Recent reviews by CBreezy

I was initially worried that this DLC wouldn't do justice to the excellent Outer Wilds but thankfully I was wrong, this is a worthy expansion to the original game and I think that the devs did a damn good job coming up with some totally new gameplay ideas and breaking new ground. It's far from perfect though and I do think that many people have totally valid criticisms which you should consider before buying.

On the positive side; in a game already bursting with sights and sounds you can't see anywhere else, this game somehow managed to upstage the original setting with a truly awe inspiring new location, it really is something you don't see very often and it's huge! This new location, initially shrouded in shadow will reveal it's secrets one by one and there is a lot to discover here, not just on the surface level, there are secrets within secrets as you go deeper and it is truly the most satisfying of the puzzles in the game to solve once you finally put it all together. Not many games can pull off the sheer number of a-ha! moments this one did for me. There are plenty of head scratching puzzles but in the end they all work logically and consistently.

Having said all of that, this game is a serious tonal shift away from the original game and is honestly starts to feel more like a survival horror game than pure exploration, honestly I don't have many bars to measure this against since I'm not generally a fan of horror but this is a far more distilled kind of dread and terror, it really taps into your primal fears of dark unknown places and will make you fear every shadow. In fact I'd say that as a horror game this is above average, it really builds a seriously unsettling tone through music and lighting which is way more effective than any amount of viscera.

Midway through the game you will have uncovered more and more of the story and new gameplay mechanics but I have to admit that this is where things didn't hold up so well for me. There was a point where I was playing this and thinking I like this but I just don't know if it works well as an expansion, maybe it would of benefited from being it's own standalone game.

While trying to spoil as little as possible:

- Flying back to the new location repeatedly feels like a commute, it's not long but it's tedious and breaks the flow of exploration.
- Because you have to leave your ship to enter the new location you can't check your ship log and this can make keeping track of information very hard. Some of the clues left in the log aren't very good anyway so this compounds the issue.
- The lack of ties back to the original story is kind of disappointing and for some reason you can't tell even discuss what you find with any of the other characters except one and there is literally only one detail you can talk to them about.

That said if you are willing to fight through the fear then you will be rewarded by an excellent final puzzle which takes every new skill you have learned in order to beat (and incidentally allow you to mostly side-track the horror elements if you're not into that). The logic behind some of your "special abilities" for lack of a better term is fantastic and ties in well with the themes of the story. The ending is honestly touching, bittersweet and actually fills a role that wasn't fully addressed in the base game.

Can I recommend this expansion? Yes... but with caveats.

- Do you enjoy old sci-fi stories like Rendezvous with Rama where the characters try to uncover the story of a past alien civilisation with very little solid information to go on?
- Did you play Outer Wilds and think "This is great but I want more of the chills from Dark Bramble"?
- Do you want more of a challenge with tougher and more cryptic puzzles to solve than the base game?
- Are you used to commuting to work each day?

If so then I think you will find Echoes of the Eye a very satisfying experience.

The Outer Wilds has become one of my favourite games of all time. without going into spoiler territory I can tell you it's got all the right stuff; mysteries to solve, funny writing, flying, exploration, a gorgeous art style, a fantastic soundtrack... and heart. This game is a journey and it will take you to some far out places, but in a strange way it's all about getting back to where you just started, in a manner of speaking.

This game is not without it's downsides, there are a few but I can honestly say that this feels like a game that has really been carefully crafted to make the experience as fun as possible whether your new to it or returning after a long break.

As of writing this I have 66 hours in the game, I've played it from scratch twice and completed the all new expansion and I still love the heck out of it. It just doesn't get old for me, but it's difficult to know what exactly to put into the review because honestly this game is way more fun the less you know about it.

- Do you enjoy open world sandboxes where you have to decide where YOU want to go instead of following a set path?
- Are you fascinated by space and want to get out there and truly explore it for yourself without artificial barriers holding you back?
- Do you like some dry, witty writing in between deep existential mysteries?
- Do you enjoy time travel stories (with an added side dish of space-time breakage)?
- Are you tired of dull music in your video games and want something with a way more distinctive style and which actually compliments the gameplay AND atmosphere?

If you answered yes to any of these then The Outer Wilds may be for you!

I'd say the biggest downsides are the steep learning curve right at the start, learning to fly can be daunting but it's surprisingly straightforward and the Autopilot helps a lot when your still getting to grips with things.

I personally wish there was voice acting in the game, I think it would help make some of the interactions a lot more impactful and just generally elevate the storytelling to an even higher level but if you can handle some reading then it's not really a barrier to entry. I also think that it's honestly a reflection of how good the writing and the overall tone set by the music is that the emotional hits still work even without a single spoken word in the whole game.

The final note is that this game does have a few genuinely terrifying moments, but I'll tell you right now that they can all be overcome and are not [i[quite[/i] as scary once you demystify them.

If you're undaunted by this then grab your space suit and get out there!

Man what can I say, this game manages to improve on pretty much everything from the first game. Aiming has been completely revamped and that change alone makes the game so much more fun to play.

The graphics and animation are fantastic, even better than the original and there are ample opportunities to start chaos in the levels and use environmental hazards to your advantage. There's a great range of weaponry and the sound design and voice acting combine to make for some hilarious moments in amongst the crazy battles.

This is a short but highly entertaining game, it's got satisfying combat with a load of great weapons and ample opportunities to set up surprisingly brutal kills against a range of diverse enemy types. The voice acting is good in a hammy, chewing-the-scenery kind of way with some great cheesy dialogue, it's very clichéd but well executed. Animation and graphics are also really good and the game even holds up surprisingly well in 4K.

The problem is this is a game without discreet aiming, so basically you just shoot straight in front of you at all times. This affects the whole game and makes what would be pretty simple firefights very challenging, this is mitigated somewhat if you have grenades as they allow you to kill enemies slightly above and below you but it honestly really holds this game back in my opinion.

The game also loves to spam you and it sometimes ends up feeling like you can make one mistake, especially during the boss battles, which will leave you completely unable to react for a couple of seconds and you end up getting hit several more times while you recover, it feels like double (or triple) jeopardy.

I feel the game's character really makes up for this though, and really carried me through. It's not a deep, smart story but it keeps you going with with tons of pithy quips and plenty of dark humour.

Train Valley 2 straddles that gap between being a casual game to dip into and a more serious puzzle game which swallows hours of your day. The first few levels are very simple and relaxing to play, I enjoyed them as a nice 'cool down' game to finish off a hard day. However, the later levels start to get much more challenging and you will find yourself constantly having to micromanage your trains to stop them crashing or going to the wrong stations, and the less said about the levels where you will lose your precious 5 star rating if you pause the better... or worse yet not being allowed to bulldoze your old tracks to fix mistakes.

Overall it's a fun little game with a lovely art style and (mostly) fun mechanics, the music is very nice but there just need to be more tracks to avoid getting repetitive during longer play sessions. I've definitely enjoyed this game and the DLC and I will keep playing it for a while I think but the sheer amount of micromanagement in the later levels left me just wanting a signalling system to take care of controlling the trains so I think I'll be checking out something like Transport Fever 2 when it comes out.

This game is one part zen-like calm and tranquility and one part rage-inducing difficulty.

Honestly it's pretty damn good overall, the game is frankly beautiful and the world you get to explore is a selling point all on it's own, the way the puzzles are actually built into the world almost invisibly is sometimes astonishingly well done.

Another thing the game does nicely is teach you its mechanics. The basics are so simple you almost don't even notice that it's teaching you pretty much everything you need to know in the first few seconds. The problems start however when the game opens up and just lets you loose on the island as you can now explore in whatever order you want. This poses a bit of an issue because it's possible to find puzzles that you haven't learned how to solve yet. It's not a massive issue on it's own because you can just leave and come back later when you have found out what to do but it can be a bit frustrating after walking around for ages only to find yourself unable to proceed.

However, the big issue is that sometimes the game expects you to make a leap of logic that is just far, far to much to be deemed reasonable. Like deliberately breaking the rules it sets up halfway through the final puzzle in an area without warning, I won't spoil which particular puzzle I'm talking about but that unfortunately was one of the few areas I had to look up a walkthrough for.

I was actually able to complete nearly the entire game without resorting to guides, which I think is a hallmark of good puzzle game design and this game has probably given me more of those brilliant "Ahhh so that's how it works!" moments than any other game I've ever played. For that reason I'd definitely recommend it.

I really liked this game, it's chock full of character, humour and charm.

Good Points:

• The characters are really well animated, despite not having moving faces or even hands these characters can display a wide range of emotions very well.
  
• Great sound effects, the impact sounds are well mastered and have bite. Also while there is no voice acting in the game there are sounds from certain dolls that are particularly amusing.
  
• Great soundtrack, the music is really pleasant and really helps to set you in the world of the game. It's quite twee in places but it really suites the silent film aesthetic this game goes for, especially during the cutscenes.
  
• There are many characters and they all feel unique. In a game where nearly every character is also a collectible you get to really appreciate all the work that went into designing them all.
  
• Some great humour, there's plenty of slapstick and a fair bit of toilet humour as well but I like that kind of thing. Letting rip an enormous fart in a crowd and hearing everyone comically screaming in disgust and running away never gets old for me.
  
• There's loads to unlock in the game and loads of extra challenges to complete. While I'm sure it is possible to storm through this game in a few hours, if you just choose the straightforward solutions to puzzles so that you can complete the story, the real meat of this game comes in the extras. Going through the game and unlocking everything, doing every challenge and finding every unique character takes quite a bit longer.

Bad Points:

• Player movement feels quite stiff and lacks a proper feeling of momentum. Wierdly it takes a while to get up to speed but when you stop walking you just stop dead, changing direction is also very sluggish.
  
• Stacking into one particular doll in a crowd can be a pain because many of them may be highlighted but you don't know which one you'll end up stacking into.
  
• Sometimes the solutions to certain puzzles can be really obtuse and just downright unintuitive. There are also a couple of puzzles where 2 different solutions were pretty much the same in effect and some others which were very different but end up just counting as just one in the stats.
  
• The sound in the game can be glitchy, though this may just be me. There will be certain times where every sound effect except the music and background ambience will just stop or be replaced by crackling and pops in my headphones. This only happens quite rarely though.
  
• Getting around some of the later levels can feel like a chore. When you're trying to complete a level 100% you will quite often have to find a specific character to accomplish this, it can mean trekking halfway across the map to find them and then bring them to where you need them.

While it may seem that there are more bad points than good points I can assure you that the good easily outweigh the bad, this game is totally worth your time and money.

One of the most complex love hate relationships i've ever had with a game. Aesthetically speaking it's excellent, this is a good looking game and I love the period it's set in, the cars and the music all fantastic. The weapons have real bite, the cars have real weight and the voice acting has conviction. But this game is filled with litle ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ which on their own wouldn't bother me, but there are so many of them that it really bogs down the experience. The sparsity of checkpoints is easily the worst problem, the number of times i've been killed while behind solid cover is a joke and the car controls are far too twitchy, making a complete mockery of the game's fantastic physics model. What I really hate is that pretty much all of these problems feel like they could of been ironed out with a little more work from the developers, this is by no means a bad game but it doesn't feel like a polished product.

Usually I stay away from 2D sidescroller games, too retro for my taste, but i'm glad I didn't do that for Intrusion 2. It's just bloody amazingly good fun; huge boss battles and loads of weapons and really good visual style make this a great little game. It's totally worth getting.