cobysev

Get To Work is a tongue-in-cheek game about climbing the corporate ladder. But it's more metaphorical than literal, as you spend the game on your hands and knees, rollerblading your way up difficult obstacles (and falling back to the ground level) just for the slightest recognition in the workforce.

It's one of those climbing games, like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, or Only UP!, or A Difficult Game About Climbing, except you're on rollerblades instead of climbing with your own two hands. This game just released two days ago, so it's very new.

I like the title screen of this game. It's designed to look like a business magazine, while showing off the main character and your game options. Your character reminds me of the political activist Charlie Kirk, with his tiny face on a large head.

I also love the article call-out for Sam Bankman-Fried. In case you're not familiar, he was considered the poster boy for all things crypto, having founded FTX cryptocurrency exchange. That is, until FTX went bankrupt and he was arrested and charged for fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. As of this year, he's serving 25 years in prison and was forced to pay back $11 billion.

Get To Work opens in your bedroom, with you staring at a poster encouraging you to climb that corporate ladder. So you set off, with rollerblades on your hands, feet, knees, and elbows. There is no walking or standing in this game; you rollerblade everywhere.

You reach your first room of obstacles, with the goal being to show up for your first interview. You may notice that there's a clock in the top left corner, giving you a subtle tracker for how long you struggle throughout this game.

A narrator explains the jist of this game for you, essentially claiming that NFTs were more far-fetched than a game about rollerblading up the corporate ladder. If you can't read the narration subtitles at the bottom of this screenshot, open the image in a new window to see its full 4K resolution.

Hidden around each room are these spinning logos for The Grindset, a podcast about business. They have short (usually funny) discussions about corporate life and what you need to know to succeed in today's work climate. As if the climb wasn't hard enough, most of them are in hard-to-reach areas. But there are three achievements for collecting these, so grab every one you can find!

Here's an excerpt of unprompted narration. It sounds silly and preposterous, but is also real in America and kind of sad. Two of my close friends are in this exact situation right now, having spent the past year job-hunting and still not having any luck being seriously considered. And one of them has a Harvard degree!

I'm almost to the interview...

You finally get to your first interview, only to find that it's not going to be that easy. We've gone so far metaphorical now, it's wrapping back around to literal!

You finally get an offer letter!

...Only to be rejected and fall all the way back to the start.

Thankfully, you have a family member who can hook you up with a warehouse job in the meantime. So you set out again to climb a new corporate ladder.

The game starts to get really sassy at this point. I got stuck in this room for about an hour, and the more I fell to the ground, the more the narrator had to say about it.

Eventually, the game gave me a GIVE UP button to press, for when I'm "feeling like this game is too much and it's time to give up." They also started mentioning shoes a lot, claiming it would probably be in my best interest to buy a pair and just walk my way to the top instead.

I finally made it to my first pay raise! ...Only to learn it wasn't feasible at this time and instead I received a pizza party. Goddamn, that's too real. But at least there's a manager role that I can promote to, so I'm not done yet, right? RIGHT?

I finally made it to the promotion to manager! Woo!

Only to have a brick wall literally pop up in my face, proclaiming that a college degree is required. Which I apparently don't have.

This was the first time my character seemed to be in real despair. Normally if he fell, he'd immediately pop back up and be ready to go. But after this one, he just lied there, unmoving. I had to jiggle the controls to get him back up.

There was a hallway off to one side that led to an unpaid internship, the only option left for a warehouse worker with no degree. Sigh.

After climbing this next room of obstacles and getting accepted for the unpaid internship, I finally had to call it a night. This humor in this game was starting to get too real and painful. And I spent an hour and a half just to get this far! You will eventually work your way up to CEO before the game ends, so I still have a long way to go.

By the way, I couldn't resist making this. 🤣

LocoCycle, despite its appearance, is not actually a racing game, but an action/adventure fighting game that happens to take place on the open road.

LocoCycle opens with a live action B-movie cinematic. We get a few of these cinematic cutscenes throughout the game. We see important military leaders from China, Russia, Africa, and America, along with a ton of other guests in elegant formal wear, gathering at a secret formal event in Nicaragua. It's a gallery held by the arms dealer Big Arms, to show off two new motorcycles: the sentient combat bikes S.P.I.K.E. and I.R.I.S., with advanced AI and powerful weaponry. The bikes will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Yes, that is James Gunn in the background. He plays the host of this event, showing off the two bikes. The girl in blue (Lisa Foiles) actually performed the AI voice for I.R.I.S., and S.P.I.K.E. was voiced by Robert Patrick, the guy who played the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

A thunderstorm starts brewing and the party is moved indoors. Some armed guards are asked to move the bikes to the garage, but while one steps away to take a call, I.R.I.S. is hit by lightning!

We're then introduced to I.R.I.S.' mechanic, Pablo, who is asked to repair her. Her circuitry is fried and she needs to be fixed up before the auction begins. Pablo only speaks Spanish throughout the entire game, which makes it impossible for him to communicate with I.R.I.S., whose database of 5,000 languages is now corrupted. If you don't know Spanish, make sure you turn on subtitles!

While Pablo is fixing her up, I.R.I.S. scans the magazine he was reading, then watches a commercial on the nearby TV about a Freedom Rally being held at the fairgrounds in Scottsburg, Indiana. She's inspired by the ad's tagline: "Live Free. Ride Alive."

She decides she needs to find this rally in Scottsburg, IN and she invites Pablo to tag along. Problem is, Pablo's pant leg is caught on I.R.I.S.' rear wheel frame. When she takes off, he finds himself dragged along!

The rest of the game is I.R.I.S. racing to find Scottsburg, IN while dragging Pablo on the pavement behind her. That trip is over 3,000 miles long! I hope Pablo is wearing some durable britches.

I.R.I.S. breaks out of the Big Arms facility and is quickly pursued by men in black suits and heavy firearms.

You'll quickly notice that I.R.I.S. drives on her own, and you only control her other functions. You can steer her back and forth, attack with front or rear wheels (Pablo himself usually being the rear-wheel attack), shoot unlimited rounds from her forward guns, and boost forward for a limited time.

Despite occasionally aiding I.R.I.S. in combat, Pablo insists that he's being dragged along against his will. He begs for help from anyone who comes after them, but is mostly ignored as they do everything they can to take down I.R.I.S.

There are several types of enemies you'll encounter. The armed men in black being the most prevalent, but there are also guys with jet packs, helicopters, and even rocket launchers. I.R.I.S. can counter all their attacks with quick-time events, including throwing rockets back at their launcher.

S.P.I.K.E. himself will come for I.R.I.S., but she refuses to go home with him. So he resolves to take her out and you get a boss fight with him.

When S.P.I.K.E. realizes that Pablo is a "powerful human ally" in I.R.I.S.' escape, he decides to get his own human companion. He grabs the first lady he finds at a campground, who willingly goes along with him despite being dragged on her back for miles of gravel and pavement.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure I.R.I.S. is just holding onto Pablo; he's not actually stuck. Because she can throw him like a ninja star to attack ranged enemies! He always boomerangs back to her and ends up with his pant leg "stuck" on her again.

Because I.R.I.S. is technically malfunctioning, there are times when she might shut down completely and stop in the middle of the road. Then Pablo has a limited amount of time to fix her up before a pursuing semi truck catches up and runs them both over.

It's a little tricky moving Pablo around until he finds problems to fix, but the various fixes themselves are relatively easy to complete.

This is an extremely campy and silly game, but very fun to play! Combat is mostly button-mashing and swerving around obstacles on the road, with some quick-time events to either counter an attack or dodge an obstacle. There are three skill trees to improve I.R.I.S. and Pablo's abilities, and the more stuff you unlock, the easier the game becomes. The whole game is 5 levels with 3 missions per level, plus a final boss fight level. You could probably beat the whole thing in a few hours of gameplay.

Here's a shot of S.P.I.K.E. eating a sweet corn and black raspberry buttermilk ice cream cone:

Good morning! Today I'm going to be looking at the latest game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise: Sonic X Shadow Generations. This game is a 2024 remake of the 2011 game Sonic Generations, which itself was a modern tribute to Sonic's past games fighting against Dr. Eggman.

Side note: His name was Dr. Robotnik in the old American version of the games, but he's always been known as Dr. Eggman in the original Japanese. The game Sonic Adventure fixed the discrepancy by making "Eggman" a teasing name Sonic called Robotnik. Robotnik liked it enough, he made it his official moniker and he's been known as Dr. Eggman ever since.

The original Sonic Generations inspired the creation of new games in the classic side-scroller series, including Sonic 4 Episode I and II, Sonic Mania, Sonic Origins (which was an updated collection of Sonic 1-3 & Knuckles, Sonic CD, plus 12 Game Gear games), a cameo of "Classic Sonic" and his side-scrolling adventures in Sonic Forces, and recently, Sonic Superstars.

Sonic Generations firmly established in the canon that the 2D side-scroller Classic Sonic was a younger Sonic. Every game since his redesign in Sonic Adventure is the 15-yr old "Modern Sonic," whose 3-dimensional third-person games continue to this day.

Today, though, I will be focusing specifically on Shadow the Hedgehog's story in Sonic X Shadow Generations, since this is the "Year of Shadow" according to SEGA. He's going to be the new villain in the live-action film Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which is releasing late next month.

I do my best not to spoil the games I review, but I need to be extra careful with this one, as the opening cutscene basically explains Shadow's whole tragic past. For those unfamiliar with Shadow's games and don't want his story spoiled before they see the live action film, I will be avoiding any revealing details concerning his past.

Shadow Generations starts out with a brief glance at Shadow's past aboard the space colony ARK, a massive station orbiting Earth. This was where Shadow was created 50 years prior, by Professor Gerald Robotnik, Eggman's grandfather.

Shadow lived on the space station, alongside Gerald's young granddaughter Maria, who was a constant ray of sunshine; the only beacon of optimism and light in Shadow's life. The two of them were the best of friends.

Long story short (skipping a lot of revealing backstory), Shadow ended up captured and contained in a cryogenic tube for 50 years, where he was awoken by Dr. Eggman in the game Sonic Adventure 2. After losing a half century of time and everyone he's ever known in his life, the despairing hedgehog agreed to team up with the grandson of his creator to fight Sonic and destroy the world that ruined his life. Later, he realized he was fighting for the wrong side (and for the wrong reasons). He eventually teamed up with Sonic to save the world instead, then went off to become an anti-hero, searching to discover the truth about his dark past.

Cutting back to modern-day Shadow, we find him exploring the ARK because of an unusual bio-signature detected aboard the space colony. He's contacted by his partner, Rouge the Bat, who claims he's missing Sonic's birthday party. This was the opening for Sonic Generations, showing that Shadow's story takes place at the same time.

Suddenly, Shadow comes across a creature from his dark past: Doom's Eye! This tentacle starfish alien creature is an extension of Black Doom, a world-conquering alien from the game Shadow the Hedgehog. Even though Shadow defeated him in the past, he's somehow back!

Doom's Eye can warp reality, trapping Shadow in a Doctor Strange-esque mirror dimension of sorts.

Shadow fights Doom's Eye and after giving him a solid poke in the eye, Doom's Eye runs away through a portal, exclaiming that they'll meet again soon. You receive an alien-looking artifact that's in the shape of the Black Arms symbol, the mark of Black Doom's alien army. If you ever played Shadow the Hedgehog, you'll recognize this symbol as part of the game's logo.

As if there weren't enough trouble, the Time Eater from Sonic Generations shows up, trapping everyone at Sonic's birthday party in a time anomaly!

This was the latest plot by Dr. Eggman, to control the Time Eater and thus control time itself. He planned to rewrite past events and erase Sonic from existence! Shadow finds himself caught up in the anomaly, although he lands in a barren land of his own past which is frozen in time. There is a floating orb in the sky with eyes surrounding it, which awakens from the Black Arms symbol you collected. Every one you collect throughout the game brings it more to life.

Having no way out of this "White Space," you start exploring various stages, reliving places and villains from Shadow's past. Every stage has two acts, which bring life and color to the area as you complete them.

This area is different from Sonic's White Space in Sonic Generations. Sonic explores a 2D White Space, where all the frozen stages are lined up in a row. Shadow gets more of an open map to explore, like the recent open-world Sonic Frontiers game.

Eventually, you find others who have been trapped in the time anomaly, like E-123 Omega, Shadow's other partner; Orbot and Cubot, Eggman's robot lackeys; Big the Cat, a friendly fisherman whose looking for his best friend, Froggy; and... Maria and Gerald Robotnik?!

These two familiar faces from Shadow's distant past are a sight for sore eyes. Vowing to protect them, he runs off to save more of the time-frozen realm and stop Black Doom, the main villain of Shadow's past. Black Doom plans to use the time anomaly to accelerate his plans and destroy the world before Shadow has a chance to stop him.

Shadow, as the "ultimate life form," has his own powers, including Chaos Control. It's a way he can use chaos emeralds to warp time and space, which he usually uses to teleport. In this game though, it freezes time for a few seconds while Shadow continues moving. It's used as a way to freeze impossible obstacles so Shadow has a moment to cross, destroy, or escape them. It also freezes your game clock, giving you a few spare seconds to complete an act without dropping to a lower final grade. Destroying enemies fills the Chaos Control gauge at the bottom center of the screen.

You also unlock Doom powers for Shadow, allowing him to use the dark energy for new abilities. But the stronger Shadow gets, the stronger Black Doom gets, making your inevitable fight a tough one.

There was an act in Sonic Generations where Sonic goes back in time to a race/fight with Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2. This fight was retconned in this remake, where modern-day Shadow runs into Sonic in the time anomaly and they chase each other into the past act where they originally raced. Sonic is looking to take the Chaos Emerald that Shadow has on him, because he needs it in order to stop the Time Eater. But Shadow needs it to perform Chaos Control, so he has an advantage against the Black Arms. Who do you think will win this fight...?

This game was a masterful remake of a tribute to the classic games in the Sonic franchise. Not only modernizing graphics and gameplay, but also adding more lore, exploring Shadow's past games, and introducing his gameplay to elements of more modern games, like Sonic Forces and Sonic Frontiers.

The gameplay is fantastic, seamlessly blending action and speed with the controls so you actually feel like you're moving at mach speeds while controlling Shadow. And the visuals are just incredible for a Sonic game! Like in the Kingdom Valley stage, where you ride an eagle several times throughout the two acts! This is a throwback to the game Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), where the eagles provided characters transportation throughout Kingdom Valley.

This game is full of references and updated levels of older Sonic games, but you don't need to play the previous games to get enjoyment out of this one. There is plenty of story and lore to fill in the gaps, so you don't feel left out. The important details are fully covered, while also giving you a new full story to enjoy. The only thing that might stop you from playing it is Shadow's backstory, which might ruin parts of the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film that's about to release. But that film series is already deviating quite a bit from the original games, so you probably won't spoil much of the film if you play this game.

As a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan for over 30 years now, I can say that I really enjoyed this game! So much so, that I'm actually going to go back and re-play some of the older Sonic games from my childhood. I wish I could play Shadow the Hedgehog, which introduced Black Doom and his Black Arms, but it only released for the PS2 and it never got a port to any other console. We need a modern port and/or remake, SEGA!

How do you do, fellow gamers? I'm back with another set of video game screenshots! And today's game is a simulator game. I actually love simulator games; I have a whole category in my Steam library dedicated to them. It's the only library collection I've made that's specifically for a genre of game.

I got Tavern Manager Simulator on sale yesterday, and whereas there are probably better simulator games in my collection, I did enjoy this one in particular.

It opens with you acquiring a run-down tavern just outside a large castle. The place is boarded up and you need to remove some planks in order to get in the back door and open up the tavern.

The place is in disrepair and you spend some time picking up trash and cleaning stains on the floor before you can open the place.

The large piles of garbage are too much for you to deal with right now, so you just throw a cloth over them to get the place open and running.

You have a small private room just off to the side of the bar room. There's a bed in here where you can sleep until 6 AM the next morning. There's also a desk where you do all the "paperwork" for the tavern. This desk is where you can upgrade your tavern and its amenities. The more you level up your tavern, the more variety of foods you can sell, and the larger the tavern will grow. Literally; it will actually expand into a proper dining hall if you upgrade it enough.

Although the most important category is the Delivery tab, where you can order resources (food), furniture, and decorations.

You will need to make regular food orders as your supplies dwindle. You can place an order anytime and it will be at your back door in less than a minute. You can actually watch a horse-drawn cart show up down the road as soon as you order. Almost half the wait time is just watching it turn in a loop before stopping for you to unload it.

Next, you need to fix your sign out front. This is what you will use to signal when you're open.

When it's facing the tavern, you're closed. But when it's turned to face the road passing by your tavern, you're open. You can switch it anytime, day or night, to start or stop the flow of customers. You can also customize your new sign. Here is my tavern's sign, turned to signal that I'm open for business:

To start, you'll only have ale. Pouring ale is a bit of an art; you have to hold the pour button until it fills to the green line on a bar. Any less and it's just a "good" ale. In that green, it's a "perfect" ale and will have a sparkle to it. And if you go over, you will spill on the floor (requiring a clean-up) and it will be a "bad" ale, with a puke-greenish tint to it.

Make sure you hand out as many good or perfect ales as you can to customers! You're earning reputation to help improve your customer base and upgrade your tavern, so keep those customers happy! I don't know what the customers will do if you serve them a bad ale. I've just been dumping them in the trash and taking the financial loss so I don't hurt my reputation. Here was my very first customer:

You have a limited supply of dishes, so make sure to clean them as often as you can in the kitchen sink. You can get water from the well behind your tavern, and every dish you scrub counts for 2 cleaned dishes. It's super easy to clean, just swirl it in the soapy water for a few seconds and all the gunk will disappear from the dish.

You also have to clean your tavern as you go. Most patrons will leave a mess on the table when they leave. Collect their coin and dishes, but also don't forget to wipe down the tables as needed. Some customers will also leave footprints all over your floors. Don't forget to sweep them up!

Most customers will only make a single food/drink request, then leave when they're done. But this guy kept requesting more beers until he passed out on the bar. You can literally pick up these drunk customers by the scruff of their neck and toss them out. You can also ask anyone to leave anytime you want, but it's more fun to throw them out while they're black-out drunk. Plus, you collect a ton of coin from all the booze they consumed.

There are also beggars who might come into your tavern. You can give them what they ask for, which will give your tavern a boost in reputation, or you can tell them to scram. Later, you acquire a frying pan, which you can brandish as a weapon against unruly patrons or beggars.

This beggar lady came by pretty often. I had one guy come by saying he was dying of thirst and just needed some water. I went to the well out back and got a pail of water and he was very satisfied with that.

Over time, you start to expand the menu; first to sausage, then vegetable soup, and then grilled meat. It gets more complicated as you go on, because you now have to pay attention to customer's requests and not just hand out ale to every customer. Eventually, your kitchen gets fixed up as you level up your tavern and expand your menu. It starts to look like a nice place to work!

You will also unlock fairy helpers, whom you can assign jobs in the tavern. Which is nice when you have to cook soup, grill meat, chop firewood for the stove and grill, pour ale, clean the outhouse, and do dishes. PLUS ensuring customers are getting the food they want in a timely manner, cleaning up after them, and ordering more food when your supplies are getting low. It can get intense. Thankfully, I have not been completely swamped with customers yet. I got maybe 1-3 orders at a time, so I have a little time to balance everything. Just having a fairy to do dishes is a huge relief during open hours.

When you're closed up for the day, if you explore the grounds outside your tavern, you'll find hidden tributes to other medieval fantasy series. So far, I've seen references to Zelda, Dark Souls, Shrek, World of Warcraft, and Lord of the Rings. Let me know if you find any others!

If you catch a break (which I rarely did), you can chat with your customers, which gives you a +1 to your reputation. Although they usually just have either something weird to say, or a medieval dad joke.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable game. I had fun running back and forth, trying to keep food and drink prepared and dealing with customers as they came in. I had to make a lot of orders in the middle of the day to keep my stock up initially, but as I got used to the game, I was able to more effectively plan my food and drink and I was mostly able to make an order at night and be ready for the entire next day. It helps that none of the consumables ever went bad, so I could prep a bunch of stuff and leave it sitting out until customers ordered it.

I always felt there weren't enough hours in the day, though. Every minute of the day was a real-time second, so I basically had 24 minutes max to host customers every day. I'd run my tavern until I was almost out of everything late at night, then I'd spend the last few hours of the night/morning restocking and prepping for the next day. If I went to bed, it was usually with only an hour or two of sleep before getting up the next day. So far, I don't think sleep deprivation is a thing in this game. I ran my tavern for 3 days straight without any side effects at one point.

So if you like restaurant managing/waitressing games, this was a pretty fun medieval spin on the genre. Come grab a pint and enjoy!

Happy (belated) Veteran's Day! Sorry for posting this so late; I'm a recently retired veteran, so yesterday ended up busier than I expected.

And speaking of busy... I started these daily posts as 1.) a writing challenge for myself, 2.) a way to geek out about the games that I've been enjoying lately, and 3.) with the hope of adding some interesting and unique content to /c/games. But my ADHD/hyper-focus has been taking the wheel lately, and I've been taking longer and longer to write these up, not counting the several hours of gaming I do every night to acquire screenshots in the first place.

I was trying to find something to play the night before last and I ended up bouncing between several games that I just couldn't get into. Then I found Remember Me and it was so much fun, I didn't want to stop playing to write about it. I stayed up until dawn playing, then had so much on my schedule for that day, I didn't have time to write until later that night.

Basically, I've been spending most of my free time preparing these posts (which is a lot, considering I'm 100% retired now), and as much fun as it is, I need to cut back a bit and focus on other stuff in my life. Like actually finishing some of the fun and interesting games I've been writing about. I can't complete most of these games in a single night, despite my best efforts. But I don't want to make multiple posts about the same game several days in a row; I want to provide new and interesting content for you to read.

I'm not going to stop writing detailed (and spoiler-free) posts about video games, but I will cut back a bit on my posting schedule so it's not eating up all my free time. I never promised to do daily posts anyway; that was just a personal writing goal of mine and I've made it to 50 posts with only 3 days missed (including this one), so I'd consider that a win. I'll try to aim for an absolute minimum of a post a week; although I may post more often as I find and play interesting games. I still have a list of games I want to write about, so there's still plenty of content to come.

All of my screenshot posts have been archived on a blog, which you can find here. I draft them on the blog initially, then copy/paste to Lemmy and post both simultaneously. I have another blog where I review movies, although I've been ignoring it for over a year now and would like to get back into it; another reason I want to slow down these gaming posts. You can find a link to that blog on my blog profile if you're interested.

And now back to today's game...

Remember Me is a fascinating cyberpunk game taking place in Neo-Paris in the year 2084, a dark future where people have merged their brains with technology and can now have their memories accessed digitally. This has created a market for buying, selling and trading memories. This has also led to a surveillance society, where corporations can access memories and either wipe or replace them as they desire.

You play a French woman named Nilin, a memory hunter who can not only access memories, but has the extremely rare skill of editing details within them to give a person false memories. She's part of an underground resistance movement, fighting against Memorize, a corporation trying to create a monopoly on human memories. She's classified as an Errorist, which is not only the name for people who can create "error" or false memories, but is also a brilliant take on the word "terrorist."

I'd like to point out that this is a game developed by a French studio, the story takes place in Paris, and the French language is written on signs and billboards and graffiti throughout the game's world, so I felt it was appropriate to play this game in French with English subtitles to get the full effect. It's such a beautiful language and it felt wrong to play this game in English. Especially when Nilin has a British-English accent in the English version.

Unfortunately, this game originally released in 2013, so it wasn't designed for 4K displays and despite having that resolution option on the Steam version, the subtitles don't scale to the size of my screen. They're extremely tiny in these screenshots, so I apologize in advance for that. If you see a fuzzy white line across the bottom of a screenshot, open the image in a new tab and you can zoom in to read the subtitle.

Remember Me opens with Nilin squirming on the floor of a prison cell as her memories are erased. When the procedure completes, a doctor approaches her and asks her name. Surprisingly, she's able to remember her name! She doesn't remember much else though, so the doctor consults the head of the department, Dr. Quaid, and Nilin is scheduled for a more detailed memory wipe to scrape out any remnants.

Barely able to stand, she's directed to follow an orange line down the hallway, where she joins a queue for another memory wipe. While waiting in line, a voice pops into her head. A guy by the name of Edge, who claims he's attempting to rescue her.

The power goes out and a blast door next to Nilin raises a little bit, exposing a small gap. She's instructed to slip through the doorway. Her escape is detected though and she's pursued by a large robot, which she's barely able to stumble away from in her dazed state.

Eventually, she falls down an air vent and stumbles across a machine loading up bodies into caskets. She's told to climb into a casket, which she does begrudgingly. The machine seals her in the casket, then launches her out of the prison facility and into a river.

Edge explains who Nilin is and why she's had her memory wiped. Apparently, their resistance movement failed and everyone was rounded up except for their leader, Edge. Nilin was his best fighter though, so he's rescued her so she can help recover their resistance.

Her casket drifts up to Slum 404, a garbage-filled slum of Neo-Paris. She's freed by some scavengers known as Leapers. The correlation to lepers is not lost; deformed and monstrous, they're the corrupted and insane remnants of citizens whose memories have been edited too many times. Their instinct is to attack Nilin when they find her.

Suddenly remembering some basics on how to fight, Nilin is quick to take them down. Her memories start coming back a little at a time throughout the game, although only enough for her to remember key details. Edge informs her to travel to Tommy, her best friend and former memory hunter who is loyal to their cause. He runs a bar in the slums called The Leaking Brain.

He is grateful to see her, even though she doesn't remember him. He rescued her glove that she uses to manipulate memories, as well as her combat skin. He comments that it's a good thing they caught her on her day off, or else they would've gotten their hands on her high-tech gear.

But just as soon as she's suited up, a bounty hunter jumps out of the shadows! Olga Sedova, one of the best in the business, and she's out to collect the bounty on Nilin's head.

Before she can secure her though, Nilin gets her glove close enough to Olga's neck to grab hold of her memories. We're transported into her memory from three hours ago, when Olga was at a hospital watching Dr. Quaid tend to her husband.

Her husband had deleted too many memories over time, causing a syndrome that is breaking down his mind. It's implied that he may be turning into a Leaper. Dr. Quaid promises he can fix it; although it will be very expensive. A bounty for Nilin pops up and Olga promises she can pay, heading off to hunt Nilin.

At this point, you're able to fast-forward and rewind the memory, finding small glitches that you can edit in the details, like unfastening the husband's mask or removing one of his wrist straps. Changing these little details leads to a different outcome for the memory. Your goal is to find the right edits to make Dr. Quaid appear to have killed Olga's husband instead of saving him.

This part may take a while and some tinkering with various details until you find the right combination of edits, but once you figure it out, Olga is forced to watch as her husband dies a violent death due to Dr. Quaid's incompetence. Snapping out of the memory, Olga suddenly decides to side with you as revenge against Memorize for killing her husband! She offers to give you a lift to your next objective.

From here, you carry out missions for Edge, fight more people from your past whom you barely recall, return to the prison to regain more of your memories from their memory backups, and along the way, question who you really are and what you're actually fighting for.

This game is kind of like a cyberpunk version of Assassin's Creed. You're part of a shady underground organization, sneaking around, climbing all over the structures of Neo-Paris, and fighting the controlling organization ruling over the land, all while stealing and/or editing people's memories.

You can't free-roam like in Assassin's Creed though; you're stuck on a singular path toward your objective, which prevents you from back-tracking even a couple rooms as you progress forward. It does help keep you focused on the story, though. I've played nearly 7 hours and I just finished episode 4 out of 8 total. So the lack of exploration doesn't make this a quick story to burn through.

The combat is extremely fluid, too! You have combo streaks that you can build yourself from various types of attacks (power, healing, cooldowns for special attacks, and chain abilities). Completing combos will grant you points to eventually unlock even longer and more powerful combos, which can make defeating even the toughest enemies no effort at all.

Not to mention, Nilin is extremely light on her feet. Every time an attack is incoming, you can just press your jump button and she immediately cartwheels out of the way, or even flips over enemies' heads if she's up close in combat. You can weave and dodge in and out of a dozen enemies without taking any damage because they always indicate when they're about to strike.

You can also find collectibles in each level called Mnesist memories, which are cultural memories of Neo-Paris, preserving actual history so corruption from edited memories doesn't wash away what actually happened. These are more background lore, if you're interested in world building. They give a history of the fall of Paris during a global war in the 2040s and how Neo-Paris and its current social and economic structure sprouted from the ashes. As well as many other detailed bits of lore to flesh out the world.

One of the only things I didn't enjoy about this game is the camera controls. They're a bit dated and erratic. It is an older game, so it doesn't have smooth modern camera controls. It keeps trying to default the camera to a position that doesn't give a good view of your surroundings, so I found myself constantly adjusting the third-person camera, which didn't want to move smoothly and precisely most of the time.

Also, the shadows and lighting effects are pretty bad. There were tons of dark scenes where I could hardly make out Nilin or others. Her skin tone is so unnaturally dark and shaded in this game, it looks like she spent way too long in a tanning bed. The only time she looks halfway normal is when her face is directly illuminated in a bright space. But if the light wasn't directly on her face, even in bright sunlight, she was unnaturally shadowed.

But again, those are problems due to the age of the game. Physics engines have evolved a ton in the past decade, and if this game was remade today, it would look absolutely stunning. Even for its time, this is a gorgeous look into a future cyberpunk Paris. And the story is captivating and kept me engaged for hours. This is an incredible game, it just needs some tune-ups to the graphics and controls to be perfect.

The orchestral soundtrack gives this game a very cinematic feel, too. I wish they released the soundtrack on Steam so I could listen to its music outside of gameplay.

Say No! More is a relatively short but comical game about empowering people to say "no" more often. It mostly plays itself, with you interacting enthusiastically at key points throughout the gameplay.

The game starts with you creating a character. You can pick one of their 16 presets, or create your own. I modeled mine after my wife, because she's really good at saying "no." 😅

Next, you pick the way you say "no." There are 17 languages, with both a masculine and feminine voice to choose from. I think my favorite is Irish Gaelic. Instead of a 2-letter word, theirs is long and super complicated sounding.

Then the game opens up on a video game called "Wizards of Nay," where you play as a wizard who fights imps and a Devil King by using the word "nay."

When you get a game over, it zooms out of your cell phone to show your character sitting on a park bench. Your roommate approaches you and offers you a custom lunchbox he made, with a home-cooked meal inside. How nice!

But was he just buttering you up? Because the very next thing he asks is if you can cover the rent this month... AGAIN. He has all sorts of excuses as to why. He's short on cash, still job hunting, etc. You try to respond to him and all you can muster is a "..." Which he takes as "we'll discuss it later" and he lets you run off. It's your first day of work at a new company!

You arrive at work and meet up with two other interns, who are already waiting with your new supervisor. He reprimands you for being late and when you can't respond with an excuse, he threatens to fire you before lunch if you don't learn to speak up. But he's one of those supervisors, who tries to play off all aggression as just a joke.

He instructs all three of you to say "yes" all the time if you want to promote within the company. The other two interns are motivated and on board, but again, all you can muster is a weak "..."

He decides to have a practice run. He claims he's hungry and wants your lunchbox. What do you say to that...?

When you can't give a straight response, he laughs it off, saying it's just a joke and no one will take your lunch. At least, not yet...

You and the other interns go off to the tiny cramped corner behind the vending machines that has your new desks. After the other two interns are called away, your supervisor pokes his head around the corner and claims he actually forgot his lunch and really needs one today. So...?

Unable to give a response, he takes it as a "yes" and runs off with your lunchbox. You bang your head on your keyboard, defeated.

That is, until a cassette player drops on your head from somewhere. Inside is a cassette tape labeled, "NO!" You put on some headphones and listen to it.

You're introduced to the confident voice of a motivational speaker! He instructs you to have confidence in yourself and speak one magic word: NO!

He has you practice using the word a few times, then shows you how to laugh at people, to confuse them and break their confidence so your "no" is that much more powerful against them.

You chase down your supervisor in the office and use the new word you just learned against him. It's super effective!

You relentlessly pursue him through the office, throwing your powerful word at him, attempting to shake him so he gives your lunchbox back. All your coworkers jump in your way to ask you to do menial "intern tasks" for them, but you can knock them back with the word "no!"

From here, your lunchbox gets passed around to various levels of leadership in the office, while you continue to chase after it.

Thanks to the motivational speaker on your cassette tape, you learn how to say no in different ways to affect different types of people. You have the standard angry no, but you will also learn a cold no, bored no, and wacky no. On top of that, you learn an add-on response to shake your target and make your "no" more brutal. You start with laughing at them before hitting them with a "no," but you will also learn how to slow clap, nod in agreement before saying "no," and a sarcastic "hmm" before landing that solid "no."

Eventually, your coworkers notice you speaking up against management and they start rallying behind you. You go out to lunch together and teach them all how to say "no" as well. Before you know it, you have a whole crowd of employees willing to say the word "no."

The game gets more wacky and outlandish as you go on, with all sorts of hilarious twists and turns to the plot. It's a fun journey through a day in an office where the word "no" is banned. Like I said, the game mostly plays itself and you just shout the word "no" at every opportunity you can. You can probably beat it in about an hour, but it's so much fun, I've already played through it a few times.

Despite all its silliness, this game comes with a pretty decent moral at the end about standing up for yourself, but also knowing when to say "yes" too. So take charge of your life! Learn to say "no" instead of caving to social pressure! And empower those around you!

Note: I set this game to display in 4K resolution, but it enabled a resolution scale and wouldn't scale larger than 1080p for some reason. After I beat the game, I realized I was in borderless windowed mode. Changing it to fullscreen granted the full 4K resolution. So these screenshots are all going to be 1080p instead of my usual 4K.

Death From Above takes place in the Ukrainian town of Nenatsk during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. You play a Ukrainian drone operator who is captured by invading Russian forces. But you're freed by a little old lady whom the Russians took for granted.

You grab a drone and a bunch of grenades and set out to clear the region from Russian invaders.

You can customize your drone and its pilot. As per usual, I switched to a female drone pilot. I also chose a camo pattern for my drone with Ukrainian colors and a Ukrainian flag trail behind it. Not very good camouflage in real life, but colorful and fun for a game!

You set out to restore communications with your military unit. There's an antenna nearby, guarded by several Russian military members, so you move to engage them. You can switch between your pilot and your drone, and for the most part, you only fight with your drone. Your pilot can't pick up a weapon and engage the enemy, so you want to keep them tucked away somewhere safe. Your drone has some seriously good range on it though (and unlimited battery life), so raise it high enough in the sky so as not to be seen by enemy forces and go scope out the target area ahead.

You can also turn on thermal imaging to make people and vehicles show up easier. Good for finding those stubborn forces hiding in the woods.

An interesting detail is that every time you kill a Russian combatant, their body immediately sprouts sunflowers. The sunflower is Ukraine's national flower, and if you haven't heard the story, there was a Ukrainian woman recorded on video who approached an occupying Russian military member and offered sunflower seeds to put in his pockets, so his dead body would blossom sunflowers. (Source)

Once you restore communications, you receive a message from Special Forces HQ, asking you to clear out Russian forces in the nearby village. From this point, you'll receive messages from HQ after each mission, directing you toward your next mission.

Also, you'll see a wanted poster of Putin on the wall in this room. Make sure you improve the poster for a huge score bonus. There are several of these posters to be found around the map. Don't forget to deface all of them!

To take out enemy forces, you switch your drone to a bomb view, giving you a target reticle directly below your drone. In this mode, you can drop your grenades on enemies.

Also, you can ask troops to surrender using the drone.

I've only had one guy surrender to me so far, but I got blown away by a tank before I could accept his surrender. The tanks just sat there idly, unmoving. I didn't realize they were armed and ready to target my pilot as soon as she wandered close. Oops.

The Russian troops were looting washing machines from homes, but after you clear out the enemies, you can pick up the washing machines with your drone and drop them onto designated pallets for homeowners to reclaim when they move back in. It doesn't matter which pallets in an area you drop them on; they get beamed up into the sky every time you drop one off, as well as giving you a score bonus.

Once you take over a Russian command post, you'll find the FPV drone. It acts like a guided missile; when you launch it, it shoots rapidly in the direction you're facing and blows up whatever target it hits.

You have some control over its direction, but it needs space to make big turns and it has a very short battery life that will drain in seconds, so make sure you're prepared when you launch it toward a target.

I should mention that you have unlimited ammunition in this game. Despite blowing up the FPV drone on each use, it will respawn in your inventory after a few seconds. Also, your regular drone can only hold 6 grenades at a time, but every time you fly it close to your pilot, it automatically refills all your grenades. So go nuts and take down as many enemies as you can from a safe vantage point!

By the way, the soundtrack for this game is awesome! Starring all Ukrainian bands. You can download it on Steam. The title song, also called "Death From Above," was made and performed by the band Antytila. They have three versions of the song: an English version, Ukrainian version, and a 21-minute instrumental version. I've been playing this song on repeat for months now; it's my favorite on the soundtrack!

There's also the band Surface Tension, who released their single "Завтра (Tomorrow)," both the original song and an instrumental version.

The band Odarka Zyrko released their single "за тобою (Behind You)," also the original version and an instrumental version.

Finally, there's GO_A with their single "Kalyna," which is the Ukrainian name for the guelder rose. It's a prominent symbol in Ukrainian culture, showing up in a lot of their media. This is probably my second most favorite song on the soundtrack.

You can hear "Death From Above" playing on radios scattered all throughout the game. But in the first village you come across, if you follow the sound of music, you'll find the actual band jamming in a house! Sadly, you can only watch from a single window. I had to take 2 screenshots to get all the band members in there.

This game actually benefits Ukrainian forces in their ongoing war. The publisher, Lesser Evil, claims that 30% of their proceeds are donated to two organizations helping the Ukraine war effort: "Come Back Alive" and "Army of Drones." Once they've earned back their production costs, they'll change their donation amount to 70%, using the remaining 30% to continue improving this game.

So if you want to show support for Ukraine (while also experiencing what it's like to operate a combat drone in occupied territory), I highly recommend playing this game. It's only $10 on Steam, or $16.46 for the supporter's edition, which includes this rockin' soundtrack and more skins for your pilot and drone.

If I had anything to complain about, it's that the controls currently can't be changed. I'm used to using Shift and Ctrl to go up and down in helicopters in other games, but you use E and Q to fly your drone up and down in this game. It took me a while to adapt to their controls, and I kept getting them confused and dipping into enemies instead of flying away. Developers, please let us change the controls!

Also, the game is relatively short. The whole game takes place on a single large map, but you are directed toward missions in specific regions of the map. There are 8 missions in total (plus a secret warship mission!). If you rushed through it, you could probably beat the whole game in an hour or less. But you earn points toward your total score for every little thing you accomplish in game - every enemy you kill, every vehicle you destroy, every flag you raise or propaganda site you discover. Heck, every washing machine you return gives you a boost to your score. So if you were to run around doing everything you possibly can... well, it took me about 4 hours to complete, and I know I missed a bunch of stuff.

Your total score gives you a global ranking, which you can see on the main menu. I started last night at #5,549 (I had previously played the first mission then quit), and by the time I beat the game, I was #194 globally.

So long story short, this was an extremely fun game with an amazing soundtrack, if not a bit short on gameplay and clunky controls. I hope they continue to improve on it and make it much more enjoyable. Lesser Evil, on their Steam page, claims, "We are uncompromisingly anti-authoritarian, anti-prejudice, and pro-democracy. We publish video games with clear political or social intent and messaging. We publish games that take a stand." So even though it's a short game, it's meant to deliver a message against fascism. And I think it did a pretty good job in getting that point across in the span of its gameplay. Slava Ukraini!

Cult of the Lamb is a cute game about building, maintaining, and running a cult in order to overthrow the four Bishops controlling the Old Faith. But is there such a thing as a good cult...?

You play as The Lamb, about to be put to death by the four Bishops. They've eliminated all of your kind to prevent a prophecy of "The One Who Waits" returning. With your sacrifice, the prophecy will be impossible to fulfill.

As soon as the blade lands, you wake up in a strange land, in front of The One Who Waits. He's imprisoned by four chains. He says that the Bishops, in trying to keep you from him, ended up sending you directly to him. He claims that he will grant you life again if you would start a cult in his name. Your choice is either "yes" or "absolutely." No middle ground option, I see.

He gives you his Red Crown, which revives you and grants you the power to command the loyalty of your followers and strike fear into the hearts of your enemies. You awaken at the sacrificial grounds, renewed with life, and fight your way out, taking out some of the Bishop's cultists along the way.

On your way out, you run into Ratau, a former vessel of The One Who Waits. He was instructed to help you with starting your cult. He will pop in and give you advice and guidance from time to time.

He also instructs you to save a poor soul about to be sacrificed. The grateful sacrifice will be your very first convert.

From here, you learn how to build your own cult grounds. It takes some work! You can't just leave your cult members to their own devices; you need to check in on them, provide food and shelter, task them with jobs, and overall just ensure they're happy and loyal so they continue to praise and worship you.

The more loyalty they have, the more power you build and the larger you can build your cult. Placing a shrine in the middle of your cult grounds will give your followers a place to pray and grant devotion, a sort of currency that you can use to upgrade various aspects of your cult.

You will also need to build a temple in order to give sermons, enriching your followers and also collecting more devotion from them.

Cultists can be tasked with collecting resources, which are needed to build up your cult grounds. But you also need money and more followers, both of which can be obtained by fighting your way through the lands of the Old Faith.

You ultimately need to end the lives of the four Bishops in order to release your imprisoned leader, so working your way through each of their lands is your overall goal. But it takes time to build up a cult and gain power, so you will slowly work your way up to each Bishop. As you gain more followers, each of the four lands will open up so you can travel through them for resources, money, followers, and power.

Good luck in building a faithful following! And remember:

Did you know you can save Doretta's head in the Escort Duty missions? I make it my goal to always return home with her. No dwarf (or machine) left behind!

Deep Rock Galactic is my second-most played game on Steam, with about 546 hours. Which may not seem like a lot for you hardcore gamers, but with almost 3,600 games in my Steam library, it's impressive that I've put that much time into a single game. Their Halloween event just wrapped up this morning, so apologies for the Halloween decorations in some of these screenshots.

For the uninitiated, Deep Rock Galactic is an FPS bug-shooting and resource-gathering game, with dwarves as the playable characters. Except you're on a space station, mining minerals from Hoxxes IV, a scorched, tidally-locked planet orbiting the blue star Creus. Every mission, you board a drop pod and are dropped deep into the caverns of the planet to accomplish some sort of mining expedition.

You can have up to four players per game, and there are four classes to play as: the Driller, Engineer, Gunner, and Scout. You can play on a team with any combination of classes you want; you're not stuck with just one of each. There are also tons of cosmetics you can deck out your dwarf crew with. Here are each of the classes with my own custom cosmetics:

The Driller specializes in drilling tunnels and igniting alien bugs with his flamethrower:

The Engineer crafts sentry turrets to protect the team and can shoot platforms against the wall for easier vertical climbing:

The Gunner is the tank of the group, laying down heavy suppressive fire, and he can also shoot ziplines across rooms for the team to traverse:

And the Scout is the lightweight, able to travel quickly across the caves with his personal zipline and illuminate the darkest rooms with a powerful flare gun:

As you can tell, I've sampled all the classes, but I play almost exclusively as the Gunner. It's a running joke among my friends that I'm gold-obsessed (because I'm always making them harvest all the gold they can find in each mission), so I leaned into it and decked out my gunner in all gold. He even juggles a couple gold nuggets at the end of each mission.

There are nine separate types of missions to play, scattered randomly across 10 diverse cavernous regions within the planet.

You can either select random missions to play, or you can pick an assignment from the Assignment Board, which will have a series of specific missions you need to accomplish in order to achieve the assignment and collect its rewards. There is always a Weekly Priority Assignment and a Weekly Core Hunt, both of which have several missions to complete in order to reap the rewards.

There are several robots that aid you in your missions. First and foremost is the Mining Utility Lift Engine (aka M.U.L.E., or "Molly" as the dwarves refer to her). She's a walking mine cart, collecting all the minerals that you mine so you don't have to be weighed down during your missions. There is no limit to the amount of resources she can carry, so call her over to you and regularly empty your bags!

Then there's the APD-B317 (aka "Bosco"), who is a flying drone that helps solo dwarves with their missions. If you're not on a team, Bosco joins you. You can point him at minerals and he will automatically dig them up for you. Pointing at blank walls will cause him to illuminate the space for you. And if threats appear, like alien bugs, he will automatically engage them. Although he has weak firepower, so don't expect him to take on all threats on his own. You can change his appearance and color scheme on the space station, as well as upgrade his abilities, so have fun customizing him for your missions!

Finally, there is the Drilldozer (aka "Doretta" or "Dotty"). She appears only in escort missions, where you have to protect her (and refuel her) while she slowly ventures toward an Ommoran Heartstone.

Doretta will take damage from bug attacks, so make sure you hop on top of her and repair her damage as you go. Once she reaches the Ommoran Heartstone, she will begin drilling into it (when you're ready) and you need to protect her from waves of bug attacks, as well as several defenses from the Heartstone itself.

Don't forget to find and collect her head after the Ommoran Heartstone explodes open! She's still "alive," and I'm sure she appreciates being brought home.

Every mission has a primary objective and an optional objective, which can be seen at the top right of your screen while on the planet. The optional one is usually collecting a particular resource, but not always.

The main mission ranges from harvesting minerals or alien eggs, refining liquid resources, eliminating giant deadly aliens, and salvaging lost equipment left behind by dead teams. Every cave is procedurally generated, so you never play the same area twice. It's always a unique mining expedition.

Deep Rock Galactic has recently started doing seasonal content, and the seasons have brought more missions to the game, including industrial sabotage against a competing dwarven mining company, and deep scans, to pick up rare minerals buried very deep beneath the planet's cave structure. As well as various events to encounter within the missions.

The best part about their seasonal content is that you can always acquire all the season rewards, even if you're just starting the game today. Not only can all unclaimed cosmetics be found in various chests scattered throughout the game, but you can actually select which season you want to play and earn the rewards from that season. You're not forced to jump into the latest season. Which is awesome, because there are story missions connecting all the seasons together. You can play through them relatively quick and get caught up with what's going on with the in-game lore. Or just enjoy the unique events that only happen during specific seasons.

So grab a beer at the bar, dance to some jukebox tunes on the dance floor, kick some barrels into the launch bay (to annoy the bureaucrats in Mission Control), then go explore some bio-diverse regions of Hoxxes IV!

I think Subnautica was the first crafting game I ever played, and I didn't really understand the genre, so I found it frustrating and slow. I prefer my games to have an ongoing story, and this... didn't. Not to say there isn't a story here, it just takes a backseat to the gameplay, which is exploring and crafting.

The game opens with you jumping into an escape pod. Something's wrong with your spaceship, the Aurora, so you're abandoning ship. As you fly away, you watch a massive explosion erupt from your former ship. The blast damages your escape pod and you're hit in the face with a metal panel. When you come to, your escape pod is on fire!

You jump up from your seat and grab a nearby fire extinguisher. Putting out the flames, you realize your secondary life support system and radio are both broken. You need parts to build a repair tool. You climb out of your escape pod to find yourself floating on a water planet, with the wreckage of the Aurora nearby.

In desperate need of resources, you dive into the ocean and start exploring. At first, all you can do is pick up a few resources found on the shallow ocean bed. But with the right kind of components, you can craft a scanner at the fabricator on your escape pod.

The scanner allows you to scan almost everything in your environment, collecting data from this strange alien world. It may also help you to unlock new crafting recipes. You find scattered wreckage all over the ocean floor, and scanning broken components will help you to reassemble their recipes so you can craft them yourself.

Once you've found the necessary resources, you can build a repair tool, which you can then use to repair your secondary life support system and radio.

Almost immediately, your radio picks up a message. Listening to it, you hear survivors of another escape pod. They're nearby, and under attack from a giant sea snake of some sort.

You swim out to their location, only to find the remains of their escape pod. You pick up a PDA left behind in the wreckage and download its data, which will give you the crew's log.

Your own PDA has been communicating vital information to you throughout your journey so far. Around this time, you may hear her say that the Aurora's drive core is going critical and is about to explode. You can actually watch the explosion from the surface, just make sure you're not swimming anywhere near it at the time.

From here, you're just responding to radio signals, exploring and collecting resources to build more and more advanced technologies, and eventually, you can build an entire underwater base to live in.

I didn't get much further than this, because this game is so incredibly slow for me. I enjoy the crafting game Satisfactory because all the resources I need to get started are right nearby, almost within eyesight of my landing pod, and I can scan for the location of more resources as I start to branch out. Plus, your hub gives you instructions on what to build, so you have some direction to progress toward.

Subnautica, on the other hand, just dumps you in the water with no explanation and expects you to just swim around and collect stuff until you figure out what to do with it. The first time I played this game, several years ago, I spent maybe 2 hours swimming in circles, unsure what I was supposed to do. Eventually, I realized that I needed to repair my escape pod, and then I started getting radio broadcasts.

But even then, every escape pod I tracked down was wrecked with no survivors. It was just demoralizing for me. I was hoping for some sort of plot, or an eventual rescue or something. But instead, I found myself just floundering about in the water for hours, not really sure what I'm doing or if this gameplay is going anywhere.

Not to mention, this is a survival game, so on top of trying to figure out what I'm doing, I was also trying to figure out how to find food and water to stay alive. And despite being a game about exploring an alien ocean, I could barely be under water for 30 seconds before I was drowning. It took an exceptionally long time for me to find appropriate resources to build more advanced oxygen tanks so I could stay underwater for longer. I couldn't ping for resources, I kept getting lost or turned around under water, and I could never find exactly what I needed to progress in the game.

I know this game is exceptionally popular and I rarely ever hear a bad thing about it. But I personally just can't get into it. I gave it a second chance last night, and I progressed much faster than I did my first time playing, but it was such a slog. I have no idea if it gets better later, but it's frustratingly slow and I just can't enjoy it.

Pacific Drive is a fantastical driving/survival/crafting game, where you are sucked into a reality-altering unstable zone, with the only working car the trapped residents have seen in ages. This is a very story-rich exploration game.

In 1947, the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state became a staging ground for developments in a new technology. Unfortunately, it didn't go as planned, and by 1955, the government had walled off parts of the peninsula. 30 years later, after expanding the radius of the walls many times, the government finally sealed all access and abandoned it. No one ever found out what happened inside the wall. All was quiet until you happen to be driving by in 1998...

Finding the road blocked by the wall, you turn off on a dirt road parallel to the wall, hoping for a path through the region. The ground in front of you starts shifting and morphing until you drive near it and it pops back into stability... until a large enough burst of energy kills your car's engine completely.

You sit in dark silence for a moment, until a massive burst of red glowing energy suddenly swells next to you, dragging your car off the road and into the vortex!

You wake up on the ground, surprised to see bits and pieces of your car floating through the air. The slightest tingle of radiation courses through the air around you. You realize that you're inside the walled-off peninsula now.

Wandering down the path, you find an old station wagon in a garage, flashing its lights at you. Over its radio, you hear someone chime in. They've detected strange but familiar energy readings coming from your vicinity. They identify themselves as Tobias Barlow and Francis Cooke.

The vehicle is extremely beat up, rusted, missing several panels, two doors, and the front left wheel. You find a wheel sitting nearby and install it yourself. You try the engine and surprisingly, it starts up!

You can't respond to Tobias and Francis, but they're tracking the energy your car is giving off. They instruct you to drive a few miles up the road to a safe zone, before the incoming instability scrambles you. You pull up to an auto shop, right as your left front wheel falls off again.

This shop belongs to Dr. Ophelia Turner, or Oppy, as the two guys call her. But without working vehicles, the shop has been mostly abandoned for years. When you turn on the power in the shop, she's alerted to a trespasser and threatens you over an intercom. But Tobias quickly sends out an emergency broadcast, insisting that you're there on official business for them. Oppy is annoyed, but intrigued that you have a working car. She lets you patch it up in her garage and assists you in your journey, if only to help you find a way back out through the border walls and out of her hair.

This will become your staging area for the rest of the game; you'll always return here after each mission. This is also the only place you can save your game. You can't save during a mission; you either need to complete your mission and return home, or abandon it.

At this point, the game becomes a crafting game, except almost exclusively for your vehicle. You learn how to repair, build and replace parts, and even upgrade and add components. You can also upgrade various stations in the garage, and even upgrade your gear to better protect yourself in the wild.

Oppy instructs you to use this strange "repair putty" on the damaged parts of your car. It's a pale green glowing goop that seems to magically restore parts to their full strength! It's in limited supply, but you can always make more at the workbench. This is how you repair your car as it gets beat up in the field.

She also has you fill your trunk with cardboard boxes and a craft mat. The boxes will be your excess storage, outside of your backpack. The craft mat will let you build tools and resources on the road. Your tools have a limited durability and will break after so much use. But as long as you have resources on hand, you can easily craft another one from the trunk of your car.

Finally, Oppy has you install an Arc Device in your passenger seat, her own personal invention. This will be your map, as well as a guide to warn you as anomalous storms approach. It auto-rotates to face you no matter where you're standing, so you can glance over at it while driving, or you can run up to the passenger window and view it quick.

Also included is a status screen on your dashboard, which will inform you of the "health" of your car's parts. As you take damage, each component will turn from green to yellow to red, then gray as they break off the vehicle. Be sure to repair your car as needed!

There is a giant map on the wall of the garage, and Oppy is able to remotely access a projector to display data on it. This is where you'll pick your missions. She instructs you to go find parts to build an antenna for the garage; otherwise, you'll never be able to travel far. The zone within the walls is unstable and entire regions could be erased entirely, or reconstructed into another land that didn't exist previously, so you need to be able to receive data about each region before - and during - your travels there.

It's explained to you by Tobias that your car is a Remnant, which is essentially a shabby cast-off item imbued with strange properties, that randomly appears within the zone. He gives the example of a broken microwave that freezes food instead of heating it, or a rusty paint can that produces every color of paint in existence. Your car gives off this same energy, which is exciting for him because it's been several decades since the last remnant appeared, and it remains to be seen what strange properties your car will produce.

Most of the game is spent exploring regions and scavenging all the parts you can find. You're told that most all of the zone is abandoned and each region could cease to exist if a wave of instability passes through, so you might as well loot everything that's not bolted down. Be aware of aggressive machines roaming the lands. These floating guys in particular will just grab your car and drag it into the woods before abandoning it.

While out scavenging for parts, I ran into these creepy mannequin-like guys stuck in the ground. They pulse red from the head or chest, and if you bump into them, they explode. The creepiest part is, if you get close enough to them, then look away, when you look back at them, they'll be much closer to you. You never see or hear them move, and they never attack you or anything, but if you're not paying attention near them, you might turn and walk into one suddenly. You need to stare them down while backing far away, so they don't pursue you behind your back.

Once you've completed your objective in each zone, you need to find and grab a stable anchor, a round glowing ball sitting on a large semi-circle device, and feed it to your Arc Device. It will cause some instability in the vicinity when you pull it, so be careful.

Grab as many of them as you can! Your map will point them out in the region. There are always a few of them scattered around, and you use their energy to unlock more advanced technologies and blueprints back at the garage. So the more you find, the quicker you can upgrade your crafting capabilities.

Once you have at least one, you will be able to use the Arc Device to open a gateway directly back to the garage. But only activate it when you're ready to leave, as it will quickly collapse the stability in the region. Make sure you know where the gateway is and that you're relatively close to it, Then once you summon it, drive like mad into the giant sky beam! Be prepared to do a bit of off-roading for this part.

As you explore, you can find paints, decals, and other trinkets to deck out your car. Plus, keep upgrading its components to make it stronger and more efficient. Here's my car after applying some glow-in-the-dark decals, adding off-road tires, and replacing all of the panels and doors with steel.

This has been an extremely entertaining game so far! I'm enjoying the open world exploration, scavenging parts off other vehicles or wherever I can find them, and of course, I love driving games! That's your main mode of travel in this game, so you'll be doing a lot of it. Your car is your lifeline, so stick near it at all times!

This game is pretty in-depth, and with 11 hours of gameplay already, I've barely scratched the surface of the plot. I've been so preoccupied exploring around and looting everything that I can get my hands on, that I haven't actually made it very far into the story yet. I'm debating taking a brief hiatus from posting these so I can really enjoy this game.

Little Kitty, Big City is a cute game where you play a cat who fell out of their owner's window, way atop a high-rise apartment.

Miraculously surviving the fall (thanks to some well-placed obstacles and a bird you cling to), you find yourself on the street level several blocks away, unable to find your way home.

The bird admonishes you for your poor flying skills, then offers to get you a fish when you insist you're too tired and hungry to climb all the way back up your building. But you need to pay him in "shinies," which you can find lying around all over the city. You will need to find 4 total fish around the city before you'll have the stamina to climb your way back home.

From there, you're traveling around the city, interacting with other animals and collecting cute hats to wear. You either find the hats lying around in places, or you can pay 5 shinies to the bird at a vending machine and he'll get you a hat out of the machine.

You rescue a rambunctious tanuki stuck in a pipe and he professes to be an inventor. He offers to let you be his test subject for interdimensional travel.

He's been messing with the spacetime continuum and has connected all the sewer pipes through a sort of wormhole. This is your fast-travel in the game, so you can cross the map quickly without having to run across the whole city.

He calls it the Petwork™ and insists you unlock each one with a single bird feather.

Another cat will teach you how to sneak up and pounce on birds, causing them to drop a feather. Don't worry, it's a catch-and-release game; you let the birds fly away as soon as you catch them.

You also meet a duck who has lost his four children. You agree to track them down for him, but be warned that he won't take them back until all four are accounted for. So you'll have a trail of ducklings following you everywhere until you find all of them.

Another fascinating character you'll run into is a chameleon who can't change his colors to match his surroundings. He's convinced you're a magician (like he is!) because you can always see him. He gives you riddles, then "hides" and you have to track him down across the city.

There's also a beetle, who is the manager for Taffy, a wealthy social influencer cat. The poor guy is stressed beyond belief and hanging by a thread. #JusticeForBeetle! He gives you a phone, which you can use to take selfies. In Steam, snapping a selfie will actually take a screenshot.

There are a few other cats who will teach you how to behave more like a street cat, unlocking different cat reactions you can use throughout the game.

And that's pretty much the jist of the game. There are a few other characters to meet and plenty of small puzzles to figure out. Ultimately, you need to get your stamina up so you can scale your building and get home. Which will be a challenge in itself, even with a full stamina bar. But there are plenty of fun things to do around the city on your way there.

Or just find one of many nap spots all across the city and take some time to relax.