As of this writing, Darkstone is an 18 year old RPG. And it definitely looks it. But so far, the voice acting and atmosphere have kept me wanting to play. For now, Tier One – even if I can’t take screenshots.
Darkstone
by LepcisMagna Author: LepcisMagna
SPAAAAAAAACE!
by LepcisMagna Shadowrun Returns
by LepcisMagna 
Shadowrun Returns is the sort of game I really want to play when I’m not playing games. When I actually sit down to play it, though, I just never find the motivation. That’s the curse of RPGs. There’s actually not much more to say about Shadowrun. It’s a true pen-and-paper RPG translated to cRPG – the Baldur’s Gate of Shadowrun. If you’ve not heard of the Shadowrun setting, it’s based on the premise that some time in the near future, magic returns to Earth and transforms a percentage of the population into orcs, elves, dwarves, and the like. It’s high fantasy crossed with cyberpunk. It’s quite good, as is this computerized version. Tier One.
The Turing Test
by LepcisMagna It’s pedantic, I know, but the thing that bothered me the most in my first five minutes of the Turing Test was that the AI on the spacecraft said “100 degrees Kelvin.” It should have said 100 Kelvin, since the Kelvin scale is absolute and not measured in degrees. There was another issue I had, but I can’t actually tell you what it was without ruining a twist that happens in the fifth chapter. As for its mechanics, the RPS article said it best by saying that “in a world that had never seen Portal nor The Talos Principle, it would be lauded, famous beyond belief.”
In about three hours, I got roughly 80% of the way through this game. At that point, my motivation tanked and I’m not sure why. I only have about three puzzles left, but I just can’t bring myself to try finishing them – perhaps because it feels so much like Portal and The Talos Principal. So as strange as it seems, I think this game will have to go to Tier Two for now.
Stellar Overload
by LepcisMagna 
Unreal
by LepcisMagna Sadly, I think I missed the train for these games (Unreal and Unreal II). They’re just a tad too out-of-date to make it to Tier One, given the sheer quantity of other games to play. It’s particularly sad since they seem like excellent FPSs. Perhaps someday I’ll make it to them.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
by LepcisMagna 
Fantastic advice by the first shopkeeper in the game, right there.
Thumper
by LepcisMagna 
I take back what I have said about rhythm games in the past. About the genre, I mean. BIT.TRIP is still a terrible game. But Thumper … Thumper is not a game you play. Thumper is a game you feel. And it feels very, very good.
My complaints against BIT.TRIP were mostly about requiring perfection. This is not true in Thumper – you have an armor system, short levels, checkpoints, and more – all with no need for a complicated interface (the above is in the middle of a boss fight). With the armor system, you get one “mistake” per section. But at the end of each section (and sometimes within), you can regain your armor. This is good design – prove you can do better, and you are rewarded. The tutorials are well thought out and integrated into the gameplay. A sign that you’ve done extremely well is that the controls feel natural – and once you get through the first section or two, they feel fantastic – added to by the perfect timings of audio cues. My only true complaint is that I couldn’t take good screenshots since there’s never enough time except between sections.
There’s certainly a degree of bias here – they combined my love of fast racing, psychedelic visuals, and drum beats into a truly wonderful game experience. But if I’m having fun, that was sorta the point – and I simply can’t wait to try it in VR. Tier One.
Firewatch
by LepcisMagna 
Firewatch had potential. But, maybe because I actually wanted to play a fire lookout game, I didn’t find it enjoyable. It just doesn’t truly succeed at anything it tries. Story wise, you are a man in his late 30s trying to escape life by taking a job as a fire lookout in Wyoming. You start talking with the supervisor of the fire watch posts, Delilah, and develop a rapport. There are hints of a conspiracy and a love triangle, and the dialogue is quite well written.
Spoilers past the break!
Subnautica
by LepcisMagna I started playing Subnautica with the intention of spending an hour on it and then going to watch the West Wing. I ended up spending several hours on it and I plan on going back as soon as I finish this review.
In what started as a very familiar intro, the spacecraft I was aboard broke apart and I got to one of the last life pods – no other apparent survivors. I crash land in the middle of an ocean, and start looking around for ways to survive. Unlike The Solus Project, my survival seems to be the main objective. Unlike FarSky, surviving and progressing is actually difficult and interesting, and the wildlife don’t all immediately attack you (well, except for Crashfish – Crashfish are jerks). For now, Subnautica is a solid Tier One (though I am just now feeling the pain of not having enough storage space, which turns a few things into a bit of a grind).
The Solus Project
by LepcisMagna In stark contrast to Valley, The Solus Project has a painfully slow walking speed (or I just shouldn’t have gone from Valley straight to The Solus Project). In the Solus Project, a sole survivor of a exploratory probe has crash landed on an unknown world. There’s a dead civilization and a not-so-dead one to explore, all the while trying to stay alive, stay warm (but not too warm), and get a message back to the colony ships. It’s very pretty, and there are a lot of things to like. Unfortunately, the tasks of staying alive become mere annoyances during a slow, ponderous walk to find seventeen parts for a communications array. I very much wanted to like this game, but in the end it is no more than a fetch quest.