Q.U.B.E.

Q.U.B.E. is currently available on Steam for a dollar.  At that price I'd say it's worth it.  It is a shorter game though (maybe 3 hours to complete).

I liked the puzzles in this game even though it's a bit on the easier side of what I'm used to in first-person puzzle games.  There were a couple where it seemed like the solution had more to do with playing with the physics engine until it works just right rather than finding a solution with logic.

The story wasn't really that good.  The voice acting seemed alright but there wasn't really enough of it to really relate to the characters and the plot wasn't really very deep.  I don't know how much it really matters though as I don't really play these games for the story.

The visuals are actually pretty good especially considering it's mostly just a bunch of cubes (for the first half).  The second half gets a little more work from the artists and it probably has something to do with the way this game was developed.  Somebody built the concept with simple assets, then once the project got legs they put more work into it.

If you want to say the game is similar to Portal you'd be right.  The aesthetics are very similar and Portal is sort of the definitive game in it's genre.  The mechanics are different though and if you like puzzle games because you like puzzles as opposed to some weird fascination in cakes and companion cubes I don't see why this would really be a problem.  There are some neat puzzles in there and it costs a dollar.

8/10

Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series

Honestly I don't know why I'm still playing Telltale games.  There were some parts of this that were pretty cool and I respect that they were to able get many of the more popular voice actors from the show.  It just feels like the games Telltale has been making seem to include fewer and fewer gameplay elements.  Almost as if they're only hiring wannabe film makers who couldn't quite cut it for some reason.

In The Walking Dead, there were large gameplay sections where you would have to walk around and solve puzzles.  Not that this was an amazing mechanic but it was a mechanic.  In this one it's rare to even be able to walk.  It's more common that they only enable the forward button and you have to hold it to get through a hallway.  Fun.  The fight scenes are pretty easy to get through and they've usually decided beforehand whether or not you should win the fight leaving your performance mostly irrelevant.

A bigger issue than the lack of gameplay elements is the lack of choice.  There is some branching to the story but the branches almost always lead back to the same things happening anyways and usually don't take too long to do it.  Whether or not you're a good handmaiden to Margaery doesn't matter, whether you're obedient or defiant with the Whitehills doesn't matter, how you treat Ramsay doesn't matter, I could go on.  The same things happen either way.  Your strategy isn't important.

These games are supposed to be like choose your own adventure books not like sitcoms.  That's what made The Walking Dead cool.  Watching a 5 minute cutscene then holding W for a little while before getting to the next cutscene doesn't constitute gameplay.  Telltale needs to stop making these games so long and start focusing on making them good - polishing something shorter.  This feels like mediocre Game of Thrones fan fiction.

5/10

Overwatch Open Beta

Overwatch is similar Team Fortress 2 in a lot of ways.  2 teams of heroes with unique abilities face off trying to hold various points on a map.  While every Overwatch character is different they're divided into 4 basic types.  Offense, defense, tank, and support.

There are player upgrades but they're all cosmetic which is nice as it keeps things balanced.  This is something that Team Fortress 2 actually doesn't do.  I mean to say that the upgrades in TF2 are mostly cosmetic but the fact is you can unlock new weapons.  It's true that TF2 tries to balance these unlockable weapons but being able to further customize your play-style is an advantage.

The graphics are beautiful and the Overwatch world is inherently interesting.  I will say that based on the trailers I've seen it doesn't make a ton of sense though.  Some of the heroes seem to be "good" characters and others are "bad" yet the teams are a mixture of both and there isn't really a particularly good reason for attacking or defending the objectives.  Not that this really has to make sense.

Ideally the team ends up being fairly balanced but it did seem to me that the offense characters were the most popular.  My personal favourite character was Tracer.  She can die fairly easily but zipping around the map is a pretty fun way to play the game.  I also appreciated Pharah; flying around launching rockets at unsuspecting opponents was cool.  I had picks for the other 3 class types as well; Bastion for offense, Roadhog for tank, and I liked Lucio for support (not that I really liked playing support that much).

Overall it's a very well put together game that I expect will continue to grow and could very easily move into esports.  I'm on the fence about purchasing it though.  This is the kind of the game that'll take a pretty big time commitment to get good at and I would want to play a game like this with friends.  If they had split-screen on the PS4 I would definitely invest but it seems that they have no plans for that.  It's a very good game though and it seems pretty well-balanced considering how different the heroes are.

8/10

Soma

Soma is the third game by Frictional Games I've tried.  The others being Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.  It has a lot in common with it's predecessors.

The gameplay of Soma isn't overly impressive.  Amnesia: The Dark Descent was a great horror game that was fairly innovative when it came out.  This game doesn't add anything to the mix however and is actually less interesting mechanically.  Really, the story of Soma could probably be planted into any kind of game.  I'm not sure there's any real reason for this to be a horror game other than because it's what Frictional Games seems to specialize in.

At one point I remember sitting in a dark room with nowhere to hide and a monster across from me.  After several seconds the monster decided to come get me but my only consequence was respawning in the exact same place and having the monster removed.

I can't say I really found the game to be very scary.  In The Dark Descent, much like the movie Jaws, a lot of the fear comes from not actually seeing the monsters.  The player would lose sanity when they looked at them, the camera would become distorted, and if they looked long enough the player would lose.  There was also a very memorable scene with an invisible water monster.  In Soma there's no penalty for seeing monsters and once you've seen them having them lumber up to you isn't really as freaky.  I also felt like I spent more time hiding in closets and behind doors in The Dark Descent while Soma was more about waiting for a monster to walk a repeated pattern and leave you an opening.

On the plus side what Soma does very well is tell a story.  It's a great plot that I spent basically all my free time on until I finished it.  I'll avoid mentioning any spoilers though but it's science fiction that brings up thoughts of artificial intelligence and what it really means to be alive.

I also think the visuals were generally pretty nice and especially the camera effects.  The camera would play with bloom, technical and biological distortions, and all sorts of neat things.  Walking through the abyss was particularly well done.

Overall I enjoyed Soma even though I didn't love the game mechanics.  The world it takes place in is very engaging and it does a good job of building a theme.  I recommend the game if you're into science fiction.

7/10

The Witness

The Witness is a puzzle game set in a beautiful environment.  The art for the world is fantastic and every area feels different.  The core game play's puzzle involves drawing a line toconnect one node to another with various conditions. 

This is a hard game.  That being said, not all of the puzzles in this game need to be finished in order to get through the game which provides some relief.  Myself, I finished the main plot but certainly not all of the puzzles.  Still I thought it was challenging and especially some of the ones near the end. 

The game does a good job of letting the player learn the new mechanics without using any words.  Many times I would encounter a symbol that I hadn't seen, then I would search the island for a simple puzzle with that symbol in it so that I could learn how it works.  This had me really getting to know the island.  

As for the plot, I will say if there's anything to get I didn't get it.  It felt more like a collection of snippets from writers and poets than anything cohesive.  It is a beautiful environment though and I certainly felt drawn into it.

The game world is certainly beautiful but it's a bit funny how much attention it received in this game's marketing when the player actually spends most of their time looking at simplistic looking puzzles.  It seems it's easier to market an art style than it is a puzzle mechanic.  I'm not sure this game would do as well if it only had the puzzles and not the environment.

The puzzle itself is good though and the production values in this game are great.  I had a hard time putting it down until I finished the story.  If you like puzzle games I recommend this.  I might wait until the price drops a bit from $40 though.

8/10

Undertale

When I first started up Undertale it reminded me of something like Earthbound or Pokemon.  It starts off pretty simple with a tutorial that you might even call painful to get through.  The first character you meet, Toriel, holds your hand through a few puzzles and is too worried to allow you to do anything for yourself.  Toriel also encourages you to talk to the randomly encountered enemies until she comes and helps you. 

It's a fairly unique way to start the game and at least for me it had the effect of making me really want to get into it.  It takes a lot of time to spell out some things that are second nature if you'd played RPGs before.  However, Undertale is not like other RPGs.  

I didn't really know much about Undertale going in.  I knew it was an indie game with great reviews and that was about it.  In Undertale's kickstarter it was called "A traditional role playing game where no one has to get hurt" which is something I wasn't aware of.  When Toriel said I should be talking to the enemies in the game, I thought it was a joke.

Every enemy can be talked to and you don't actually have to do any damage to them.  They will keep hitting you though while you try to talk them out of fighting.  You also don't gain any experience points if you don't kill them.  Wanting to level up my character I found myself monsters largely because I wanted her to be strong enough to handle the challenges ahead.  This wasn't really necessary though I think a totally peaceful play-through might be more difficult than a violent one.

It's a neat and quirky for non-ethical reasons as well.  For instance, when I tried to "SELL" an item in a shop, the storeowner told me that they wouldn't be in business for very long if they bought every piece of junk that was offered.  It's also neat how the enemies' personalities are all complex and how the game combines a bullet hell game with RPG mechanics.  There also seems to be a lot of hidden content and if you do a second playthrough, some of the dialogue will change and some decisions will persist.

It's a good game that's been getting a lot of attention lately.  It's also cool that this was made by only one person (or at least mostly, there are names other than Toby Fox in the credits).  I recommend this game.

8/10

Gauntlet: Slayer Edition

Gauntlet: Slayer Edition is a dungeon-crawling hack and slash game which I played on the PS4.  It's easy to pick up and with a few exceptions it doesn't really get that much harder.  This makes it a good option to play with friends when you're just looking for something casual.

Each playable character is upgradable but not to a very large extent.  Comparing this system to Diablo 3 (another game I have on my PS4) it's considerably easier to learn and there's much less need to spend time navigating menus.  Many of the upgrades are cosmetic but some of them change your attacks.  The new attacks aren't necessarily better though, they're just different.

Another comparison that can be made between Gauntlet and Diablo is that the original Gauntlet likely provided inspiration for Diablo but today Diablo is clearly the stronger franchise.  I'm sure the success was largely because of Diablo's multiplayer.

After each level is complete the players are told how many kills they've achieved, how much gold they've earned and who was the greediest.  This is very relevant because the gold goes to whoever picks it up first and limits the upgrades of the other players.  Somehow I ended up getting this "award" in most of the levels we finished despite one of my friends using a powerup to turn all the health pickups into money.

All in all it's a good light game.  It's one of the better PS4 options to play with somebody who doesn't really game that often but experienced gamers can appreciate it as well.

7/10

Super Time Force Ultra

I can't think of any bad games that use time control as a mechanic.  STFU is a rogue-like platformer with a twist.  When the player dies, they can spawn a new character at any point in the previous play-through before their death.  This allows you to layer more and more characters on top of each other in order to kill enemies faster, pick up hard to reach collectables, and finish the level as quickly as possible.  

For me at least, the game didn't seem overly difficult until I decided to started trying to win the badge for finishing the level in record time.  30 do-overs is enough to finish most of the levels normally.

The different characters are a pretty cool feature of the game.  Not that they're balanced though, there are some characters that I found myself using again and again, some that were pretty handy in special circumstances and some that I looked at only once before giving up on.  With the ability to double-jump, activate a shield, and kill enemies without aiming, I found the character from Journey to be pretty stacked for instance.

Although it was good, the game was very short.  I'm sure if I were to attempt to complete and unlock everything it has to offer it would take quite a long time though.  Deciding to collect the optional badges is also a good way to add time to the game, and difficulty.  I feel like more games have been doing something like this lately; including optional elements to make the game more difficult rather than including a difficulty setting.

8/10

Fallout 4

Fallout 4 starts out with a bang.  You get the power armour and a minigun almost right away and end up fighting a deathclaw.  These are all things you wouldn't have seen until much further into Fallout 3.  At the same time though the power armour becomes upgradable and it's power source start's off in short supply.

I wanted to wait until I finished this game to write a review for it which makes it a little difficult to write this review.  It took about 40 hours to finish the main plot spread out over a month and a half for me. By the time I got to the ending though I was pretty over-powered and it was pretty easy to complete.

In most games it seems like the main plot is sort of the premium content and the rest of the missions are something similar to filler.  This really isn't the case with Fallout 4 though.  In fact, I preferred exploring the wasteland independently more than I did following the main quest.

The weapon crafting system was a very cool feature.  However, it's inclusion did mean that the shopkeeper's rarely had stronger equipment than what I had already.  In the previous games allying with stronger factions like the Brotherhood of Steel was the best way to get good equipment.  In Fallout 4 this didn't really matter so much.  

This game is huge.  There's a ton of content and I don't really think I'll have the time to get through all of it.  This is probably a game I'll keep coming back to over time though.  Just exploring a single building or completing an individual quest should use around an hour and was an enjoyable way to spend time for me.  I recommend this game.

Spoiler alert:  I picked the Institute.

8/10