tldr videogame curation
melbourne, australia

Decent follow-up to Her Story. Great production, but some of the magic is gone: it’s not as immersive and some of the writing is a struggle. That said, definitely play if you love FMV games.

It’s Skyrim. For its time, raised the bar for the genre. I have many, many fond memories of the hundreds of hours lost to this game. Hugely influential for better or worse.

A lot of the magic of the first one is gone and unfortunately it’s just kind of… uninspiring. For everything it does well, there are two things it doesn’t. Worth a look on sale.

A beautiful love letter to oldschool Zelda et al. Starts off slowish and somewhat opaque (by design), but if you stick with it, the pay-off is pretty good. A wonderful little puzzlebox of a game.

“Best of All-Time” lists are very hard - impossible maybe. So in lieu of being able to commit to what are the best, here are my favourites of all-time. The order is kinda loose, fwiw.

Basically Genshin but sci-fi instead of fantasy, and turn-based instead of realtime combat. The intro tutorial is painful, but push through and it becomes pretty fun. Lock up your wallet.

Tone, visuals, atmosphere and music are back to Diablo’s dark roots. Unfortunately the pacing, activities and uneven design quality (not to mention monetisation) become old pretty quickly. Feels more like a checklist than an epic journey, but it’ll probably be a good game in a year or two.

Bafflingly, just like with BOTW, I have no idea how Nintendo pulled this off. The mechanical additions are creative and wildly impressive. Somehow though, as a sequel, it never quite hit me as hard. I was constantly amazed, but sometimes struggled to find or maintain the fun.

It feels lazy to say so, but it really is - in the best way - more of the same but improved. I wish they leaned more into the soulslike aspects, but they understandably want to retain a broader audience. The set pieces are bombastic, combat fun and exploration a bit more rewarding this time around.

Fast and well-polished roguelike that revels in letting the player break the game. Very satisfying and addictive, and even more fun with friends. Great value - just get it.