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
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My younger self would have loved this. But I’m no longer that kid, and it immediately becomes a case of 'too little, too late.' Seeing where the Test Drive series ended up, maybe this is how you revive a franchise. I won’t pretend TXR didn’t make waves back in the day and now it's revival acts like a time capsule in an era where 'PS2' is often used as a pejorative. The game doesn’t boast the highest fidelity, but it looks good. I love the car models, the overall vibe… yet I just can’t connect with it.

TXR is a mixed experience. I’m too used to rallies and endurance races now that I had to rewire my brain for a straightforward highway racer. Oddly enough, it becomes addictive, even though I firmly believe the game lacks challenge and depth. These flaws could be fixed near launch, though.

The first 3–4 hours are a slow grind upward. The next 2–3 hours are more engaging as you familiarize yourself with the mechanics, upgrade your car, and unlock perks. After that, the next 2–3 hours is the real chore where you’re sitting on your ass with a pile of 50+ unused BP and you'd end up with more cash than you could spend. Am I supposed to panic buy upgrades in a racing game?

I can’t help but ask: Why? Why hard-lock cash progression? Why kill the momentum? TXR was never known for its perk system. Sure, perks could evolve the gameplay, but locking content behind certain bosses creates pacing issues. This is especially problematic in early access, where you can’t unlock much until you beat Midnight Cinderella. After that, the game boils down to whether you want to grind for customizable cars or not. If you’re going to hard-lock cars, skills, perks, tunings and your ability to endure rivals and punish rivals through driver level at least have some mercy for the fkn cash.

Unlike the original, you can no longer unlock special cars by defeating rivals instead you have to buy them. Fair enough. But why can’t you sell them back? I bought a custom car, realized it was garbage, and got stuck with it. What’s the point? The boss’s car was actually slower than the boss themselves and didn’t even have nitrous. The worst part of it you can barely buy 1 custom the whole game because you can only hold 7 million until you defeat the final boss only then you can hold up to 15 million which is the almost the cost of the better customs.

The races are always require the same mindset and any average racing fan would point that out immediately. You buy nitrous, spam it at the start, and within 25 meters, you’re already burning through their health bar. Most rivals (even team leaders) are underpowered, making races trivial. When a leader does show up, they’re always behind you (unless you lose and trigger a rematch through flashing), so it’s a no-brainer.

The final two or three bosses require something like an RX-8. The car I’d been using from the start—the one I loved—was quickly outclassed. I saw it coming, especially since the remaining upgrades are locked behind the final boss. That’s certainly a decision… a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ one. The tuning system isn’t overly complex, but since I don’t care much for fine-tuning, it works well enough.

The rivals can’t corner for their miserable lives. If you stop in front of them on an empty highway, they’ll just sit there, stuck. There are also invisible walls (they won't harm your gameplay but they are still odd), which I’ve learned to tolerate. I think tire wear and nitrous exhaustion should have been restricted to races only, allowing for more relaxed free-roaming. As it stands, constantly driving to a parking lot or going back to garage is just a bland choice, especially when the races are already mindless. Maybe it’s intentional (most likely intentional) once you pull ahead, victory is almost guaranteed because the AI acts clueless. But if they’re ahead (usually due to their cars being faster), they barely make mistakes.

Their behavior seems tied to poor pathfinding. They don’t use the full width of the road or proper racing lines. Instead, they stick to rigid, discrete lanes. Remember how they freeze if you block them in free roam? Imagine that in a race. If a slower car is ahead, the AI checks the opposite lane if it’s clear, they swerve over like a normal driver. But if both lanes are blocked, they do something bizarre: they hug the center line, overbrake, and fail to maintain speed through corners.

A few friends of mine who adore this game already made a big deal out of this discussion, and I don’t want to sound overly polarizing but I can’t buy into the whole 'This is what racing games need' narrative. There’s so much room for improvement. $30 isn’t a bad price, but let’s be real: this game’s only standout feature is being a modernized time capsule. Coated old stuff that is. It doesn’t just need tweaks, it needs a whole-ass overhaul. The AI, the progression, the perks… all of it. I want rivals that evolve and learn with each race. I want team leaders and bosses to mean something beyond 'Here’s your cash and BP—now go buy a mediocre custom car.

It’s always daring to square off against a beloved game, but I’d hate myself if I didn’t try. I need this game to be better. Truly better.

★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

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I profoundly believe Leila is one of the few games with the gravitas to back up the story it tells yet it’s also true that it ends just as it starts to pick up. A difficult balance to strike, certainly, but for a game that can be completed in an hour (and 100% in 2-3 hours), it leaves much to be desired.

That said, Leila should not go unnoticed. The game begins at a desk in the year 2047 (did you notice 2047 is closer to 2025 than 2025 is to 2002?), featuring one of the prettiest menus I’ve seen in a while. From there, you relive fragmented memories in a virtual setting that functions like a "Mind Forest," akin to Sherlock’s palace. As you progress, the experience becomes increasingly gamified or so the game claims.

The puzzles are solid, though I never felt Leila fully found its footing. It dabbles in a bit of everything:

Verbal reasoning puzzles (familiar even to survival horror fans) are essentially deductive challenges, you can track back to Layton or Phoenix Wright. One of those puzzles will be tied to the tale of Layla and Majnun which was interesting to see. Then there are formal operations like the Towers of Hanoi, tied to an achievement requiring "fewer" moves implying you must deduce a more economical solution. However, I feel like the developers fail to communicate what "fewer" actually means.

Side note: For that achievement alone, I spent over half an hour. Mechanically, the solution can be parsed out (around 40-42 moves). If that is the case though, I am unsure how many people will be familiar to this concept to do the whole equation of it so I'd be glad if the amount of ''fewer'' amounts could be included in the achievement description.

Environmental puzzles range from perception-based challenges (Pareidolia) to aligning objects that mirror parts of Leila’s life, assembling geometric shapes symmetrically, or simple point-and-click "hidden objective" puzzles—sometimes evoking Myst, other times Unpacking. These rely on inductive reasoning (provisional generalizations), demanding observation, guesswork, and verification (think Machinarium or Fez). They can be easier to imitate than deductive puzzles in certain contexts.

Abductive puzzles, sadly, are not really a part of ''a bit of everything''. While some logicians consider abduction a form of induction, it’s its own beast, delivering immense satisfaction when executed well (see Return of the Obra Dinn, Baba Is You, The Witness). Why compare this bite-sized game to those? Because curiosity is central to puzzles, often boiling down to: What is plausible? It has to revolve around that very question. Given the studio’s resources, if this is their answer, I’m happy to experience it. As a debut from a three-year-old studio, Leila oozes plenty of character but I can’t help but feel it could’ve leaned more into reasoning and less into brute force, given the narrative it’s trying to tell.

I wouldn’t want Leila to be seen as a "games for impact" bait. It has a clear, direct message (as it should), and I'd like to believe it’s empowering to women. However, its theme — facing problems (you can delay them, but never escape) feels one-dimensional. Not that you should doubt Leila, but her life is presented in sterilized vignettes. Are the parts always greater than the sum? I can’t say, because the mundanity of life and coming to terms with it is a process, one that can’t be shaken off in five minutes. I'd vouch that one could live a happy (as in eudaimonic) life even when they are stressed out daily and lack hedonia. This, however, is never fully explored and what we are left with is the parts with the belief that Leila has figured the things out somehow. It’s implied that this is achieved through self-forgiveness and solidarity (which the latter you’ll see in the final cutscene, though it’s much less explored). However, due to time constraints, it ends up feeling rather rushed.

I still do appreciate how the game tries to convey (hence gamify) this process: you repeat mundane tasks while Leila, visually depressed, moves slower, takes longer, and complains just like we all do. Yet, it still feels underdeveloped. And, perhaps this is just me, but I don’t understand why we’re solving a Hanoi or connecting wires as neither feels story-driven (even if I were to claim as such I still would be unable to state their impact on the ongoing narrative). When rules aren’t clearly established (like with the towers), it’s easy to feel lost (due to lack of contextualization) and get frustrated.

There’s a hint system that nudges without fully revealing solutions, but sometimes it’s arbitrarily blocked. A missed opportunity: why not block them out when Leila is depressed, framing them as a "Get your ♥♥♥♥ together" mechanic? The inconsistency itself is puzzling though even the whole concept of arbitrariness has been explored in puzzle games with a Brechtian lens (Baba Is You, again), so who am I to say anything? Additionally, in a game explicitly framed as a gamified experience, I'd be lying if I didn't say I expected more play with memories' malleability.

The hand-drawn art and animations are jaw-dropping, rocketing the game to the sky immensely. The dialogue, too, is grounded and relatable. Voice acting is great and the translation is actually done well. Any non-Turkish player (who more or less went through familiar stages in their teenage life) wouldn’t feel as alienated, since the in-game texts and jokes are appropriately translated into colloquial language. However, there are also a few nods that Turkish players would understand and grasp better which seems inevitable due to the culture.

The passion is there, all visible, and burns therein but it’s the studio’s job to steer players toward critical thinking not through solely didacticism (not to say it shouldn't be didactic but Leila isn’t necessarily preachy either), but through design. Had it leaned closer to What Remains of Edith Finch, I’d understand, but the best puzzle games linger in your mind. They have to live rent-free. That’s always the goal.

All that said, Leila has clever ideas, much like Leila herself has clever drafts in her notebook. There’s wit here; easter eggs that made me smile (cough Death Stranding and Tetris Effect Connected), a wholesome early-2000s setting, and an amiable soundtrack. All in all, you can fit in so much within an hour.

ps: Screenshots are good indicators of the game and they constitute 95% of what you'll be working with.
There is body horror in some gameplay sections but the game lets you skip them.
All the achievements are missable.
You can pet the cat. He's a grumpy one though.

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

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Atomfall sets itself apart from Rebellion’s usual catalog by dropping you straight into an unknown, hostile world. If that sounds familiar, it should but what makes it stand out is how it handles player choice. When dealing with the Quarantine Zone, your options boil down to the classic "Embrace it, nuke it, or ♥♥♥♥ it." Yet, no matter what you'd pick, the goal remains the same: escape.

Rebellion markets the game as a ''Survival-action'' and I don't usually suspect the dev tags. At first where I thought it would be something more akin to We Happy Few it turned out to be a sandbox action-adventure and while it's great at that most of the ingame systems are rather shallow (nevertheless still fun). The internet had the game wear its Fallout and STALKER inspirations proudly, but its real charm lies in clue hunting and open-ended problem-solving. It's more Chernobylite but even more open-ended where you piece together the story bit by bit and tackle obstacles your own way. If you love unraveling mysteries at your own pace, this is your jam. Better yet, you can finish the game however you want. That may mean doing almost everything or skipping a large portion of the game.

It still is a compact experience. My playthrough took 11 hours (with nearly everything done, minus one questline), and that's with some save-scumming (which is what we all do, right?) You could probably see all of it in under 20 hours. The in-game timer barely clocked 8 hours, though. There’s a speedrun achievement for finishing in under 5 hours, which is already plenty as you can already finish the whole thing under a hour without the much need of a guide. I suspect everything's doable in one playthrough (minus the speedrun, obviously) if you can manage your saves.

The main objective is straightforward: power up the Interchange. You need 4+2 atomic batteries (four for the sectors, two for the finale). At first, that sounds like a tough quest, but it’s not—big bad enemy robots drop them frequently, and once you get a trusty weapon and exploit their weak points (which is disappointingly easy), fights last barely a minute. You can kill traders and loot their batteries if you’re feeling like a good ol' sob. While I appreciate the agency, it somehow makes things feel reductive. Trading is an option and I do love trading and all, but why bother when violence gets the job done faster? Traders mostly reside in isolated places and I didn't face any real repercussions after killing them.

You get four handcrafted maps full of landmarks to explore (have not tried but I suspect you can sequence break). World design is excellent, offering multiple approaches. Questlines usually have more than two solutions (through NPCs or fighting your way in/out or trying to see if there's another area which you could utilize). It lets you mess around and I adore that.
The Interchange however is the highlight, evoking STALKER’s labs with its eerie, curious nature. It has some wings to explore and those were some of the intense moments of the game even if they are mostly optional. You never feel like you’re wasting any time even when you know that the questline you’re currently doing won’t be the one you’ll thrive for in the end.

Inventory space is tight, very tight to the point where you can't even stack items. But in a game this small, it surprisingly works. It forces you to prioritize (to spend them fast above anything else), though you’ll rarely run out of crafting materials if you explore adequately. This is a central core mechanic to STALKER already but in a huge map where you must organize things for over 50 hours is one thing and to do that in Atomfall is completely another. Luckily things are lighter here and not as tedious. There is no fast travel but it's a closed-world which you can sprint in about a few minutes. You tremble, your heart beats like a hammer (not a Metric reference🤞) but you won't stop sprinting! Unlike many of the open-world hugeass games you can sprint as much as you'd like. It's good as I can guarantee you this game is a backtracker's wet dream (isn't really tougher than any avg. survival horror).

Enemies do respawn (except some infected enemies like Thralls in the Interchange I believe), but most threats are trivial once you’re armed. The real danger? Those bullet-sponge Thrall bastards slowly lumbering toward you, everything else is cannon fodder. Unfortunately, the lack of enemy variety doesn't really help it. There are two types of infected, two types of big robots, three factions (Druids/Outlaws/Protocol Soldiers). There are swarm enemies (bugs, bats, rats) which would occasionally show up and don't present any real threat.
ps: You can't side with the Outlaws. They are your typical baddies.

The lack of fast travel combined with respawning enemies though.. It results in something quite unfortunate. That is wanting to skip the enemies if not the entirety of the whole level as you wouldn't want to waste resources (which is far more evident with the enemies like Druids who are easy to kill but doesn't drop bullets and melee is more inconvenient) and/or let them distract you from your objective. I get them wanting the map to be more vivid while also posing a threat but it still ends up being a problem. Respawning enemy patrols are fine but enemy camps should have not been respawned. On top of that, I must reiterate how easy is it to fight. You just sit on your ass and snipe everyone including those damns robots which can melt you in miliseconds if you stick to their asses but can't do ♥♥♥♥ if you stand still only a few meters away. All of a sudden the game becomes a worse Sniper Elite.

While I loved connecting the dots, the story left me cold. It’s more about the situation than emotional and moral stakes. You get snippets of lore from notes, but the characters’ motivations feel thin. There are six endings, but the finale is chaotic—mostly, once again, a mad sprint through areas you’ve already seen. It's kinda anticlimactic. The characters you’ll be in cahoots with are very stereotypical but that’s what you get with soldiers, scientists, and delusional people, eh?

Combat is serviceable. Early guns feel appropriately weak but never unfair (meaning your bullets don't travel to the fkn moon). Melee is fun but gets overwhelming as you move close to the endgame. You have your kick to stagger enemies and it does put a distance but to close that distance you'd need to play more aggressively which doesn't always work (unless you spam in cycles). Stealth is barebones and that's really it. Yup, this is one of those games where enemies have eyes on their back.

Puzzles could’ve been better, but as an action-adventure game (at the face value), it checks the right boxes. The sandbox elements give you freedom, but the RPG (there are no skill checks etc.) and survival mechanics (don't expect to feel the tension of mitigating hunger, thirst, sleep etc.) are certainly shallow, possibly hurting replay value. I don't insist on replayability but seeing Atomfall is ''done and gone'' suits better anyway.

On the plus side, it’s well-optimized, capturing rural England’s atmosphere nicely. Voice acting is neat, and the customizable difficulty is a standout feature. You can tweak combat, exploration, and survival separately, even being able to adjusting enemy behavior (aggression, accuracy, etc.). Survival settings affect loot scarcity and trading from what I was able to gather, exploration is probably the most important one as it lets you disable navigational hints, waymarks, hell, the whole compass.

Atomfall never digs deep, but it’s a solid experiment which deserves its flowers. At €50, given today’s AA pricing, it’s forgivable enough. If you’re craving a compact, choice-driven adventure with a retro-apocalyptic vibe, it’s worth a look.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
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This game gnawed at me—not because it lingered in my thoughts, but because I kept convincing myself I must have missed something. That I was the numb one. And that’s the most infuriating part. In a way, I was compulsed into thinking what was not unfolding before my eyes.

First, some context: Compulsion has been in this industry for over a decade, yet they’ve only released three titles. When I played Contrast as a teenager, I recognized its jank, its staged moments, but I also saw something clever, warm, and painfully underappreciated. Guillaume Provost’s vision may not have fully crystallized, but it was a short, sweet, and oddly charming experience.

Fast forward to today. The ongoing narrative is that industry is bloated—$80 price tags (we are really there huh), open-world excess, the relentless sprawl of "more" at the cost of meaning, games bloating themselves to death only to increase the cost of development and the effort that's put in. Yes, I crave tighter, more focused games just like this. But not exactly like this, you know. South of Midnight (SoM) understands its scope, yes. It’s self-aware, unfolding over a single day, steeped in urgency. Yet, for all its aesthetic ambition, it feels like a relic—a PS3-era curiosity without the conviction of its predecessors. Think of Puppeteer, Heavenly Sword, Dante’s Inferno, even Tokyo Jungle. All stuck in that era. None were revolutionary, but they had identity, some bizarre ideas. They left marks. SoM, on the other hand, is the kind of game you forget within days, only to vaguely recall years later—not with nostalgia, but with a shrug. Oh, right. That existed. I felt that as soon as I grabbed the game which is a shame because it plays overly safe and still seemingly underperforms.

How did we regress from Contrast’s light-and-shadow puzzles to… pushing boxes and carts? A mechanic so tired it was memed heavily after Uncharted 4, a game that, at least, justified its simplicity with cinematic flair, grounded storytelling, and still a dozen of intricate puzzles. SoM offers none of that evolution. Its mechanics are skeletal: a handful of underbaked abilities with no weight, combat that’s neither punchy nor thrilling, and a "challenge" that boils down to getting cornered by off-screen mobs while locked onto a single enemy. This isn't progress - it's stagnation. A misguided attempt to recreate Contrast's magic in a zeitgeist that has long moved on.

I wanted to forgive the combat. Nailing melee systems is hard. But SoM falters in nearly every other department, save two:

Optics – The stop-motion aesthetic is stunning, a dying art resurrected with care. But here’s the irony: it’s too effective. The choppy animation triggered headaches, and the occasional frame-rate dips (especially in Chapters 5–7 and 10–11) turned play sessions into endurance tests. Thankfully, the option to disable the effect exists, a small mercy to improve my gameplay and ease distress. I appreciate trying to impletent such a technique but once I couldn't hold on to that gimmick, I felt like all was lost. To me, it was a bit too much and I rarely get motion sickness.

Soundtrack – Some blues, some honky tonk, bits of jazz. This game, for real, has some of the best pieces of an original score. It's woven to its gameplay so neatly that simple chase sequences, boss fights, even quiet platforming stretches are elevated by the music.

But these strengths are betrayed and underminted by the rest which is the exact skeleton of the game: its gameplay. The world is pretty, yes, albeit lifeless. You’ll scavenge currency for trivial upgrades, skim forgettable collectibles, and endure platforming that never evolves beyond its first few initial hours. Hazel’s traversal abilities feel static—no fluid combos, no chaining stuff,no synergy with combat, just stiff, functional movement. Puzzles? Push this push that. Use Crouton (your Tonberry-like little doll guy) to reach a ledge. Repeat.

Combat is a slog of dodge-poke-unravel cycles. No parries, no blocks—just awkward crowd control in claustrophobic arenas. The "unravel" mechanic (a finisher that acts like a finisher which restores slivers of health) feels pointless. Ghostwire had a similar execution style in which you were able to blast your opponents with a wider range and finish multiple opponents at a time. I was not a fan of it but seeing this, oh my. I called Hellblade 2's combat an on-rail swordfighting (which was) but it was nevertheless a spectacle. Here, when we have Kena at hand, I don't know anything. It's good for nothing.

Even the escape sequences lack high stakes. I didn’t realize what was chasing me until six chapters in—a formless fog-like entity, devoid of anything like Alan Wake’s oppressive dread. Just… run. Platform as usual. Repeat. Nothing intense if it was not for the BGM. The bosses are not half bad but very generic stuff. The final boss is overwhelming and incredibly anticlimactic, it just spawns waves of mobs that you've been fighting since day one. During my playthrough one of the bosses (Molly) was bugged and softlocked progression, adding insult to injury, but instead of reloading I just skipped the boss fight, hurray! It did save me of replaying a boring fight! Accessibility has gone too far to skip an entire game to question yourself at a point why am I even playing it but I am not against it. Because, hey, it worked in my favour. So, you can skip any combat, escape sequences and pretty much anything in-between besides going from A to B.

And then, the story. The heart of this Southern tale. Surely, this would salvage the experience? No. The game leans hard into [shared generational] trauma, south folklore, and macabre, but its themes fray like old rope. Hazel’s journey is undercooked, her potential squandered. Jellyfish, her oddball yet amusing companion ends up with no closure. Even Hazel’s mother and grandmother, central to the emotional core, feel like sketches.

SPOILERS AHEAD -regarding the ending

The ending is where the threads fully snap. Hazel reunites with her mother (lost in a hurricane) and accepts that some wounds can’t be fully seen or healed—a metaphor for her role as a Weaver (that bottles pains?), yes, but also a clumsy nod to generational trauma. Her grandmother, who committed some atrocities to save her daughter (like ripping heart of an innocent creature), confesses her envy of mundane joys (like "There’s a child in this car" signs gut her). It’s a raw, human moment which often is hard to convey—until another character offers her a Morpheus-style cop-out: the illusion of her child’s return. A delusion to numb the pain. She accepts. What the ♥♥♥♥?

After all this—the suffering, the confronting, the unraveling—the message is… give in to the lie? The house collapses (no clue why), Hazel escapes, and she promises her mother "so much to tell"—but there’s nothing left to say. Credits roll! It's dumb as rocks.

I really can't puzzle out how this game critically placed alongside the PS3-era titles I mentioned—or even newer releases like Atomfall or Khazan. It reminds me of all the Recore again only prettier and safer.

SoM is a tapestry with gorgeous threads and no pattern. It looks like art. It sounds like art. But peel back the veneer, and you’ll find a game that makes you want to punch a hole in your wall—a game that mistakes aesthetic for depth, folklore for meaning, and trauma for storytelling which is all too similar. Getting stigmatized as some might claim. I wanted a game that is lyrical but SHARP, melancholic but BITING. This ain't it chef.

As much as I dislike how SoM was directed I would not want Compulsion Games to suffer heavily from it. There are hints of creativity for sure. However, I also feel like it's not gonna getting actualized under Microsoft's roof.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

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Khazan is a beast of a game, a sleeper hit like its sister Stellar Blade, and another banger in S.Korea’s growing lineup of stellar (pun intended) soulslikes. NEXON, in their words ''home to world's most popular online games'' probably mostly known by CSO and Maplestory, needed a strong single-player entry to bolster its library. With Khazan, Neople delivered their first chef's kiss.

Set in the Dungeon & Fighter (DnF) universe (which I’m less familiar with therefore can't comment accurately on the lore), Khazan’s story is straightforward but slightly hamstrung by its soulslike structure. Like most in the genre, it relies on environmental storytelling and collectible lore snippets—effective, but ultimately limited in scope. The narrative hinges on the holy trifecta of love, friendship, and treachery (treason to be exact), yet it feels like it should have unfolded in real-time through playable game sections in flashbacks or whatever to showcase the earlier imperial politics and the bond between Khazan and his friends & men under his command. A true ending locked behind dialogue choices and conditions unlocked with collectibles doesn’t help. Still, the world is rich enough to warrant a prequel (surely we will get a sequel) if not in games at least in other media.

Since it's a soulslike with some good ol' HnS coating, we're mostly here for the gameplay. There's a sort of endoxa in the genre—the idea that these games aren't meant (and shouldn't be) for everyone. I partially agree, but something not being for everyone doesn't automatically mean it has to be inaccessible. I frankly believe Khazan sidesteps elitism not only by including an easy mode but rewarding those who dares to 'attempt'. Challenging a boss rewards you with lacrima even in failure (the 'souls' equivalent currency) to help you level up. Respecs are free and you can relatively farm gear faster as in it doesn't turn into a grind-hell. But it does so by borrowing a trick from Nioh which being able to challange phantoms who you mostly are able to defeat them with the help of environment. You can repeat levels(missions) and replay from any checkpoint to check up on what you've missed, everything is documented in the menus. You can summon and upgrade your summon as well as upgrade your damage/damage multiplier as well as lacrima gain and health recovery. It's quite good to go on a collectible hunt to be rewarded with bunch of incredible passives.

Levels are cool and I would say they really start to shine in the last third of the game which is quite unfortunate because I had that feeling the team gained so much experience by then and it really started to show up. Nothing against the earlier levels and any good designer probably retouches them in some sort before the full release but they are quite straightforward. The last level of the game includes some platforming even and is almost a spiritual successor to Anor Londo and the game has its own Sen's Fortress. Will they be equally iconic? Probably not but they are fun to go through! Since it's not interconnected I'd expect slightly larger areas a la Dark Souls III but they did a good job nevertheless. They are full of traps, surprise attacks, illusions, almost every trick in the playbook of a FromSoft game. But it doesn't just 'imitate' stuff it crafts it to its own blend and create something special. As any good soulslike you learn the game by 'doing' stuff which is often messing around.

There is a hub world with NPCs, and you’ll occasionally find a bard in some levels where you can purchase exclusive items—only after encountering them there can you buy those items in the hub. Other NPCs are scattered around the levels, some offering items, others leading to optional side content, though they’re not as fleshed out as in FromSoft’s. I must say I don't like this 'dead/alive' (mirrored) world distinction which makes some of the NPCs unavailable and you need to go through a portal every time, feels arbitrary and unnecessary.

You can dismantle gear (I’d love a way to sort duplicates—it becomes a minigame spotting them) for Lacrima. You can also re-roll gear attributes at the cost of some Lacrima. Then there are jars—yes, jars—which you can turn into equippable, emoticon-like jars (weird, I know, is there a lore behind this to at all?). The "Jar Guy" sells boss materials in limited quantities (also farmable) and offers lanterns that guide you to collectibles or reveal illusory walls. These feel a bit reductive, but since they’re optional, they also do help building game towards being more accessible.

The bosses are mostly high-quality, though many side bosses are reskins with slightly a larger health pool. They’re still a solid challenge, and since side levels are tighter, more cramped, and shorter, they lack but hey, you get to play more of the game and at least get story/lore bits out of those missions as well as more material. There are 16 main bosses, nearly all exceptional except for a few debatable ones that feel like attrition tests rather than skill checks, but fixes (hitbox tweaks, stat adjustments) could easily improve them. Me? I wish they were reworked because they hurt the rythm. That said, bosses demanding environmental and situational awareness. The final two? Pure spectacle. Incredible incredible stuff. And what I like the most is Neople's bosses are readable enough to predict and couse correct when needed, adjust on-go. I think that became difficult with ER especially Erdtree although it still had dynamic fights some of them required you to almost have a precognition. That's completely another story but to some I know it's a prominent issue. Parts of Khazan suffers (if that's the word from it) from delayed follow throughs trend (you can grab skills for to increase the time windows btw) but I still feel its very fair and mostly telegraphed in a decent manner. Decent enough to give you a frame where you can regen stamina (which is an important aspect of the game) and consume stuff, creates more openings etc. so all in all I do believe Khazan is in a good spot where it's just not a reaction check but an actual skill check where it does add variety.

At first, I thought the combat was subpar and slow, but once clicked—especially after unlocking skills and gear bonuses—it became addictively satisfying. The arsenal is limited to three weapons (spear, greatsword, dual-wield), so don’t expect ER-level build freedom. But the responsive combat more than compensates, and the javelin adds fun ranged options. You have your usual parry and counterattack (very similar to Sekiro's Mikiri) options to sweeten the combat further. My only real problem is the Phantom mode (similar to DMC's Demon Form or GoW's Spartan Rage). It helps you to survive&reposition but you can't upgrade its damage&duration before first unlocking a skill which immediately turns you into the said form before death. That's BS and that skill asks for 7 whooping points. Cmon Neople, player agency yk.

I dig the cell shaded art style it really pops. Optimization is smooth. Camera is often good and works well against the big enemies (the issue with the certain dragon is not necessarily the camera but how you are only able to lock in a specific location and how elevated it hitbox is) A certain dragon fight also begins with a choir and the spinning camera. Sounds familiar? It's hard to nail such a spectacle for a studio with their first try. I appreciate the effort even though I was disappointed with the actual fight. The OST is some strong selection, too.

Khazan sits alongside Lies of P and Stellar Blade as a top-tier non-FromSoft soulslike. But here’s the truth: it’s critically underrated just like the other two. It might just be my favorite soulslike outside Miyazaki’s catalog. An early contender.

★★★★½☆
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