Recent reviews by jArmAhead

It's charming, engaging, and kept me coming back for nearly a hundred hours.

My only qualms was with the combat. It's a bit clumsy and simple, but it's fine.

I'd love a handheld version because I'd probably come back to it more.

I've played about 10 minutes of the game. Listening to the first song on my Audiotechnicas has been blissful, nearly religious experience. I cannot wait to play more, and that experience alone was worth the $20. Cannot wait for more. I know this is a bad "review" but I cannot stress enough how good this game sounds. Not just the music, but everything. And I have very expensive headphones and I know what you're thinking: this isn't an audiophile game. But man, the way it sounds is incredible. PLAY WITH NICE HEADPHONES AND BE AMAZED.

Ori and the Blind Forest is one of the first games in quite a while to completely capture my attention. It's visuals, score, and subtle story telling serve as an excellent draw to a demanding, precise, and incredibly rewarding platformer.
As the game opens up, you start with a basic collection of platforming abilities, but over time the gameplay becomes rich with options. By the end, you are juggling nearly a dozen abilities to get through increasinly challenging levels, many with their own environmental mechanics that play off of your character's abilities rather cleverly. Driven along by the game's stunning aesthetic and wonderful music, the came keeps all your senses occupied.
There are some minor quirks to the gameplay. The control scheme could use some tweaking, or at least allow for customization. Some of the visual element, particularly the bloom and attack effects, tend to obscure the action a little too much, especially in combat. It's frustrating when you can't see enemy projectiles because the air between you and them is filled with blue energy.
There are a few incredibly demanding, lengthy sequences that may not be to some players' liking. You will probably die a lot and the sequences, for those not especially good at platforming, can take a long time to complete, despite the actual sequence in full taking maybe a minute to complete. These sequences also tend to be very trial and error based, juxtaposed by a very easy to read level design philosophy throughout the normal areas of the game.
My last issue with the game is probably my biggest. You cannot return to the game once you complete it. So if you want to 100% everything, do it when you get all the abilities from the trees. It's fairly easy and rewarding to find all of the hidden locations and orbs so I do recomend it.
Overall, I found this game to be thouroughly enjoyable, gorgeous to look at, and extremely touching. I normally cannot stand 2D platformers, but the art and intro was enough to convince me to give it a try. I'm extremely glad I did and I've grown an appreciation for the genre that wasn't there before.

It's Good. I'm posting this to get rid of the review at the top of the store page.

A neat little game, with a relatively entertaining concept but lackluster execution. The lack of feedback and issues with "slack" and the like just don't let the game flow as much as you'd hope.

This game is excellent! In short: Banished is a well crafted city-builder with a smartly designed interface, lots of options, and decent element of depth. Simply put, it's much like SimCity but in terms of scale it's much more like the old Stronghold games.

If you're a fan of the genre, Banished is a great modern option. While similar to Sim City, it's less about the broad picture, and moves at a slower pace. It's much more like Stronghold especially in that much of what happens is based on real units moving independently of your control. As a result, placement and distance are somewhat larger concerns, and the number of citizens is EXTREMELY important. One bad winter can staunch growth and make survival difficult due to upkeep.

One of the best aspects of the game is the UI. It's very robust, relatively attractive (if maybe a bit aesthetically discordant with the rest of the game), and most importantly highly customizable. The ability to tailor the UI to your preferences and even to your present projects makes the game much more enjoyable. The ability to contextually control jobs on a per-building basis is also really useful. No need to figure out why a building isn't being worked, they go to another pane to add a worker to the pool, and then add a spot at the building in question, you can do all of that in one place: the building pane. I think there are a few things that could be added; such as a pane for build progress, agriculture yields, etc, to get that information all in a compact space, but you can easily get around most issues by just stacking windows where you want them.

Visually the game isn't exactly a tour de force, but it still looks very sharp and vibrant. The weather effects bring a welcome bit of variety, but some more biomes would be appreciated, both for visual variety and for some interesting potential gameplay twists.

This game is kind of broken, but with some tweaks you'll find some really well written and performed characters, a unique and peppy conversation system that gives you a short period of time to pick a branch, and fairly competent stealth mechanics makes for a really interesting Bond style adventure that captures the spirit of the classic spy movie better than just about any other game.