by Herald Selenay

Related Item: Herald's Call

ROMagister wrote:

May your in-game health transfer to your physical body :-)

Thanks, Mircea! That would be really nice.

by Mulligans

A new GeekList has been posted 2026 New Player Initiative: Pirate Borg by Mulligans

by Mulligans

An item RPG Item: Pirate Borg has been added to the geeklist 2026 New Player Initiative: Pirate Borg by Mulligans

by latindog

I have run the Topaz Championship from theLegend of the Five Rings Starter Set as well and it does reward the PCs for completing their gempuku and winning the tournament. We've also run many adventures where the nominal motivation is money or a specific magic item as a reward. I think this has been more of a means to give a plausible motivation to a group of PCs to undertake a risky endeavor than to provide an actual motivation for the players. That is to say they have been more excuses to explain why one's character undertook a task than an actual motivation for playing a certain adventure.

by Forbidding

The list for my personal most disappointing games of the year. To clarify, these are not the "best and worst" games of the year. They are titles I enjoyed or was letdown by based on my own preferences and expectations. Most of the titles on my disappointing list are not even what I would consider bad games, they just weren't for me, or were not what I was expecting.

All the games on this list are the launch version or later, and I have either played them to completion or abandoned them. The list is ordered based on my overall enjoyment (one being the best) of games I played in 2025. Most of the games listed here will not be brand new 2025 releases. They are games I played in 2025 that were new to me.

[hr]

#1: Desperados III | patch 1.06 installed

At its heart, Desperados III is a real-time with pause stealth game, which is not quite what I was expecting going into it. I don't think I have played any other real-time game where stealth was mandatory and I have read that previous Desperados games let you go in guns blazing. There are guns in this one, but they are loud and will alert all nearby enemies to your presence, making them an odd inclusion in a stealth oriented game. There is also a very limited amount of ammo that further restricts their use, so throwing knives and bare handed strangulation or punch-outs are the primary tools in this western themed title. There are 16 missions in total, spread across three chapters, each containing a unique map. The environments are richly detailed and range from brightly lit cities to grungy bayous to forest covered mountains. They are creatively designed and easily have some of the best map layouts I have encountered in a tactical game so far.

Each level is spent shuffling around a small group of characters trying to complete objectives while avoiding the visibility cones of patrolling hostiles. Only the range of one enemy cone is visible at a time, so the rest you have to memorize or guess at. Mission levels are laid out like a puzzle with a very specific way of completing them, which is dictated by the layout of arenas, arrangement of guards, patrols, and hiding spots. Every now and then there may be an alternate route or something, but overall it does not allow for different approaches.

The cast of characters are outlaws on a mission, so you are free to kill or spare as many people as you like without a morality system judging your actions.

The cast of characters is varied, consisting of a bounty hunter (John Cooper), a devious damsel (Kate O'Hara), a brutish fur trapper (Hector Mendoza), a Scottish assassin-doctor (McCoy), and a voodoo practitioner (Isabelle Moreau). Each member of the group has a limited set of combat abilities relevant to their trade: the trapper can set traps, the lady can charm and distract, the doctor can snipe and blind, et cetera. Some of their abilities overlap because all five desperadoes may not always be available; some characters may leave temporarily for story reasons. The story itself is your standard 'revenge for a murdered pa' plotline. It moves things along but is mostly in the background and doesn't explain why such a disjointed group of people would associate with one another. It is implied in at least some of the levels that the doctor is getting paid to be there. The fur trapper is the [o]guardian/friend of John[/o], but this isn't revealed until the last chapter. The lady alternates between hating John the bounty hunter and being sweet on him, and the voodoo practitioner Isabelle straight up has no reason to help a gang of strangers other than they're "going the same way".

The mission "One Hell Of A Night" felt like a chunk of the story was missing. Everyone goes from boarding a train to being black out drunk in a ramshackle town. The developers meant for players to piece things together as they go, but it didn't read that way. It genuinely felt like something was missing rather than coming across as a puzzle to work out. And you can go through the entire mission without ever figuring it out.

[o]• Isabelle supplied Rosie with the drugs she used to spike everyone's drinks in Baton Rouge. Why Rosie drugged everyone that first time is never explained unless you managed to piece together the events of the "One Hell Of A Night" mission.

• After the big heist Hector steals all the money and abandons everyone to run off with Rosie. Presumably this is to explain his absence in the sequels.

• What happened to Hector afterwards? Rosie is a manipulator and her relationship with Hector never felt genuine.[/o]

Each of the characters has different walk, run, and idle animations that reflect their physiques and personalities. The trapper is the only individual that is able to pick up and move swiftly with bodies. The bounty hunter and voodoo practitioner have their movement slowed down by them. The lady and the doctor both have to slowly drag the bodies due to not being physically strong enough to lift them fully.

I ran into a few problems while playing. The controls never felt right (with a controller), like I was always fighting with them or hitting the wrong button and there was no way re-map the controls. It was too easy to pick up bodies while trying to retrieve a knife or climb stairs, leading to a lot of restarts. When spotted, my character would slow down to a snails pace and I am not sure if this was intentional to prevent the player character from reaching cover as quickly as they normally would have, or if this was a glitch. When pressing the button to stand, crouch, or jump there would sometimes be a delay of several seconds or it wouldn't register at all. I would have to press the button multiple times before my character carried out the action and by that point the guards would have spotted them. Certain doorways were hard to see or outright undetectable without moving the camera. I got stuck on the environment a few times. The game crashed once. I also had a problem with the tutorials auto-closing immediately after I opened them, so I couldn't read what they said and there was no other way to access that information. The game not saving correctly and setting me back was especially frustrating.

Aesthetically the character designs and environments were stellar, and the area layouts were well thought out, but I never felt immersed in the western setting. The sneaking around and constant save-reloading (required by design) ripped me out of the experience again and again. Each mission level can take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours to clear, in part because it requires a lot of precision, patience, and retries. There is a very small margin for error, so the slightest misstep and you'll have to restart from the last save. People who enjoy a challenge will probably love this aspect of the game, but I am not that kind of gamer; this type of gameplay just stresses me out and it is why I avoid souls-like games. I feel relief when a level is cleared rather than excitement that I overcame its challenges. I did end up playing Desperados III to completion, so I definitely get the appeal, but I can't say I love it as much as some other people seem to.

#2: Horizon Forbidden West - Complete Edition | patch 1.029.000 installed

Forbidden West is basically more of what Zero Dawn was with some Legend of Zelda DNA spliced in. The lush, sprawling environments have a good degree of verticality and were designed to look gorgeous from the ground or sky. You can climb the mountains, swim the oceans and glide through the skies using a new glider or flying mount. The cauldrons (dungeons) are more diverse compared to its predecessor, Zero Dawn, and usually come with some unique twist. One cauldron will be [o]underwater for example[/o], while another will have Aloy (protagonist) [o]make a dramatic exit atop a freshly assembled tallneck (giraffe shaped machine)[/o]. The new tribes are all expertly fleshed out and easy to tell apart thanks to their unique aesthetics and customs; from the Utaru's elaborately woven structures inspired by real life Cadjan and Arish architecture, to the colorfully jagged patterns the Tenakth tattoo into their skin to showcase their achievements. They all have extensive hierarchies, histories and beliefs tied in some way to the Old World. Such as how [o]Hekarro (Tenakth Chief)[/o] united the warring clans through physical might and [o]"visions" (holograms) of past warriors[/o] calling for a united front against the machines, or the Quen empire which views itself as the [o]"chosen people" of the Ancestors (pre-apocalypse humans)[/o] and censors information to all but a select few individuals.

The side quests are used to organically inform the player about certain characters, political disputes, rivalries, and tribal customs. One that stood out to me involved a Tenakth called Korreh who was blinded by machine acid. In the strength-based Tenakth society, physical impairments are not viewed favorably and those with them are usually put down out of 'mercy'. The more docile Utaru tribe shows reluctance to take in Korreh due to an ongoing food shortage. However, Korreh develops a new instrument, which endears him to the music loving Utaru. It is a really great way of seamlessly introducing the player to the customs, values, and ongoing troubles of two different tribes. Aloy meanwhile, continues her character arc of learning to trust other people. To this end she establishes a mountain base where returning characters, [o]Erend and Varl[/o], along with a handful of new characters, prepare for the battles ahead. I just wish that it had some type of gameplay impact. Outside of personal side-quests and a select few main missions, Aloy still completes most of her adventures solo while the rest of the crew sit in their designated corner of the base.

For better or worse, nearly every character of note from the first game makes a cameo appearance in the sequel. I assume this was done to please the fans but it is the sort of thing that can leave new players feeling alienated.

Continuing from Zero Dawn's narrative, Aloy is trying to restore sub-functions to a terraforming system called "Gaia", while a new threat is trying to do the same. This new threat is a group of [o]immortal businessmen from outer space[/o] called the "Zeniths". I hated the inclusion of the Zeniths and the way they shifted the story away from the grounded science-fiction of Zero Dawn to something closer to science-fantasy. The lack of any precedent for [o]immortality[/o] completely broke my suspension of disbelief and the revelation that the [o]Odyssey (Zenith ship) survived the Faro plague[/o] only lessened the impact of Zero Dawn as the last hope for humanity.

Barely anything is learned about the Zeniths themselves or their technology: How did they achieve [o]immortality[/o]? How and why did they acquire [o]DNA from Sobeck (Gaia's creator)[/o]? How do they defy gravity to float? What are their shields and weapons made of and how does it make them [o]impervious to Earth weaponry[/o]? Why were they not able to stop or contain [o]Nemesis, the angry AI trying to kill them[/o]? And now that the Zenith's are [o]all dead, what motivation does Nemesis have for continuing with its plan to destroy the Earth[/o]? The messaging of Zero Dawn was about selfishness and unchecked corporate greed, not technology as an enemy. Of course Aloy needs a new threat. I just don't find [o]another evil AI[/o] or the Zeniths that compelling. They are so out of place in Horizon's world and would be more at home in a superhero or extraterrestrial narrative.

It took me 60 hours to unlock every essential tool in the game; granted, I probably took longer than most because like to take my time. Getting told over and over that I didn't have the necessary items for the various ruins, hidden treasures, or side quests and would have to come back later was very annoying. It felt like I was being punished for not speed-running the main storyline.

I also didn't like the direction Forbidden West took with Ted Faro. Ted wasn't a good guy by any stretch, but he was a complex character with believable motivations. He didn't set out to [o]destroy the world[/o], but through hubris and a lack of foresight, [o]doomed the planet[/o]. Ted [o]purged the Apollo database (library / education system)[/o] in a misguided attempt to prevent future generations from making the same mistakes he did by [o]limiting their access to knowledge[/o]. In Forbidden west, Ted is reduced to nothing more than an egomaniacal tyrant with a harem that [o]purged the entirety of Apollo to cover up his part in the world's end[/o]. When the Quen empire claimed to be [o]related to Ted Faro (at least spiritually) and upheld him as a paragon[/o], I started to wonder if the Quen royal family might be [o]directly descended from Ted or if they possibly had a Ted clone, similar to how Aloy was cloned from Sobeck. It would run parallel to many real-world royals who claim to be descended from the gods or were otherwise appointed by a higher power.[/o]

Instead you find out that Ted [o]is still alive and has mutated himself into a gelatinous mess in an attempt to achieve immortality[/o] - something he was never previously shown to have an interest in. It felt like something more at place in a horror story than in Horizon's world. They already had a really good villain setup with Regalla (Tenakth rebel), so I don't know why they felt the need to [o]revive Ted in the flesh only to kill him off-screen seconds later[/o]. Not only was Regalla leading a rebellion against the local leaders but she had plans to bring down the [o]Carja with an army of machines[/o]. She was a grounded threat with dangerous knowledge that could harm the people Aloy actually cares about. It is a shame they underutilized her.

The story in general had a lot of inconsistencies and weird stuff in it. For example, [o]Zo (a new companion) gets pregnant with Varl's child despite the two of them only knowing each other for a week... a month? And this only comes up after he is dead. It came off as a cheap attempt at eliciting an emotional response from the player. But I hardly know Varl from the first game, and I didn't learn much more about him in the sequel. Instead of being sad about Varl's death, all I could think about was how Zo is going to get by as a single parent and what assistance, if any, her village will provide. Is anyone going to tell Varl's mother, war chief Sona, that her last surviving child is dead and that she is a grandmother now? Will Sona be able to visit her grandchild in the Forbidden West? How would that work? None of this is addressed or even brought up.[/o]

[o]One major NPC from the first game travels around the Forbidden West in full Carja armor despite that practically being a death sentence given their history with the Tenakth. It came off as something done purely for nostalgia and made a lot of what Aloy had to do just to step foot in the Forbidden West feel pointless. A romance between Aloy and Seyka (a new NPC) is also setup in the Burning Shores expansion, but it comes off as something built on projection and trauma bonding rather than chemistry. They lean heavily into "how alike" Aloy and Seyka are, but I couldn't see it. That aspect of their attraction to each other also just felt creepy to me given that in the base game Zenith Tilda (Sobek's lover) got friendly with the Beta clone (another Sobek copy) because of her physical similarities to Sobek. And then tried abducting Aloy because of "how like Sobek" Aloy was in more than just body.
[/o]

In Zero Dawn it was satisfying to bring down machines by exploiting their elemental weaknesses and tearing off armor. Forbidden West makes that much harder because the combat has been altered so that Aloy will get hit more easily due to her hitboxes having been enlarged. Machines hit harder as well and attack with a relentless aggression that necessitates dodging, something the player is punished for doing more than three times. Most machines have long range attack patterns that track where Aloy is dodging to rather than where she currently is, making the timing on dodges crucial for avoiding damage. Contending with a group of machines can become chaotic due to the increased difficulty curve of combat, no indication of where enemies are positioned, and the heavy use of particle effects which reduces visibility. Aloy can get stun-locked, knocked down or out of combat animations more easily than before and takes a while to recover. Compared to Zero Dawn, Aloy feels weaker and more sluggish in combat. I never felt as if I was in control this time around or had a shot at avoiding damage, which made me start ignoring fights whenever possible. I am not a challenge gamer, so these changes really put me off, but those that enjoy an increased difficulty will probably have a good time.

The ropecaster and spear have been made mostly unviable for combat against machines. I also ran into an issue with Aloy using her spear's quick attack whenever the "critical hit" option would appear because they are mapped to the same button.

The bane of my existence though, is the new climbing system. The thick painted ledges of Zero Dawn have been removed in favor of a minimalist approach. The focus (scanner) will highlight what ridges can be scaled, but depending on the time of day and the environment, the handholds can be very hard to see. During the quest "The Deluge" for example, the player is told to use their focus to figure out how to move a crane to rescue a group of people trapped on a rocky ledge. The focus will fully highlight a cable spool in a bright yellow glow to indicate that it can be broken. Shooting this spool will do nothing. What the player is suppose to do is notice the explosive rock highlighted in a white outline under muddy brown water. Only once that has been dealt with can the spool be damaged. Other times Aloy can physically reach a railing or jagged outcrop, but the focus will show that it cannot be grabbed for whatever reason. I am not sure if there is something going on with the collision detection but I constantly ran into problems with Aloy not responding to commands or randomly letting go of a ledge. In the Restless Weald ruins I could not get her to grab the zipline at all, but I know that it can be done. I like what the developers were trying to achieve with the reworked focus mechanics, but the climbing has always been my least favorite part of these games. Forbidden West adding in more of it plus this new finicky system did not make me happy. I actually died more times to missed jumps and accidental falls than I did in combat.

I kept running into problems with visibility. It was worst in the cauldrons where the lack of contrast made it hard for me to discern when a doorway was open or when it had a shield up. The confusing layouts, low light, and dense wiring would obscure the walkways. I had to go into photo mode on multiple occasions to get a better view of my surroundings. A few times I had to look up how to progress. Usually I had just gone down the wrong pathway, couldn't see the handholds, or my game had glitched.

I walked away from Forbidden West with mixed feelings. The narrative really jumped the shark with the Zeniths, which has dampened my enthusiasm for the series as a whole. I just don't care about [o]immortal entrepreneurs[/o] or another save the world plotline. I enjoy learning about the tribes, their customs and ways of doing things. The smaller scale stories and earthly problems. I wanted to know more about Regalla and I was excited for how she would impact the various tribes and allies of Aloy, especially with an army of machines at her command. Outside of a few NPCs I didn't feel the same attachment to the world and the people in it like I did with Zero Dawn. The first game gave you motivation to care about Aloy. Who was she and would she ever be accepted? It also did a good job of setting up a goal that extended beyond the Nora village and getting revenge for the death of Rost (Aloy's father). The sequel by comparison, starts off with a series of fetch quests to retrieve parts for Gaia and resolves its larger conflict with a deus ex machina. The things that I liked about the first game have been altered in ways that made them less enjoyable to me, and the things that I disliked have been made more prominent in the sequel. It can be frustrating to play if you do not enjoy the combat system or the climbing. There are also a lot of bugs: lighting glitches, NPCs getting stuck, the 'critical hit' not working, etc. I was really looking forward to riding a clawstrider (raptor machine) but never got the chance to override one because of a glitch.

#3: Shadows of Doubt

Set in a procedurally generated city, the player works as a private investigator pursuing crime related cases in the city. These cases range from theft to murder and can occur anywhere at any time. Like in real life, the investigator will need to collect fingerprints, shoe prints, check surveillance camera footage and interview people to find the culprit. Much of the evidence will be time sensitive, but if the player takes too long the killer will always strike again. The Detective is expected to illegally trespass to gather information and contend with automated turrets and hostile citizens. Only the murderer's name is required to solve a case, but cash bonuses are rewarded for additional information and evidence. Cash is then used to pay for helpful implants, to cover medical expenses, bribe citizens, pay fines, obtain tools (camera, handcuffs, doorstops, weapons), and to rent and furnish an apartment. The game ends when enough social credit has been accrued to retire.

Most cases are relatively easy to solve. The trickiest ones I encountered involved kidnappings or a sniper because the perpetrator wasn't in the room with the victim to leave evidence. For snipers you have to [o]follow the bullet trajectory and inspect apartments at the likley sniping location[/o]. It doesn't give you much to go on and subsequent murders will not yield any evidence you don't already have. Shadows of Doubt does not have any kind of pity system and no new cases will open until the current one is resolved. Kidnapping cases were especially hard, mostly because they had a tendency to glitch out - the phone number for the ransom will either come back as invalid or the kidnapper never shows up to collect the money - leaving the game in a state of limbo since you cannot abandon a case. Even when working as intended, little to no evidence is left. Randomly locating the victim in the basement of one of the buildings was the only viable way I could end these types of cases.

The game in general is very buggy. The button used to back out of menus is the same one used to open them. Witness testimony and business hours are given in the 12-hour clock system while the player's watch and investigation notes use the 24-hour clock system. Witness testimony and CCTV footage will list the suspect as 'male' and 'bald', but when apprehended the suspect's ID and dossier will say 'non-binary' or 'bald, red hair'. Cops and the killer will be invisible on CCTV footage. Corpses need to be found and reported by NPCs to trigger a case, but some deaths can go unreported for days (in-game) or never. The phones will not let me dial numbers which prevents me from taking on smaller side jobs and entering door codes. I have gotten stuck in the furniture, seen NPCs vanish or clip through walls, and rainy days will bring the frame-rate down to almost nothing. It is really frustrating and what finally pushed me into abandoning the game. Updates release at a glacial pace and don't always seem to fix the problems listed in the patch notes. As far as I can tell the developer is a very small team and the scale of this game may just be too much for them to fix across multiple platforms.

Parts of the game world may not load properly and there are unimplemented or possibly scrapped remnants in the game for blood types.

When I was able to get the game working as intended I had a blast. One memorable case involved three murders. My main lead was from a victim who thought she was being stalked. I checked the CCTV cameras for a person matching the suspect's description between the hours given and found a match. I had to ask around to find out what areas this person frequented and then had to check more camera footage to figure out exactly where they lived. It ended up being a false lead. My target's fingerprints didn't match the ones at the crime scene and they didn't appear to own a weapon. They also worked as a street vendor during the hours the victim thought she was being stalked. At the next murder scene a taunting letter was left by the killer. It contained an eleven-letter name with R and S in it. I used a directory to find a matching name and an address in the upper class part of town. The ritzy apartment had matching prints, the right type of murder weapon, and (weirdly) a resident who matched the stalker description even though they didn't appear on the CCTV footage.

I actually really like what Shadows of Doubt was trying to achieve. It just failed at the execution. Even when functioning properly, most of the cases aren't dynamic or varied; they have a very specific way of solving them: [o]follow the bullet trajectory for snipers, search basements for kidnapping victims, and look into lovers or coworkers of poisoning victims.[/o] The culprit was almost always a stalker, a ritual killer, or someone fed up with noisy neighbors. No lovers quarrels or killings motivated by money, jealousy, abuse, revenge, politics, or the elimination of witnesses. After a while it can feel samey. The PC can set a custom city size (700 people max) while the console releases are restricted to 1 size (450 people max). So despite being procedurally generated the layout of the cities will more or less contain the same handful of pieces every time with the exact same interior layouts, just with different flooring and wallpaper. Hopefully in the future someone will be able to build off of this concept because it is the closest I have seen a game come to replicating real life investigative hurdles and procedures.

#4: Death Stranding Director's Cut | patch 1.004 installed

Following a cataclysmic event that has unleashed phantom-esque creatures upon the Earth, a delivery man named Sam Porter Bridges braves the dangerous conditions of Iceland America to supply isolated colonies with cargo. Most of the gameplay is about managing load sizes and the arrangement of the packages in order to more efficiently traverse the rugged terrain. You don't want the heavy stuff on top of a large stack for example, and a pizza can't be turned sideways without ruining it. The heavier and taller the load, the more easily Sam will loose his footing while traveling. Some items may be especially fragile or need to be delivered within a certain time frame. Upon delivery the player is graded based on delivery time, cargo volume, and the condition of the packages. This will raise Sam's reputation with the recipient, who may allow Sam to rest at their base or fabricate items that will make traversing the environment easier: ladders, climbing anchors, bridges, roadways, vehicles and so on.

Despite being set in America, the game uses kilograms instead of pounds and kilometers instead of miles, even in the North American release of the game. The landscapes and weather patterns are also those of Iceland, not America. Death Stranding tries to explain around this by blaming timefall and voidouts, but it isn't terribly convincing. If Death Stranding's America looks like Iceland, does that mean that Iceland now looks like America? Iceland is a stunningly gorgeous country, so why not just set the game there? Why tack on the American branding? My head canon is that the story is actually set in Iceland, but for whatever reason - a lack of internet or Vault-Tec type experiments - the residents believe they are in America and need to rebuild it.

A deteriorating rain called "Timefall" (think acid rain) will degrade the condition of packages and vehicles over time. The rain will always appear in certain areas while being sporadic in others. Dwelling inside the rain are ghostly creatures called "Beached Things" (BTs for short) that are undetectable except with a sensor called an "Odradek". The Odradek is a human fetus that functions like radar to detect ghosts because the unborn child is "between worlds". Sam will have to sneak past the BTs until weapons to restrain and combat them become available. If a BT manages to grab a hold of Sam, they will drag him to a large animal (catcher-type) BT, initiating a boss fight. Anyone killed and consumed by a BT will cause a "voidout" (explosion). As a "repatriate" (someone incapable of dying), Sam will go to an underwater realm known as the "Seam" when killed. The Seam acts as a portal between the realms of the dead and the living, allowing Sam to follow his soul strand back to the world of the living - being reincarnated in a sense.

My playthrough of 110 hours was likley longer than most. Even so, Death Stranding should have been half the length it was. I knew that it was a walking simulator and had fun with that aspect of the game for a few hours, but by hour 42 that kind of repetitive gameplay loop had greatly overstayed its welcome.

The gameplay is average at best and an absolute slog at worst. It isn't hard, but trekking over the same terrain again and again in dead silence gets old fast. There isn't even a radio to listen too despite the game having an extensive licensed soundtrack. The only time music played for me was during moments when it would get interrupted by NPC dialogue, BTs, or just cut-out randomly after a few seconds. I have heard that the music is good, but so little of it played for me that I can't give an opinion on it. A lot of the technical issues I encountered were nothing more than little annoyances. A vehicle would get stuck on the environment and there would be no way to recover it, or cargo would just poof out of existence, even when left in a vehicle, because Sam walked too far away from it. It was really irritating to loose valuable materials in this way that took considerable time to collect and transport, and I can't tell if this distance-from-cargo restriction is because of technical limitations or a deliberate design decision. There were also times when Sam cleared jagged terrain like it was nothing, but then on perfectly flat even ground would slip and slide like he was on ice. It didn't matter if I was propped up against a wall or standing still. Sam would go into this perpetual toppling animation that was comical to watch. Some of the larger BTS would also freeze up during battles.

The BT ghosts were never scary, just annoying inconveniences.

I always looked forward to the next encounter with Higgs Monaghan (main antagonist) and whatever new tar creature he would summon. I enjoyed his playfulness, his terrible games and unwavering confidence, and I was delighted to find out he was [o]the pizza guy[/o]. I wanted to know more about this guy, how he got his powers, and why the Death Stranding event occurred. The answers, sadly, were just tired tropes. Right from the start of the game I had already pinned down who the "big bad evil guy" was going to be and guessed that the the UCA's Chiral Network (basically the internet) would be used as [o]part of something nefarious[/o]. Most of the big story revelations were things that had already been broadcasted and made obvious through the visuals, such as [o]Clifford Unger and Sam's connection[/o]. Cutscenes were long-winded, especially near the start of the game, and used mainly as a way to dump exposition. The pacing of the chapters was wildly uneven. Some are just a fight scene and a cutscene, while others can go on for hours; I was 45 hours into the game and still on Chapter 2 (out of 15) for the longest time. This made the story and gameplay feel aimless at times. I would often be driving along and find myself wondeing, "why am I doing this again? Oh right, something about connecting people."

With the exception of Higgs, the cast of characters didn't interest me at all, but I could see how a more emotionally sensitive person than I could get attached to their plight.

Characters are introduced and removed from the narrative before you get to know them, sometimes in needlessly convoluted ways. For example, the character Mama is only seen a handful of times before she returns to her sister who is located at a different base. During your second face-to-face interaction with Mama you find out that she [o]and her baby died in a bombing, but Mama's Ba (spiritual doppelgänger) remained in the physical world to breastfeed her BT ghost baby which was also the thing keeping her Ba tethered to the physical world. When Mama 'severed the cord' to return to her twin sister - whom she shares a telepathic link with - she essentially killed herself to merge with her sister into a single being[/o]. Moments like this are played up to be big emotional scenes, but there is no build up, attachment, or payoff for these characters. These sub-plots usually go nowhere and do not contribute anything meaningful to the larger narrative. Other times it felt like I had missed an important story beat, such as when Sam, completely out-of-the-blue, starts calling the Odradek 'Lou' in a cutscene as if it were something he had always done. It does get explained eventually, but for lack of a better word, the storytelling in Death Stranding is very scatterbrained. It uses a lot of jargon, symbolism, poetic writing and contradictory or undermining information to make a rather simple story appear more complex than it actually is.

For example:
[o]Past extinctions (or death strandings) are said to have been caused by "Extinction Entities" (EE for short) which are people or animals born specifically to act as the world's catalyst for the annihilation of life. These entities all have an umbilical cord (even in animals that do not normally have them such as dinosaurs) which acts as a link to the "beach" (the pathway between the living world and the afterlife). However, the game outright says that animals do not have souls and thus can not have a beach.

EE's seem to be an exception to the rule though, because - according to Amelie - EEs are a type of beach and "the universe's way of correcting itself". What the universe is trying to correct and how the EE's fix the problem is never explained.

There is also a paleontologist who found a rock dating back millions of years - before humans existed - with a human BT handprint on it. I have no idea how that fits into any of this.
[/o]

Death Stranding tries, and partially succeeds, in being metaphorical with its themes of grief and loss. Of feeling like the world has ended and everyone has become distant. Most of the characters have odd names and inhuman behaviors for this reason:

[o]
• Deadman is a self-proclaimed "Frankenstein's monster" who is quite comfortable around the dead. He researches death to expand his understanding of the living.
• Heartman continues to search for his deceased family because he is in denial of death. By chasing ghosts he can't be present for the living.
• Die-Hardman survived multiple brushes with death on the battlefield and now struggles with survivor's guilt. He desires forgiveness from people who are no longer around to give it.
• Higgs romanticized death to the extent of committing genocide because it made him feel as if he held power over it.
• Sam Bridges is literally and metaphorically "already dead". He cut ties with everyone and isolated himself in his work which involves bridging isolated bunkers with supply lines.
[/o]

A lot of Death Stranding's themes could be related to the ongoing loneliness epidemic. This isn't something that I have personally experienced; I actually feel overcrowded and in need of space more often than not. So I likley did not click with the game's themes in the same way a person who has felt unwanted isolation might.

The problem is that it is hard to become attached to people when they don't talk or behave like real human beings. Even the protagonist, Sam Bridges, has as much personality and emotional depth as a brick. For a story so focused on human connection and coming together, there is very little face-to-face interaction. Most of the NPCs only ever appear as holograms, not real tangible people, and seem to be living normal complacent lives with their lovers and families inside underground bunkers. None of them have any great need to join the UCA (a rebooted America). So I always felt weird trying to get them to join when both they and Sam express outright contempt for the organization and neither has any faith in its cause. If they don't care then why should I? It gets worse when [o]the whole UCA thing just ends up being a ruse constructed by Amelie (Sam's sister) so she can fulfill her destiny of ending all life on Earth.[/o] For a game about avoiding enemies rather than killing them, it made me angry that I [o]didn't get to kill Amelie[/o]. The player is given a choice near the end, but it is an illusion of choice because choosing anything other than [o]"hug" resets the game[/o].

Overall my experience with Death Stranding was both unusual and underwhelming. I expected a unique world with an equally bizarre narrative. The corpse disposal scene with the titan BT at the beginning was a highlight that introduced danger, mystery, and intrigue. I wanted to know what this thing was, where it came from, why it was here, what it was after, and why there were five of them in the sky. But from there, the story only devolved more and more into the mundane. I guess I expected something more eldritch in nature - forbidden knowledge, non-human influences on humanity, fear of the unknown, that kind of thing. In Death Stranding you're basically just an Icelandic mailman delivering packages through a haunted apocalypse. That is certainly different but not what I was looking for.

The story wasn't as deep as it was trying to be and for a narrative so focused on human connection I couldn't care less about its cast of characters. I easily guessed who the main villain was going to be and that the chiral network [o]would be used for nefarious purposes[/o] right from the start. I was let down by the lack of tar monster variety and how few non-humanoid ones I got to interact with. No one part of the game was awful necessarily. I was just expecting something more unorthodox and interesting than what the game gave me, both for story and gameplay. Death Stranding is only worth trying out if you're already intrigued by it. Otherwise there isn't anything here that will win you over. Like black licorice some people are going to love it while others find it vile.

Because I don't know where else to put it, here is a list of wacky things that happen in Death Stranding:

[o]
• Sam handcuffs himself to his bed every night to donate blood. The handcuffs are meant to illustrate that Sam feels like a prisoner to his family, country, duties - take your pick.
• A scientist collects Sam's blood, bathwater, excrement and urine to weaponize against the ghosts.
• The human fetus that functions as ghost radar requires periodic firmware updates.
• Former delivery men, called "MULEs", steal mail because they were afraid A.I. and bots would take their jobs.
• Large water bears called "cryptobiotes" reverse anemia when eaten. They also live in coral and are attracted to urine.
• People are described as different species of human based on their occupation: craftsman (Homo Faber), linguist (Homo Loquens), mortician (Homo Religiosus), gamer (Homo Ludens), mail thief (Homo Gestalt), rebel (Homo Demens).
• Extinction Entities (EE) are living beings that act as the catalyst for a mass extinction. Instead of an asteroid hitting the planet, past extinctions were caused by a trilobite, ammonite, parasaurolophus, neanderthal, and a woolly mammoth.[/o]

#5: Jurassic World Evolution 2 | patch 1.011.003 installed

I don't know much about the Jurassic World franchise; my knowledge is limited to the original "Park" film trilogy and the two novels by Michael Crichton. Those stories dealt with themes involving the commercialization of science, humanity's hubris in trying to control nature, and the potential misuse and dangers of technology and genetic engineering. The game, Jurassic World Evolution 2, doesn't feature any of that. Instead the dinosaurs are now running wild across the United States, likley wrecking havoc on the local ecosystems and everyone seems to be okay with that. The campaign story missions are all about rounding up the wild dinosaurs in various US states to be transported to an undisclosed location at a later date. That's it. The campaign missions are essentially the tutorial and the challenge modes, which are set in various countries around the world, are where the actual zoo building meat of the game is.

Some dinosaurs can co-habitat, such as the pachycephalosaurus and the younger members of its species: dracorex (juvenile) and stygimoloch (sub-adult) - which are all listed as separate dinosaur genera in-game for some reason.

The controls are more complex than those in the game Let's Build A Zoo, but far simpler than what you get in Planet Zoo. Part of that is due to Jurassic World Evolution 2 being geared towards people that do not care for the decorative or business side of zoo management and just want to unlock new animals for the guests to ogle. The pens are quick and easy to assemble because terrain elevation and water flow won't interfere with the fencing like in other zoo games. You also don't need to worry about the animals climbing out. A pond for water, a trough for food, and a few swipes of a brush to alter the landscape to suit the dinosaurs preferences are all that is needed to get a pen set up. No enrichment. No major terrain alterations and very minimal guest management. Most of the play time will be spent on researching new animals or catching the existing ones when they (inevitably) escape from their enclosures.

Aviaries are pre-made domes that are too small to place a water or feeder in. The game does not make it clear that individual aviaries need to be overlapped to create a larger one.

I got the impression early on that I wasn't meant to build anything fancy. The game wanted me to start over again and again in new locations instead of settling into any one place. To that end, the map sizes are puny. Of the three zoo games I played this year, Jurassic World Evolution 2 easily had the least amount of room to build and was the most limited in terms of decorating options. I also ran into a lot of glitches, some of which have been known to the developers for over four years without receiving a fix. Campaign missions would fail suddenly or animal comfort levels wouldn't update, forcing a complete restart of an entire mission. I constantly had problems with the shops in prime traffic areas randomly flipping between being profitable and in the red. Storms can damage shops, but this issue would occur with or without one. You also can't decorate the shop interiors to get 100% guest satisfaction without problems with profits.

In other zoo games the staff are very good at carrying out their duties. If they start falling behind it is usually because they are too far away from their assigned zone, understaffed, or in need of better training. In Jurassic World Evolution 2 you have to assign people to a pen and then hope for the best. Oftentimes the staff will get in each others way, can't find their way through a pen despite there being no obstacles, or just refuse to do their jobs. I was constantly having to babysit them or carry out their tasks manually. Whenever a dinosaur died - usually because the veterinarian refused to check on them - I would have to manually find and remove those too. The staff will grow tired over time, at which point they refuse to do their job and will not rest of their own accord. You have to manually force them to take a nap and pay an additional $75k 'nap fee' on top of their regular salaries. If you fall into debt you will only have a few minutes to get out of it by selling your buildings. This is a short term solution; once you hit this point it becomes a constant ball rolling down a hill. The only real fix is to start a new park from scratch because there is no way to advertise or take out a loan like in other zoo games.

I had been on a zoo management binge this year, so one with extinct animals instead of modern ones was a nice shake-up on the formula. Outside of that, I just wasn't impressed with the quality or quantity of content in Jurassic World Evolution 2. There is very little to do or manage, and I hate that I have to start a series of mini-parks instead of focusing on just one very large one. I hate that a full priced triple-A game released in such an unstable state and still hasn't been fixed years after launch. The game also uses an overly intense sun for lighting with very little ambient light. This results in deep dark shadows and muted colors, like what you get at sunset, which makes it hard to see some of the dinosaurs and is generally just very hard on the eyes.

I kept pushing myself to return to this one. I thought that maybe I just hadn't been playing optimally or perhaps I hadn't unlocked the good stuff yet and once I had it would get better. But it never did. After one too many bankruptcies, most the result of glitches, I finally just gave up.

#6: Endless Ocean Luminous | patch 1.0.1 installed

Nearly 16+ years ago the Wii game Endless Ocean: Blue World (or Endless Ocean 2 in some regions) opened with a lovely introduction to the watery world the player was about to dive into. You met NPCs while documenting wildlife and investigating a mysterious pendant that was having an odd effect on the wildlife. The player was given a home base, a pet dog, managed an aquarium, trained dolphins for shows, collected treasure, entered photography contests, had to manage and upgrade their gear, and deal with mild threats from sharks. Endless Ocean Luminous by comparison, opens with this:

Unlike Blue World (music track list), Luminous does not have music, cutscenes, or NPCs outside of the visual novel segments.

Luminous has the player taking on the role of a scuba diver documenting marine life in an area called the "Veiled Sea". Once inhabited by the fictional Oannes people, the area is now a trove of relics to discover. Formally off-limits to the public due to the presence of prehistoric animals, the area contains a mysterious glowing algae that coats animals until the diver removes it with a scanner. This algae has a healing effect on the dying "World Coral" which maintains the health of the oceans.

So there is technically a story mode but it functions more like the game's tutorial. It isn't directly tied to whatever procedurally generated map you're on and consists mostly of text to read like a visual novel. Each chapter is only a minute or two long at most and the latter ones are locked behind player progress on the procedural maps, which will require thousands (not joking) of fish scans.

UMLs (unidentified marine life) are mythical animals that may appear briefly once enough wildlife with "strange biometrics" have been scanned. My first UML, Lamba Apsara, glitched and did not spawn like it was suppose to. I spent 40+ minutes searching the designated area, but between the vast blue waters and the pitch black depths I couldn't tell up from down and became disoriented. Unable to spot the 22 foot long (6 meter) fish, I tried seeking answers online and it seems like most people had the fish appear directly in front of them. My second UML, Simurgh Daria, spawned inside of a rock formation where I could not reach it.

Luminous included a Sacabambaspis among its selection of animals. I have a lot of fondness for this little guy, so his unexpected discovery was the most exiting thing I encountered during my explorations.

Previous games in the series used hand-crafted maps with distinct biomes to explore. In Luminous there is only a single map slot for a procedurally generated saltwater area that will likely contain a shallow reef and some deeper sections. Sometimes it will spawn an arctic or freshwater zone but these aren't common or detailed; the freshwater area for example is just a bare tunnel system. A new map can be generated at any time but doing so will overwrite the current map slot. My heart nearly stopped when I couldn't figure out how to access a new biome and I accidentally overwrote my '100% explored, 100% lifeforms scanned' map. The UI in this game is very hard for me grasp and understand. Fortunately none of my data was lost.

I hate the new direction Luminous took with its environments. The system to generate the biomes repeats the same areas far too often and they don't look or feel alive or interesting. Most of the maps end up being a hodgepodge of geographical zones that inorganically terminate or transition at 90 degree cliff walls. I occasionally found animals out of place as well, such as finding the deep sea giant squid hanging out in the shallows of a coral reef. You also can't select the type of environment you want; it's all up to chance.


The procedurally generated maps look barren and often spawn animals in the wrong environments.

Initially I thought that if Luminous had been sold as a $20 or less game I would have been content with what I got. But $20 is what I paid for Blue World 16+ years ago and it gave me so much more than Luminous. At first Luminous made me think that maybe nostalgia was clouding my memory, and perhaps Blue World wasn't as good as I remember. So I dusted off my old Wii to give Blue World a replay and it was like night and day. Despite being an older old game running on weaker hardware, Blue World was so much more alive, lush, and exciting than Luminous. It drove home to me just how much of an unfinished product Luminous is. Luminous is missing music tracks, cutscenes, and needs its story outline expanded upon, missing NPCs added in, and additional features implemented.

It is admittedly dense with wildlife at nearly 500 species and sports some impressively large maps considering the switch's hardware limitations, but I can only perform the same task of scanning fish for so many hours before I need something more substantial to break up the monotony. Nintendo is charging a full triple-A price of $60 ($50 digitally) and isn't delivering the content to justify that price tag.


The gameplay involves scanning fish. There is literally nothing else to do besides that singular task.

I can't help but wonder if the team behind Luminous lacked passion for the project. Was this something they were forced to churn out? Were they perhaps not given the time and funding they needed? How was the series allowed to regress this badly?

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Originally posted on my blog: Magpie Gamer or The Forest Floor

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