Murdered: Soul Suspect

Murdered: Soul Suspect

Operating System: PC/Mac/XboX/PS3
Website: Official Website

Rating: 7/10
Comments: This game. My god. I was so impressed with this. I really enjoy detective games, but they never really get them right. This game did. This is one of the best detective games I've played since Law&Order or Sherlock Holmes.

Let's begin by saying that the graphics are amazing. The cutscenes are like watching a movie like all next-gen games. I didn't expect to like it, but I loved the main character Ronan. He's such a gansta with swag, cracked me up. The main problem I had was that there seemed to be a lot of repeated character models, so I would be constantly confused by the random ghosts and NPCs wandering around thinking that they were Rex or Julia when they weren't.

The demons in this game were goddamn terrifying. That shrill cry they make when they first appear or when they spot you terrified me. Made me jump on more than one occasion. I did get more than frustrated with trying to dodge them though, ended up not being so sneaky and running through a whole bunch of them and getting killed more than once.

The other downside was that there was no in-game map and so I kept getting lost absolutely everywhere. Salem town is bloody huge too so that was fun, running around for 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get out of a back alley I had ran into.  I was also then disappointed by the lack of being able to fast travel anywhere (like a teleport save spot) because running around wasted a lot of time and took too long.

I liked the plot twist. I liked how it starts off as you trying to find out who killed you and ends up being a whole conspiracy of horrible murders and tragedies. At least it wrapped up nicely and had a good ending, if it had a bad one I don't think my heart could have taken it.

Law & Order Criminal Intent 2: Dark Obsession

Law & Order Criminal Intent 2: Dark Obsession

Operating System: PC

Website: Website page
Rating: 7/10
Comments: The graphics left more to be desired, but then again it is an old game. I liked how it had all the sound effects from the Law & Order show. The small bleep of your PDA could sometimes get lost in the action if you happened to be talking to a witness or travelling. And the amount of times the people called you about shit every time you didn't go directly to them after they called was ridiculous. There was also a small glitch that made item info boxes hover on the screen after you closed the PDA and the only way to get rid of it was to reopen the PDA and go to the item.

The plot was pretty much like playing through the tv show. You simply try to solve a murder in the city. It's probably one of the best detective games made and I enjoyed it a lot with the plot twists as per usual. While I was unhappy with the ending suspect it didn't change the fact that I had a lot of fun playing this game.

The gameplay was fairly standard of an adventure game, albeit slightly ambiguous. The cursor was a blue circle but when you could inspect something it glows a lighter blue. And some of those scenes were so goddamn fiddly with where you had to click. Dirt skid marks anyone? Geezus! It was good that a double click made Goren run because that fatass is slow! It also has a never-ending hint button in case you get stuck... which is me in every adventure game.

Machinarium

Machinarium

Operating System: PC
Website: Official Website
Rating: 5/10
Comments: Machinarium is a unique kind of adventure game. The graphics are really adorable, like real hand-drawn robots and all, that are animated to suit the story. The story is simply a "rescue your girlfriend" scenario. Some bad guys at the start messed up the robot king and you happened to get sucked out of the city and your girlfriend held hostage.

The puzzles in this game are sometimes hard, but most of the time they're just time consuming and annoying... like the arcade games. Oh. My God. The arcade games were the worst. And there's no skip so you just have to finish the puzzle or give up if you can't.

The best thing was that there was a hint for every new thing that you needed to do, so if you ever got really stuck you could hint to get an idea on what to do next. I sometimes just wished he would walk a little quicker though, or even a fast click to the next area would have been good. The slow walking to every scene kinda made me want to shake the game.

NEO Scavenger

NEO Scavenger

Operating System: PC
Website: Official Website
Rating: 7/10
Comments: This, once again, is a survival game that is still in beta stages. The basic story is this: you wake up in a cryotube with a name and a bank account number but remember nothing else about yourself. You can see lights of a city at night and so you go out in search for answers only to find that the world outside is in a post-apocalyptic state and has in general gone to shit.

I love this game. It's so damn hard to survive! I've died in so many, many different ways, recovered from sepsis only to be struck down by gastro and have also has my things stolen in my sleep and gone on a killing vendetta to get my stuff back. And yes, I have also resorted to cannibalism when I was starving. It wasn't a pretty sight.

I can't wait when they'll have different quests and all that. My main problem is that I still don't know how to save the game... so when I first got to the city I was simply looking for some iSlabs but it was late and I shut down my laptop only to find that it didn't autosave and I had to start again.

Project Zomboid

Project Zomboid

Operating System: PC
Website: Official Website
Rating: 8/10
Comments: I don't normally like zombie genre but this game warmed to me. Well, more like it warmed my hoarding. Because I am always that person who has to drop a healing potion to pick up another healing potion. I like raiding houses, chests and boxes for loot and this game. My god this game. The amount of loot lying in peoples houses is amazing at the best of times... and other times the curiosity can get you killed. Like I did. Many, many times. MANY times.

The intro says it all: There are no survivors. There is no hope of winning. This is how you die.

You have to run around and gather the necessary tools you need to make sure that you survive the zombie apocalypse which has ruined the world. I love this game to bits and it's only in beta testing. I can't wait until it has extra plot and features. So much to look forward to!

Artist Colony

Artist Colony

Operating System: PC
Website: BigFish page
Rating: 6/10
Comments: This game is rather reminiscent of a Virtual Villagers setting in that you can control each of your people, train them in different art styles and all that jazz. The biggest let down - just like with VV - is that after a while you have people maxed out and they're still complaining about the garden being run down. You just end up needing a ridiculous amount of cash to restore the colony and that's where I started to lose patience.

The story is what really keeps you playing though. The gameplay itself is rather tedious in the end but you do what you have to. The story is a nice step-brother rivalry for the affections of a girl; a story which happened exactly the same way with the brother's fathers and their mum.

Adera

Adera

Operating System: PC/Mac
Website: App page
Rating: 7/10
Comments:I played the trial of this because I had it on my laptop so I figured "why not?" and I had no idea what kind of game it was. Turns out it's a HOG, and it is rather snazzy too. Story is that your helicopter crashes, you can't really remember what happened until you make your way back to the wreckage and see that it's covered in ice and seaweed despite being over a desert.

Since you have this orb you go exploring and can open portals to a different land. I actually really liked this game, it was rather simple but I always prefer the adventure-based games more and this didn't have many HO scenes at all. I also got excited about the fact that you can get collectables and achievements (because it links to Xbox Live).

The only downside is that I have to pay to unlock more chapters, and this game has 5 of them :C

Doodle God

Doodle God

Operating System: Everything
Website: Official Website
Rating: 7/10
Comments:  This game is so addictive it's not even funny. I played it online first then couldn't help but buy it for my laptop. Such a simple game and yet it brings so much happiness. There is so much more content with the laptop one (well duuur) because you get quests, puzzles and artefacts that you can make.

Actually, the artefacts are really hard to figure out. I had to hint every single time because I got stuck all the time. The puzzles are pretty tricky as well. You only get a few elements and have to make certain things... I never got far in those ones.

I honestly can't count how many hours I wasted in this game. I imagine it would be great on a phone when waiting at airports. Great way to pass time and very entertaining.

Grim Tales: Bloody Mary

Grim Tales: Bloody Mary

Operating System: PC/Mac
Website: BigFish page
Rating: 3/5
Comments: Don't you just love when you find incomplete reviews in a random notepad on your laptop? Yeah, I don't either. But that's what this is... and I'm not replaying this so.... yeah... I half remember this game being kinda cool with the mirror world and all that jazz, but I don't remember enough of the gameplay to fix this review :C

The title screen was enough to make me excited about this game, but after playing Stray Souls the cutscenes seemed rather lacking.

The plot is this: your niece wants you to go pick her up because she's scared and the kids there are all acting weird. Damn creepy shadows kids... Turns out to be the "mirror kids", which of course are evil, have taken over the normal kids bodies and you have to defeat them.

 

The map feature. God I love those. Because NO ONE likes to walk back and forth and back and forth just to get a bloody paper clip or something stupid like that.

The Great Gatsby: Secret Treasure

The Great Gatsby: Secret Treasure

Operating System: PC
Website: BigFish page
Rating: 2/10
Comments: I seriously thought this game would be awesome and like the movie or something, or at least set in the same era? But no. Little glimpses into the past but not what I was hoping for in a game with "Gatsby" in the title.

You're some architect. That's right. An architect. Not a detective, not a paranormal investigator, not a secret agent. An architect. So anyway, you get called in to renovate the Gatsby mansion and then for some reason your flatmate gets kidnapped? I dunno, it's a bogus storyline.

The artwork was decent enough but compared to a lot of the new HOGs, it did seem a little dated and an older style. The game seemed to lag a little when travelling between screens (which you needed to do frequently) and by the end I just didn't care about the plot. This game was so mediocre that I doubt I'll even remember it soon.

Mermaid Swamp

Mermaid Swamp

Operating System: PC
Website: Official Website
Rating: 6/10
Comments: This one wasn't too bad... aside from the fact that I had to go through every single bad ending before I got the good one. Multiple endings give me the shits like that... especially when the characters don't need to die in the first place. :/

The story was really gripping in this one. The guy really thought it out. Mermaid legend turned ugly. And then creepy. And then so disgusting when you realise exactly how sick the truth turns out to be. This one is pretty badass, so I recommend just so you can also be like "OH WTF! This guy is SICK!"

The thing that got me was how much you had to walk from here to there, and since I had to play through 3 times before I remembered exactly where to save, I forgot what I was even meant to be doing most of the time. And the non-skippable intro killed me every time!

The chase scenes were annoying as usual because it took me a while to figure out where I was meant to be running... so there was a lot of reloads. Especially the axe chase. Far out! The amount of skillful dodging I did in that one was INSANE!

Palette

Palette

Operating System: PC
Website: Official Website
Rating: 5/10
Comments: This game is next in my series because it's also very simple. It's not a horror game, it's just a little girl trying to get her memories back. Memories that involve a murder of someone.

While I did get awfully confused and found it hard to keep track of the story, it was rather interesting the parts I did understand. The girl was just an outcast due to the bad things that happened to her... I think?

The most frustrating part of this game was how you couldn't really tell which parts of the map you had "completed" and which parts you still needed to explore. The main reason why this game took me so long to finish was because I had to keep back-tracking to every single map to eliminate whether I had done everything there or not.

Such a mind fuck. Seriously. Good game, just the map let it down.

Hello? Hell... o?

Hello? Hell... o?

Operating System: PC
Website: Official Site
Rating: 3/10
Comments: Ok, so it's been a while since I played a random horror RPG and I downloaded a whole bunch to play so here goes.

I started with the ones that looked the easiest and went from there. This one is one of the most basic ones ever. It does have multiple endings but I never realised that until I looked back on the main website and saw that on the comments after I had finished this game. It's short. REAL short. Like... might take you 30 minutes to play depending on how quick you do things.

I gave it a 3 because, while there wasn't much gameplay, the plot was a little intriguing and I was curious to see how it would play out. All you really have to do it answer the phone/doorbell when it rings to progress in the story. You can tell if you've progressed because the title screen "Hello? Hell... o?" adds more text the closer you get.

The thing that got me was how it mirrored for the female player, which I wasn't expecting. Nice twist at the end. Good to pass a bit of time if you want some fun but not a lot of substance.

UnReal World

UnReal World

Operating System: PC
Website: Official Website
Rating: 2.5/5
Comments: I honestly don't normally like playing games that people recommend me (mainly because I suck in general) but this one looked pretty cool so I thought I'd give it a shot and stop my griping. At first, I wasn't really sure what to do because I picked one of the storylines that lets you just do your own thing... it was a mistake. I had no idea what to do, my character is pretty much starving now and has no strength left to build any sort of shelter.

When I asked my friend (who is also my walking game encyclopaedia) how to actually pick something up the game got more fun. I also had to read through the forum post to understand the controls... most of which I still don't get all that well.

The main aim is to survive through the winter but daaaaaamn this game is hard! I enjoyed it, despite the initial epic fail start. That made me wish there was some sort of tutorial level just so you could get a handle on the game before playing as a proper character... because this game has permadeath. If you die, you stay dead. :C

Reveries: Sisterly Love

Reveries: Sisterly Love

Operating System: PC
Website: BigFish page
Rating: 2.5/5
Comments: The music was pretty cool but the 3D, which was better than some, wasn't exactly as good as the Stray Souls cutscenes. It was still a pretty epic cutscene though, but the next in-game ones were nowhere near as good as that. The Prine was also pretty cheesy (dialogue especially) and I wasn't all that impressed with how he was animated.

The plot was: you're really sick (like, with cancer) and your sister says she'll do anything to save you.... so the mirror comes to life and steals her youth and makes you better somehow. TIME TO GO SAVE HER! HUZZAH!

The artwork was really crisp and the journal looked alright. It was like a real book with things stuck in so not too bad at least. The map was a bit weird though. The map parts reminded me of one of the match-3 games I played in that the map destinations looked like levels.

The achievement screen looked pretty awesome. The achievements were all different statues on this really picturesque  world. There was also "fortunes"  but I wasn't all that sure what it was for.

Calavera: Day of the Dead

Calavera: Day of the Dead

Operating System: PC
Website: BigFish page
Rating: 2/5
Comments: So the plot starts with some guy (who is apparently who we pay as) proposing to this girl. She then says not without her father's blessing and off you go to Mexico. You find some creepy book that looks really gross but has some nice journal pages inside. It was hilarious though because it speaks and is all "Yo hombre" because it's Mexican.

The trophy is nice. There's a lot of awards and they fill up a whole page. One of the "get more objects to fill a room" kind of trophy style. There was also a "find the skull" thing which was cool. Adds more to the game when you have little extras.

Some of the puzzles were rather irritating though... actually most of them were. And most of the things just took forever to do. It was like they had a good idea but lost most of it in the puzzles. Such a shame, but it did just end up being boring because the plot wasn't all that prominent to begin with.

Stray Souls 2: Stolen Memories

Stray Souls 2: Stolen Memories

Operating System: PC
Website: BigFish game
Rating: 3.5/5
Comments: Really nice cutscene, looked really professional even the portaits when they talked had good animation. The voice acting wasn't bad either, they must have had a good budget for this game... well, not all of them were good. That art teacher was pretty weird sounding... like a real one. The only thing I didn't like is that the ragdoll didn't seem to be as cute as I remembered. The dolls scared the crikey outta me though... that clown doll... and his creepy ass deep laugh!!!

The ending cutscene though! SO EPIC!

The plot was the typical "someone got stolen, let's go rescue them". In this case it's our dad that we need to save.... except when you find him he runs off with the daughter and seems to be totally crazy.

I like that it offered the usual "casual" or "expert" gameplay levels. I like when you can pick if you want to tear your hair out or not. The map is always good, especially with these adventure HOGs. At least that way you can easily know where you need to go. The items were also not too hard to figure out what to do with them and you could also sometimes get more than one item from doing a HOS - which saves a lot of pointless betweens.

Nightmares of the Deep 2: The Sirens Call

Nightmares of the Deep 2: The Siren's Call

Operating System: PC
Website: Official Website
Rating: 2/5
Comments: So it starts with a nice little cutscene with rather nice 3D in some of it. It would seem it something about pirates because this guy just got Kracken'd. It also has a nice recap from what happened in the last game (which I didn't play) with talking so you didn't have to read it. The voice acting wasn't too bad either. It's a shame that I didn't care much about pirates or this might have been more interesting.

The diary, while it wasn't all that exciting did have an objectives tab. The puzzle within a puzzle was a bit tedious though. Not all that difficult but still annoying all the same. The game moves well, a nice combination between adventure and hidden object. I liked that there was an exit clause for the HO scenes: play the scene or play mahjong.

The achievements were exciting though. So many to find, it was great. Some of those bloody parrots though! It took one so long to respawn it was ridiculous.

Otherworld: Omens of Summer

Otherworld: Omens of Summer

Operating System:PC
Website: Official Website
Rating: 3/5
Comments: The intro was nice, as there was a previous game before that I hadn't played it gave a nice little summary (with voice acting, yay!) I rather liked the art style in this game, very polished look to it. The voice acting wasn't too bad, usually they have this horrible deadpan voice for all emotions that kinda ruins it a little.

The journal was nice, the font not so much but the hand-drawn sketches were really nice. It's divided into 3 parts with the main story, character profiles and objective. Oh. My. God. Objective! How I missed those. So many games just make me run around forever trying to find a HOS or something. The map was also pretty awesome, it let you move around instantly and also marked places that had things to complete on it so you didn't have to check every single place. I also liked that when you talked to people it had highlighted in yellw what you needed to do/find.

Like always the puzzles were annoying but that's because they get old the more you play these games. I did love how there were hidden fairies to collect. I love my collectables and achievements.

Mad Father

Mad Father

Operating System: PC
Website: Official Website
Rating: 2/5
Comments: This game was a lot better than Witch's house AND Misao. It actually had a proper plot. Like, a full back story and progressive plot all the way through! Wow. Step up from the others by leaps and bounds. I also liked that the different choices led to different endings.

This game was an obvious RPG maker map game but I liked that, with the dark setting and custom tiles it worked rather well. Reminded me of One Night in that aspect. It also had large portraits for ALL the characters (yes, even monsters) that changed from normal, happy, scared, angry. It was good. I really liked that part of it, as it has also been a while since I played a proper RPGmaker game.

This one also had multiple endings and none of them seemed to be real classic "happy endings" like I would have wanted. In fact, the one that was the "True Ending" was rather morbid and made you wonder if the girl was quite literally like her father? I'm still conflicted by that... it was a really creepy feeling to watch her with that poor girl at the end.