Recent reviews by Gamer_152

Portal: Revolution represents the height of fan games. Going back to the basics of Portal 2 and imagining how the opening levels might play out differently or how even well-trodden mechanics might be deployed in new manners, Portal: Revolution is a fresh take on one of the most revolutionary puzzle games of the last couple of decades. Graphically, the game shows Aperture Science in a more advanced state of dilapidation than ever seen before. Decaying but frequently open, the game's abandoned scientific metropolis is beautifully sublime.

With a dwindling player base and graphics built for ancient monitors, Puzzle Pirates is showing its age. Nonetheless, the puzzles are timelessly satisfying and the modes of play remain entirely unique for an MMO, even all this time later. A player-driven economy gives the users of the game empowerment over everything from ships to shops, and the pirate theme adds to the swashbuckling liveliness of sessions. There's still nothing else in the medium close to Puzzle Pirates.

A quirky, wonderful little game of drawing prompts and graphic tools.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a deeply vulnerable and honest game, and perhaps one of the best narrative-driven titles ever created. It's heartfelt and deeply moving, but goes beyond being a simple entertainment product, delivering subtle life lessons that are hard to swallow but compellingly argued. It also has some of the most detailed and enchanting environments of any game in the past few years. I cannot recommend Edith Finch enough.

Agents of Mayhem is riddled with flaws but it still deserves more positive attention than its gotten. It's an underproduced open-world romp with progression systems that aren't nearly developed enough. However, it's also a shooter RPG that feels smooth and freeing in your hands and that disposes with all the busywork that's long cluttered the genre. It doesn't have Volition's signature character and setpiece work but it is fierce competition against Borderlands and Destiny in terms of raw game feel.

It's hard to say that either Orwell's story or its interface is earth-shattering in any way, but put together they create an experience that's enough to keep you always running after what's around the next corner. As on-the-nose as it may be to call your game on state surveillance "Orwell", the narrative inside is more restrained and explores accurate and disturbing tactics used by state spies. You get the sense that the "choice" in the story is often somewhat an illusion, but maybe that's the point. It's a game that empowers you by letting you crawl inside peoples' PCs and phones while teaching you about privacy invasion and only once it's put you through the preset experiences it thinks are necessary does it let you decide what to do about this spy apparatus.