Recent reviews by Archangel

As a friend of mine said, there are few games that can channel your inner Zen mode like ETS2. It's peaceful, rewarding, just challenging enough, and incredibly gorgeous. Update: still going strong after all these years. The continued support for the game is astonishing.

Fascinating, inscrutable, uproarious, harrowing, and utterly compelling. There is perhaps no finer story-generator is all of gaming. I'm fairly comfortable with the interface, but I still can't for the life of me find the button that tells me to stop playing and go to bed.

I have over a thousand games on Steam and all I really want to do is start another new game of Stardew Valley. It's sweet, funny, and surprisingly compelling. My play-time doesn't include the dozen of hours playing local multiplayer with my kids, which is even more fun than single-player, if that's possible. Easily one of my favorite games of all time.

I never wanted the game to end. What an absolutely, positively magnificent game, with excellent expansions to match. Everything about the world, the characters, and the story is absolutely inspired. I played Low Chaos, Ghost, and Clean Hands throughout -- I'm insufferably nice -- and the game and mechanics reward this approach with clever and satisfying gameplay. It is at the pinnacle of games of this type.

Wow, wow, wow, wow -- so many layers and little details. It's a master-class of showing, not telling, in gaming. Fantastic stuff.

Make sure you read some of the analysis after you play -- you may have missed some very interesting hints and details about the story and characters.

The game is comforting, thrilling, poignant, whimsical, and overwhelming in just the right amounts. The art style and visual direction are wonderful, the voices and sound design are brilliant, and the story and pacing are magnificent. The overall experience was extraordinary. And many manly tears of manliness were shed.

I strongly recommend that you play this game, if you haven't already.

I also strongly recommend that you hug your children and other loved ones.

Pure, unadulterated joy. I can think of no game in recent memory that makes me feel as happy as this game does. "Charming" does not even begin to describe it. It is a triumph of character and environmental design. Thank you, Amanita.

GRID's reputation as one of the best racing games is well deserved. As has been mentioned, it finds that perfect sweet spot between "arcade" racing and hard-core simulation and just goes flat out with it. The sheer variety in gameplay is also impressive. The tracks range from tight, city-based runs to wide-open racetracks to mountain roads, most with variations; the cars all handle quite differently, from open-wheel to stock to supercars; and the events can be straight laps, drift, downhill, demolition, and more. Even the same tracks can feel quite different when equipped with different classes of cars. The career mode is also lots of fun, ramping up the challenge in an appropriate way. Acquiring and managing new cars and sponsors was more fun than I expected.

I'm no racing guy, but it's amazing how much more of an experience this is from arcade-drive-gaming. It's the perfect combination of challenging and forgiving, and lots and lots of in-the-zone fun. Take some time with it and dig in; it's one hell of a ride.

It's a neat third-person hack/slash/magic-em-up with some customization and ARPG-ness to the loot and skill trees. The whole reason to play, however, is the world -- there's nothing quite like inhabiting Tolkien's works in a game. The lore is all there, and the speech is appropriately noble and lofty in all the best ways. The voice acting is fantastic, with a rogue's gallery of top-notch talent (Blum, North, Lowenthal, Freeman). The best is an absolutely stellar turn by John Patrick Lowrie (TF2's Sniper) as Beleram, arguably the most memorable character in the game. Quite satisfying.

I can't stop playing this game. Now I know how Baldur's Gate must have felt, lo those many years ago. The writing is excellent and the gameplay very satisfying. The years invested in its development really shows. It's widely adaptable to a variety of play styles, and it's well-suited to just diving in and making your own way through the world; no min-maxing required. It's the kind of game you think about when you're not playing it -- high praise indeed.