Radu Haulica
I have mixed feelings toward Randal's Monday, mainly due to the fact that it's not bad. It has a pretty interesting story to explore, but it's just bogged down in a ton of unneeded detail and contrived puzzle design.
If you're a dedicated fan of the Shadowrun setting and enjoy your games a little on the complex side, you will be disappointed in the lack of depth in Shadowrun Chronicles. If, however, you enjoy turn-based tactical action and cooperative multiplayer, you might have a blast with the game.
Although Nether still has quite a ways to go until it can offer a rich and fulfilling experience, it's definitely looking like it's going to get there. There are many things missing, but, to be fair, it's still early access.
The first chapter of Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms is pretty solid, offering a great mix of narrative and combat, but the following ones seem to favor combat over substance, which is a bit of a disappointment.
Whispering Willows is an enjoyable experience, even though it's a bit disappointing that it doesn't live up to neither the gameplay nor the writing of old adventure games.
If you loved the first Transformers games, odds are you'll also like this one. If you liked Michael Bay's movies, Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark is worth a shot. But if you're expecting a redeeming experience, this is not it.
White Night is a unique blend of noir horror, with a very bold visual style, offering an experience that is both familiar and unique to fans of the genre.
A Golden Wake is not the kind of adventure game that will convert non-believers any time soon, but those who enjoy the genre and can stomach its lo-fi visuals will definitely be entertained by its numerous quips and lighthearted attitude, as well as challenged by its more somber undertones.
Dungeons 2 is nowhere near the level I wanted it to be. It would have been nice to see an evolution of the dungeon management genre that takes things to the level of complexity of city-builders like Pharaoh or Zeus.
Space Colony: Steam Edition is clearly reaching out from a time way back when video game design used to be more forgiving. It's got a lot of flaws, but it also has a ton of personality, and it offers a pretty solid space colony management experience, albeit one a little on the light side.
Monochroma is undeniably a good game that's worth playing, but there are several issues which mark the experience down. Having a cohesive storyline, for one, would have made it much better. I know it's a matter of choice and some people prefer the mystery to knowing, but I would have liked to hear characters talking and to explore the relationship between the two brothers, as well as the relationship between the dystopian city and its inhabitants a little more than just at the visual level.
Minimum is not going to revolutionize multiplayer shooter design anytime soon, but it manages to offer a unique enough experience, with enough gameplay variety to warrant attention from third-person shooters enthusiasts that want to experience something slightly different.
Among the Sleep is a horror experience that's more interested in delivering on its premise of exploring traumatic events from the perspective of a two-year old than in shocking you with gore or employing jump scares in order to get a cheap reaction out of you, which is good.
Supreme League of Patriots is kind of a mixed bag: you have a decent adventure game that tries to work in a new direction, driven by plot and dialogue more than random puzzles and inconvenient coincidences that force you to play MacGyver or to do random strangers favors and run errands in exchange for items that could have easily been acquired from any department store.
In spite of its somewhat inept systems, Risen 3 has a certain sense of adventure around it, that will pull you in and make you endure the atrocious combat and some of the misgivings about the dialogue in order to explore its tropical islands, hoist the Jolly Roger and see what else it has to offer.
The game delivers in all major areas that old-school role-playing game fans care about. It has pretty good and satisfying combat that oftentimes challenges you to actually get involved and perform some tactical magic, it has a huge world to explore, a ton of characters to meet, and a pretty good story.
This is far from your average puzzle platformer, as its main audience is not the die-hard old-school fanbase of the genre. Never Alone is first and foremost an educational experience, and this is the standard to which you have to judge it in order to fully appreciate it.
The Fall attempts to pose the same questions that some of the most well-known classical science fiction writers did, tackling the very notion of what it means to be alive, to have a conscience and purpose, touching on themes that Phillip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov played with, and attempting to explore the consequences of the realization of free will within the boundaries of a complex but ultimately very finite system such as the one found inside a machine.
A Story About My Uncle unfortunately tells no story and is simply content to regale you with the incentive to play Spider-Man with rocket boots. It pulls it off pretty well and offers some genuinely interesting moments of gameplay but also a lot of frustrating ones, where you fail to land on your target by what seems like very, very little, time and time again.
Consortium is a really immersive role-playing experience that plays like an adventure game set in the early days of the Star Trek universe. It is similar to what a modern incarnation of the classic point-and-click adventures of old should be like, complete with diplomacy and multiple choices with different consequences and end results.