Recent reviews by Tomxj

Just... wow.

I got this as a gift from my father and I have to say its quiet lovely. I found it best when played with other people huddled around the screen looking for things to poke and prod.

If you ever have been a fan of the 'where's Wally?' books as a child or enjoy the reactivity of days gone past flash adventure games from the likes of Amita Designs then I would recommend whiling away a slow afternoon with 'Hidden folks'.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler, to my surprise I really enjoyed. It was just the right length for its complexity, always throwing slight variations on what are very solid mechanics to keep you on your toes. The way the levels are linked via a text driven narative across the landscape was also really well done, and it even had boss battles! If, like me, you've had it sitting on your steam library for a while due to bundles etc, give it a ago.

Creepy as hell and crushingly depressing, i'm not knocking it, in fact its great, But its a game that playing through feels like a hollow victory.

I Suppose its apt, but i'm not sure if i actually enjoyed Lone Survivor, I'm glad i played it though.

Maybe if i had played it a bit different things would have looked up?

Borderlands 2 is epic. The art direction, gunplay, stupid (stupid) humour, skinner box mechanics, co-op and over-the-top set pieces all come together for a real pantomime of a game complete with one of the best video-game villians ever.

Overall i thought Reasonance was trying the limits of the ags engine though. Controlling four charaters was clunky, and i did find the sections where you only had two characters to interact with flowed alot better. Saying that the narative definately benifited from a party of four, and after the 'jump' (so to speak) it got really, really good! With the ending being handled extremely well with no pretentions of a sequel. A complete, rounded story arc.

Another thing I found a bit hit and miss were the more tactile puzzles where you had to move the mouse cursor around a maze, or slide pieces into a puzzle, some were great and others were just frustrating (Cut the rope puzzle i'm looking at you).

So would I recommend Reasonance? Yes. But not to someone new to ags adventure games, there are plenty of games I'd recommend first, such as Gemini Rue or perhaps Blackwell deception. But if you can get over its slightly clunky controls there's a brilliant piece of interactive fiction in Reasonance, with some real gut punching twists and turns.

Its nearly 3am, I’ve just completed Antichamber and my brain literally aches.

If Alan Fletcher, Bridget Riley and Spike Milligan had got together to a made a game I think Antichamber would be close.

It’s brilliant, the difficulty level is just right to let you find your feet before stonewalling you with another puzzle. I found it to be have less ‘eureka’ moments than expected, instead the game slowly expanded your toolset so that you always had something new to try, whether a new gun (of which there are 5) or piece of information on how the weird and wonderful world worked.

In all the hype up to its release, I was expecting more illogical puzzles and weird happenstances. This is not the case, the world definitely has a set of well defined rules, they’re just generally used in a more ‘left field’ and ‘outside of the box’ context.

Apart from the gorgeous art, loveable life assuring messages and abstract Eno-esq soundtrack, my favorite parts of the game were the Easter egg rooms the developer must have left dotted and hidden about. They act like DVD extras giving a player who is willing to look a greater insight into the game, these included screenshots from old versions, a gallery of assets, wire frame models, a weird flowchart, and other more abstract areas… I’m especially curious about those little purple cubes that were placed in hard to reach areas.

Completed Thomas was Alone in the week. It’s my 2012 Game of the year hands down. Thomas reminded me a lot of portal strangely enough, with the difficulty level going up as the game progresses by adding new elements to the puzzles usually in the shape of a new character to control that has a different ability that'll help the party to the end goal.

While the game is happily plodding along you're also subject to a brilliant narrative with some of the best characterisation I have seen in video games. Yes the Characters are only colored squares and rectangles but the story plays up to that so well. Music is top notch as is the general aesthetic of the visuals.

Absolute Masterpiece, I highly recommend it

(Its also my first 100% achievment game, yey!).

Gemini Rue took me by the left earlobe kicking and screaming into its traditional early 90s style adventure and told me i couldn't leave until i'd FINISHED it. 9 hours later i emerged.
The game is utterly compelling, at its heart Gemini Rue is a piece of detective Fiction. Its a narative driven scifi noir piece that's punctuated by a series of logical puzzles using the enviroment, conversation, your inventory and an ingame wolrd database. The World is heavly inspired by noir scifi such as blade runner, akira or Renaissance, and each screen is oozing with atmostphere. Gemini Rue is a rare game that gets everything just right, every element complements each other perfectly; the graphics, charaterisation, setting, narative, interface, aethetic, sound, puzzles and pacing, all boils down to a game that knows exactly what tone of voice its projecting. If you ever get a day of uninterupted game time, i'd highly recommend this very well executed piece.

Torchlight does not f**k around. It’s a simple hack n’ slash loot fest of a game, not trying to do too much but what it does do it executes perfectly and with precision. Designed by a team of veteran action RPG developers, it’s the kind of game you sit down to play for ten minutes in the evening and then all of a sudden you’re late for work in the morning. It’s a hyperactive, quick rewarding, tight production, that will get you blasting goblins like a Skinners pigeon in order to get that next unique item.