Games

Last Stop presents three different stories set in the same city, mixing family drama with the fantastical: they are mostly well-told tales, featuring endearing characters and some neat ideas, even though they take too long to converge into a proper climax, which consequently feels rushed and underdeveloped. There are three main characters in Last Stop. We have John Smith, a …

The Order: 1886 makes a lot of promises it doesn’t intend to keep, leaving so many elements underdeveloped that it ends up feeling like the first couple of episodes of a TV series, instead of the full season. The game opens in media res, during a prison escape. The protagonist, Grayson, is being tortured by two English soldiers, who are …

One of the main distinguishable elements of the Gothic genre is the spectral presence of the past, which returns to haunt the characters and remind them of the things they want to forget. The setting in What Remains of Edith Finch is a house built on memories, which hide the key to understanding the curse that plagues the Finch family: …

Replaced is quite beautiful. The framing of the scenes, the buildings in the background, and especially the striking use of lightning and depth can all make us gasp in wonder. The HD-2D pixel art is atmospheric, and the environments are all incredibly detailed, layered, and bustling with life. We fully believe in Replaced’s world and are immersed in it just …

The Red Strings Club is a cyberpunk bartender game in which you pour special drinks to get information out of people. And although it largely succeeds in developing its discussions on free will, power, and (the lack of) agency, its all-over-the-place structure hampers some parts of the experience. We mainly play as Donovan, the bartender of The Red Strings Club, …

Developed by Bloober Team, The Medium tries to blend the point-and-click with survival horror, failing to live up to both genres. With a problematic story that quickly derails after a promising start and a main gimmick that is wasted by poor puzzle design, The Medium eventually falls short of all its ambitions. The game starts with Marianne, a young Polish …

Remember, red means danger. This review contains spoilers. Metro: Last Light is a fitting sequel to the good but problematic Metro 2033, sharing many of its strengths and weaknesses: if it still excels at creating an oppressive atmosphere that enhances its survival-horror aspect, it still fails at building its stealth sections against human enemies, which tend to morph into cluttered …

The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is an effective point-and-click adventure game that excels at creating an ominous atmosphere that carries most of its cosmic horror story. With a focus on characters and setting, the game only falters in the abruptness of its ending, whose anticlimax avoids some important confrontations. We play as Thomasina Bateman, a young archeologist who receives a …

Beware: this review contains psychic spoilers that will be sent straight into your mind. Through a psychic technique called “reading.” It’s late at night when Pierre, the purist, flies over to Retro Studios headquarters, looking for some executive to drink. To his dismay, however, he finds no one there but some tired programmers and artists working overtime, who are people …

Based on a Russian novel of the same name, written by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter that excels in atmosphere and worldbuilding, providing a tense and memorable experience due to its striking, stress-inducing setting. However, the game’s bare-bones story, with its paper-thin characters and a noble but naïve anti-war message, ultimately rings hollow. The world of Metro …