Recent reviews by Richard Wong

After a bit of a rough start, I think that the updates to Helldivers 2 have finally made it a blast to play, especially with friends. There was a period earlier on where enemy difficulty seemed particularly unbalanced on the higher difficulty levels (bots were laser-accurate at all times, spawns were insane) and there were only a select few weapons that could deal with this, but the weapon rebalance has mostly solved this problem.

Following in the footsteps of The Case of the Golden Idol, The Rise of the Golden Idol brings the same gameplay into the 1970s. If you've played and enjoyed The Case of the Golden Idol (or similar games like Return of the Obra Dinn) then you'll probably like this game. If you haven't, this game is basically a puzzle/logic game: you're presented with scenes where you attempt to piece together information about what happened. If you do this successfully, you get a little bit of the story. After completing all the scenes in a chapter, you try to connect the dots to form a larger, overarching storyline.

I felt that the gameplay this time around was a lot more streamlined and didn't contain too many different areas to collect clues, a problem that I thought the original DLCs (The Spider of Lanka, The Lemurian Vampire) had. This made the stories a lot tighter and the leaps of logic necessary to solve the puzzles weren't too large.

If you're still not sure that you'd enjoy the game, it does offer a demo.

Although Tactical Breach Wizards looks like an XCOM-like, it's actually more of a puzzle game. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it; it oozes charm through its fairly short (but humorous!) story and contained enough variety that it never got boring.

Gameplay revolves around maps where you have certain objectives -- kill all enemies, seal doors, protect objectives, and the like -- and you're let loose to finish the objectives in a flexible manner. Each character has their own flavor of skills, and a "rewind" mechanic lets you try out different approaches. You could conceivably set up a Rube Goldberg machine of defenestration through careful planning, or you could also just go in and brute force everything. There are bonus objectives that unlock different costumes for the characters, but even with those I never found the game too difficult. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Along the way, characters gain levels and skill points used to upgrade their powers in a somewhat flexible manner. There's no real "skill tree reset," but you do get a limited number of undos that you can use to redistribute your upgrades. Personally, I found the upgrade choices a little anemic, but I do recognize it can be difficult to balance upgrades in this sort of game, and my type of playstyle may not match everyone else's.

Overall, it was a great game that I didn't even know I wanted.

I rather enjoyed it; it's a mystery game in the same vein of Return of the Obra Dinn, except with smaller bite-sized episodes that tie together to tell a complete story. I was worried that there would be pixel hunting, but there's a setting to turn that off, thankfully.

The DLC for this game are basically prequels; they tell the events leading up to the events in the game. These are definitely more complex than the base game (which I didn't like as much) but were still very solid.

An interesting take on a roguelike deckbuilder, in which you spin a slot machine in order to earn enough money to pay your rent. The twist is that you influence what's on the slot machine reels, which in turn can have synergies with other items on the reel, which can get you more money.

It doesn't quite succeed at the flexibility of the "deckbuilder" portion, mainly because some synergies don't scale well into the late game. It's still a unique time-waster, as I've found myself pushing myself to play for just one more spin.

As is, I can't really recommend Payday 3 at this moment due to the myriad technical problems with the servers, strange quality of life issues that didn't exist in Payday 2, challenge-based levelling system, and the lack of content. It's really a shame, since the new stealth system is much improved from Payday 2's stealth system--it's more of a puzzle rather than a strange exercise in frustration.

An adorable game set in a New England boarding school about how D&D C&C and friendship can save the world.

At its core, Wintermoor Tactics Club is actually a puzzle game wearing a tactical RPG skin. There are some light "side-quests" which involve fleshing out the backgrounds of the different characters to gain equipment, but for the most part the main focus of the gameplay is the tactical RPG combat.

It's fairly simple stuff, although the game does add more challenge in the form of medals you earn for having certain statistics under par or up to a minimum amount for the map. These medals don't have to be earned in one go, but it can feel pretty rewarding for some maps when you manage to meet the requirements.

The game is just long enough to not wear out its welcome, which is a plus for me.

An exercise in tedium and a mixture of strange design decisions; it really needed more time in the oven.

The early game is relatively captivating (as with other sandbox builders you're likely to find), and it feels fairly well-balanced and polished. Unfortunately, the later tech tiers are just a huge grind for resources, and some game systems are similarly badly designed. One such system is the farming mechanic. You craft plots of land to plant crops, and then have to watch the crop like a hawk so you can harvest it before it spoils. "Great!" you might say, "that seems realistic!" Unfortunately, just because something is realistic doesn't necessarily make it fun, and farming is about as fun as watching paint dry.

Another completely inscrutable decision is the fact that your character's talents - more or less a skill tree, with points gained every level - has no way to be reset. If you made a mistake allocating a talent, you just have to create a new character.

Finally, the mission design leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of missions are basically "run to point A, then point B, then point C, then all the way back to your dropship!" The fact that one of my favorite talents to take early is to increase my movement speed speaks volumes - you'll be running around and backtracking a lot. Mission rewards also seem out of sync with the difficulty/tedium of the mission itself, which is just another slap in the face. The only place I think the game really shines is, sadly, when you're not actively pursuing any mission objectives. Unfortunately, this also means you're likely not gaining much in terms of currency.

My tinfoil hat theory is that this tedium and grind was added to extend the longevity of the game while the developers scramble to add more content. They do seem to be releasing updates weekly, so hopefully this game can get the polish it sorely needs.

A very relaxing survival builder. It's even better with friends, as your efforts can be focused on different things, like building, crafting, exploration and hunting/gathering. Progression is done by defeating bosses and is currently a bit rocky solo, but still within the realm of possibility.

The graphics aren't top-notch, but the atmosphere it evokes along with the simple background music just makes everything feel right. It's difficult to explain, but after a stressful day of work it's just the thing that I need to wind down.

I'm very excited to see where the dev team takes this game in the future.

I'll give this for Control; it's a great-looking game, and Remedy has done a great job at the world building and atmosphere. It's a pity, since the gameplay itself is such an uneven experience that it's hard to recommend it to anyone.

In a nutshell, the world you live in is like Men In Black and the X-Files had a very strange baby. You're looking for your brother, and you're sporting a weird gun and telekinetic powers. Sounds great, right?

It's a stable base to build upon, but there are a lot of very strange design decisions that don't quite make sense that build up into a lot of frustration. A few of them that stick out:

• The mod system seems like a bit of an afterthought, as it looks like someone wanted to tack on a looter-shooter aspect to a game that clearly didn't need it. After a while you're introduced to an end game mode with a Jukebox where you can grind for more mods, but doing so seems like a waste of perfectly good time doing literally anything else.
  
• Regaining health is tied to killing enemies, as enemies drop health. This leads to a strange gameplay loop where you're low on health, but at the same time wandering out to kill an enemy to gain health is a foolhardy idea at best. Add to that the fact that enemies sometimes seem to randomly spawn in behind you during fights, AND that some boss fights don't have many supporting enemies at all, and you get the sense that someone didn't really think this through.
  
• Boss fights are inconsistent at best. What I generally expect from a boss fight is a cute gimmick that can be worked around by use of your powers. What Control gives you is a paint-by-numbers approach where you generally use your "Launch" power a bunch of times and maybe shoot things.

There's quite a lot more flaws tied to specific fights and story beats (not to mention the entirety of the DLC), but overall playing Control generally left me feeling a lot more annoyed than gratified. It definitely was not worth the wait for me.