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Before The Night is a cute little horror game, following its protagonist, Lisa, as she embarks on a quest to resurrect her dear friend Alice. While from the game's description you can already gather the initial premise -that is, Lisa is a pet human in an animal village-, the creepiness only begins there. As you progress through the game, more and more dark secrets of this world begin to surface. Honestly, I don't wanna type more about the story because it'd be heavy on spoilers, even for a short game as this one.

And that brings me to my next point: the game isn't very long, but in this case, I'd say that's a plus. Its gameplay is simple enough that it being any longer would overstay its welcome. That's not to say it's bad or boring gameplay, but rather, that once you get the hang of it, there's not a lot of variation. You play in a sort of top down view, each level being a sort of puzzle you need to navigate by collecting various items, from weapons to stuff like keys to unlock doors; in most levels you'll also have a main objective of finding certain plants and mana pools in order to unlock the exit, although interacting with these items might have unintended results. See, the title is probably a play on one of the main mechanics of the game; as it gets darker (due to your actions), dangerous enemies might show up. Even then, there's also the possibility of using a more peaceful approach in some levels.

The dialogue and storytelling is all text-based, as there's no voiced audio. The soundtrack, and sound design in general, is rather good, especially when going through the darker sections of the game; there's a real sense of eeriness. This is enhanced by the art direction, as the game has a quite distinct visual style, looking all cute and such at first sight, but dialing up the horror factor when appropriate. Heck, there was a portion of the game that made me really uncomfortable as I went through it, props to the devs for that.

All in all, a short, interesting horror game, which I can recommend.

This DLC consists of the wallpapers and mini OST that was part of the pre-order bonus for the Pixel Remasters. There's two wallpapers (each in different formats), and the OST has three timelapse tracks. The tracks start in the classic 8-bit (or is it 16-bit? I'm not sure) style, before transitioning to the full orchestral arrangement.

Personally, I like this stuff.

The fifth entry in the Final Fantasy franchise, this game feels like the point where the franchise really started to get more complex, and it shows given how much it took me to beat it compared to the previous games. Being part of the Pixel Remasters, there's not a lot of difference in the graphical aspect to that of the previous games, although it does look very good, and the sprite work is really nice.

Gameplay wise, its fundamentals are what you could expect from a classic Final Fantasy game. You control a party of four characters, there's an overworld to explore, random encounters, dungeons to complete. It also incorporates mechanics introduced in previous entries; the job system from Final Fantasy III makes a much more improved return, as well as the ATB system present in IV. I'd like to talk about the job system in particular, as I found it to be an excellent addition to this entry. As you progress through the game, you'll unlock new jobs, each with their own abilities and such, and as you gain experience in said jobs, you unlock their abilities for use in combination with other jobs. A pretty cool mechanic to mix and match abilities to your liking. There's also several new jobs introduced in this game, giving even more options.

The story, I must say, is very good. I will admit, however, that my experience with the Final Fantasy franchise is stiil a bit limited, having played VII over a decade ago, and only getting into the franchise properly with the Pixel Remasters, I can't accurately compare all entries. However, I will say that of the FF games I've played, this one comes second in terms of my favourite Final Fantasy stories. It's a rather long story, with a nice cast of characters and several fun interactions, as well as dramatic moments. It's all a bit cheesy if we want to get fair, but honestly that's part of the charm. It begins when Bartz, one of our protagonists, encounters a meteorite while exploring, and there he meets up with Lenna, a princess, and Galuf, an amnesiac old man. As the crystals powering the elements are weakening, they set out to find the cause; meeting up with Faris, a pirate captain along the way. From there, their adventures take them on a quest to save not only their world, but much more than that.

Sound design is, of course, fantastic, having new musical arrangements for the original soundtrack, and you can toggle between the orchestral arrangement or the classic soundtrack. All in all, it's a pretty solid entry in the franchise, as I wrote above, and I can easily recommend it.

When I got LEGO Horizon Adventures, I got the Deluxe Edition, as I always like having "complete" editions. And while I'm gonna give this a positive review (I like several of the costumes it adds, including the ones based on other PlayStation IPs), the same caveat I added to my review of the main game applies here: get the full game when it's lower than $40, otherwise, you might feel it's not worth it.

That will be all.

LEGO Horizon Adventures sounds, at first, like a weird idea. A LEGO videogame adapting an already existing videogame franchise? However, I'd say it works surprisingly well, and makes me wish for more LEGO retellings of popular videogame franchises.

Anyway, what's LEGO Horizon Adventures like? It's a rather loose retelling of Horizon Zero Dawn's story, focusing mostly on the Nora tribe and the conflict against Eclipse. Several events from the original game are skipped or simplified, but the main threat of HADES remains, as well as Aloy's search to learn about her past. All of this is, of course, done in the classical humorous style that LEGO adaptations are known for.

Gameplay wise, this game isn't quite like Traveller's Tales' LEGO games. It still plays like a third-person platformer, but there's a limited selection of characters (only four: Aloy, Varl, Teersa and Erend), each with their own specific weapon type (bow and arrow, spear, bombs and hammer, respectively). You can also come across rare weapons and special gadgets to aid in combat against machines and human enemies. The story is divided into four chapter, not including the prologue, taking you over the four regions represented in the game, and each level has you go through a region looking for some objective, either finding a place to build a tower, defeating a machine, or even exploring a Cauldron. You'll fight several enemies in these levels, and after you're done with the story, you get Apex Hunts (where you hunt a powerful machine) and Expeditions, which is basically a free mode.

The art style, well, it's LEGO. It looks pretty damn good, and the machine designs are excellent, so in that regard, the game is great. Customization is also pretty in-depth, even with the limited roster of characters. You get Mother's Heart as a main hub, with sub-sections representing the major areas from the original game: the Nora Sacred Lands, the mountains, the jungle and the desert, and you can customize this hub with plenty of decorations and buildings you unlock as you progress. You can also unlock over a hundred different costumes, and then create 9 custom outfits for each character using pieces from said costumes, which is cool.

The soundtrack is pretty good as well, there's a song in particular I loved. And the voice acting is great, even more so since they got most of the original cast to reprise their roles.

All in all, I think this is a great game, and I can easily recommend it. Even then, I do so with a minor caveat: while I had great fun with it, I can agree with people who consider it a bit overpriced for what it is. I think the sweet spot for this game would be around $30 or $40. Any higher than that, I'd say you're better off waiting.

While the mod itself was mostly disappointing, I must say the soundtrack is quite enjoyable, and really sets the atmosphere for it. Thus, I can easily recommend this soundtrack, as an enjoyer of videogame OSTs.

Logistique, marketed as an act 1 of a series, is a Half-Life 2 mod taking place during the events of that game. In this mod, however, rather than playing as Gordon Freeman, you play as Adam, who's introduced as Ivanov for some reason, a former soldier during the Seven Hour War.

The story begins, it seems, around the start of Half-Life 2, since the introductory cutscene implies Adam Ivanov is one of the citizens living in the apartment the Combine raid during the first chapter of Half-Life 2. His wife taken, he sets out to find her by following her captors to an abandoned building. While exploring the building, Adam begins suffering hallucinations and flashbacks, which shed a little light on his wife's story, although not much.

Gameplay wise, this mod had some interesting ideas. Lacking an HEV suit, you get no HUD, and you have to check your ammo manually; you also can't use healing or suit stations, instead having to rely on classic medkits. Even then, there's regenerating health, although the enemies can quickly reduce your health. However, these interesting ideas are bogged down by some awful platforming segments; now, I don't mind some platforming in my FPS games, but in this mod, the platforming can be too frustrating at times, requiring somewhat precise jumps across large gaps, and that's without getting into the complete lack of direction the game provides, made all the more annoying by the amount of backtracking you have to do at times.

The level design, while offering interesting environments, suffers from the above point. There's a section where you go through what the protagonist believes is a giant trash compactor, and through annoying platforming, you need to reach the top, which ends up being the subway tunnels. I must say, that area, leaving the platforming aside, was cool, as was the abandoned neighbourhood.

Acting wise... It's not the worst, but a lot of the dialogue was somewhat unnecesary exposition by the main character. There were also some syncing issues when you encounter NPCs. One good point about the mod is the soundtrack, I liked that.

All in all, I can't really recommend this mod, especially since it's ending feels incomplete, as it's more a setup for a part two that hasn't arrived yet.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a reboot of the 2008 game Mirror's Edge, sharing most of the gameplay aspects of the original but with a brand new story. The game still follows Faith Connors, except this time around, the story starts with her fresh out of juvie, rejoining her runner clan until she gets involved in a larger plot that threatens the inhabitants of Glass; the game's setting.

To start things off with in this review, as I said above, the gameplay keeps aspects from the first game: the focus on running and parkour; even more, this game takes out guns entirely, and even encourages you to avoid combat whenever possible. While Faith has melee abilities, you're usually better off running than staying to fight, and this game provides a lot of opportunities for running. A major difference to the first game is that this one has an open world for you to traverse between missions, even including optional activities like time trials and repeatable delivery missions. There's also several upgrades you can get, both for movement and combat, although again, combat is usually better avoided.

Now, when it comes to the story, I'd say it starts off relatively strong. First Faith gets out of juvie, and not too much happens, do a few runs, until a conspiracy starts to unveil. There's a few predictable twists in the story, but even then it could've all worked pretty well, until the final mission; the ending feels a bit rushed, and it seems to set up a sequel that never came out, which is a shame (hopefully EA revisits this franchise at some point). Speaking of the mission themselves, they can be pretty fun, but here is an aspect where the game's main gameplay loop kinda clashes with the mission structure, as there's a couple of missions in which you're forced into combat with no way out. A rather egregious example is a mission in which you're trapped in a room fighting waves of enemies for a few minutes.

Graphics were good for its time, although now they've begun showing their age. There also seem to be some issues causing blurry textures in several places, although I believe there's guides showing fixes. Speaking of fixes, since the online servers were shut down on December 2023, achievements are straight up broken, but luckily there's a guide that fixes most of them, with a fan project trying to restore online capabilites as well (before the shutdown, it was possible to create custom time trials that other players could play).

The sound design is very good, and I loved the soundtrack. The dialogue, though, now that's a bit clunky, and could've used some more work, but it's not too terrible.

All things considered, I had a good time with this game, so I can recommend it.

As it seems to be tradition with Civ games, they need an expansion or two to start being really good, and Rising Tide proves it for Beyond Earth. To begin with it, it adds a new gameplay mechanic in the form of floating cities, which can be founded on the sea, and can then freely move. It's a nice addition, although limited in some aspects: to move a floating city, you need to spend production, meaning that's turns lost without producing something more useful; add on to this that floating cities don't expand their borders through culture, meaning their only way to get new tiles is by moving or purchasing them.

Another addition is the new personality traits system, and the Diplomatic Capital currency, all part of a revamped diplomacy system, as the original game had a system similar to V. With this new system, you can upgrade and get new unique abilities for your leader, which makes the game a bit more dynamic. The agreements you can sign with other leaders have also changed; instead of "give me X resource for Y gold", you can now sign spend diplomatic capital for stuff like extra production or science, depending on which traits the other leaders have.

There's also artifacts to collect now; by using your explorers, you can unearth artifacts and then research them in order to unlock several bonuses, including new buildings and wonders! Speaking of buildings, there's also a whole bunch of new buildings and wonders, some of them exclusive to aquatic cities, and there's now hybrid units, as the affinity system was reworked to allow hybrid affinities; basically, you get new synergy bonuses between affinities. Finally, there's four new leaders to play as, which adds a bit more variety to the game, although the flaws of the original can still be felt.

All in all, a worty upgrade to the base game, which I can recommend more easily.

This DLC adds a bunch of new custom maps to the game, each with their own unique quirks; for example, one of the maps has a frozen wasteland on the north and desert on the south. They basically act like any other random map, as you can set specific biome types and such, but with their own scripts they still give you results like the one I mentioned above. I liked the maps, so I recommend it for some extra variety in gameplay.