- By Ash
- in Reviews
Mina the Hollower is a game that's seemingly designed specifically to make go 'oooooooo!' It's a Zelda and Castlevania flavored dish, seasoned with so many secrets to find it's like a deliciously thick layer of cheese on top of it. And it's not the cheap stuff either. You don't need to hump every wall going 'ugh' until you find the fake one. There's always a subtle hint pointing you in the right direction. So subtle that you'll sometimes only notice it after you've already found the secret, and then feel like a right dumbass.
But when you do break into someone's house and notice their attic is hiding a bunch of loot, figuring out how to get there is a real treat. You can see there's some kind of an entrance to the top right, but you can't reach it from inside. So you explore the outskirts of the house and lo and behold, there's a gap in the neighbor's balcony you can slink through. And voilà, you're inside. It's a short little sequence, but it's clever, it's satisfying, and it gives you a heart attack once a clown abomination suddenly materializes from the hell dimension. What's not to love?
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Out of all the games I've played this year, Far Far West is the one that caught me completely off guard. I went in expecting a goofy roguelite shooter about robot cowboys fighting ghosts and aliens - something fun but kinda throwaway - and instead I found myself completely addicted to it. Because underneath all that goofiness is a surprisingly deep shooter that only gets more interesting the longer you play it.
So what exactly makes it so good? And does the Early Access version already have enough content to justify jumping in, or is it better to wait?
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Diablo 4 has a reputation... and it's not a great one. A lot of people either bounced off during its rough launch, or never even touched it because of... well, Blizzard being Blizzard. Which means a huge chunk of players have never actually seen what the game looks like today - after three years of updates, fixes, and now two major expansions.
So the big question is: what is Diablo 4 like today? Is it actually good? Does it still have major problems? And most importantly, is it worth your time and money?
- By Ash
- in Reviews
After four years of hard work, the brave base-building beavers have finally dammed the great Early Access river. Or as normal people would say - Timberborn is a freshly launched city-builder where you play as actual beavers. With hats.
Now if you're anything like me, that immediately raises a few questions. Is this actually fun, or just a gimmick that runs out of steam after the first dam? Do you need a masters degree in beaverology to get into it? And is there enough here to keep you coming back once the novelty wears off?
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Destiny 2 has been around for nearly a decade now, and somehow it's still one of the biggest shooters out there. But if you're like me and you've never played it before, jumping in today can feel a bit like starting a TV show halfway through season six.
So the big questions are: can a brand new player actually enjoy Destiny 2 in 2026? Do you need to spend money to have fun? And can you even follow the story anymore? So I jumped in blind, and the answers turned out to be... a lot weirder than I expected.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Nested Lands might be one of the coolest survival game concepts I’ve seen in a while... and also one of the most frustrating. The premise is that you're rebuilding society after a supernatural, sentient plague wiped out the entire world.
The land is rotting, corpses lie discarded on the ground, and strange cultists wander the woods. Yet somehow... it all still feels weirdly tame. Because every time the game gets close to doing something interesting - it immediately pulls back.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Nioh 3 is without a doubt one of the best Souls-like games I've ever played. It can stand tall and proud next to even giants like Elden Ring, and I don't say that lightly.
But, that greatness does come at a cost - some of it expected, and some of it just kind of... weird. Let me show you what I mean, and don't worry - I'll keep the spoilers to a minimum. The stuff you'll see will be from the first chapter only.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Usually city-builders want you to kick back, chillax, and just watch the taxes roll in. But not Against the Storm. It wants you to suffer... which is an insane way to sell a game to someone. I mean, the trees want to strangle you and your boss is a phoenix god who will fire you - and I have to emphasize the fire - if morale drops too low. So why did I spend over fifty hours with it these past two weeks? Well, as I found out, there is a surprisingly addictive pleasure to be found in the pain.
When you don't even know what buildings and tools you'll be able to use in each mission, something weird happens with your brain. You stop thinking about creating a mathematically optimal beaver labor camp and just start working miracles with whatever garbage you have on hand. And then, five hours later, you'll finally wake up from your trance and realize it's 3 in the morning and you have to get up for work soon.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Twenty-two minutes. That's exactly how long you have before the sun goes supernova, everyone you know and love is turned into dust, and you wake up back at your campfire roasting the world's crispiest marshmallows.
In most games, falling head-first into a black hole or trying to tap-dance on a cactus would be an obvious mistake. But Outer Wilds encourages you to be curious. This is a game with no loot to find, no XP to grind, and no gear to upgrade. Your only currency is information - and your only objective is to figure out why the universe is ending before the clock hits zero again.
This focus on curiosity over stats creates a very unique form of progression. If you know exactly what to do and where, you could finish the entire game in under 10 minutes. But you don't. So instead, you're forced to step into your rickety, wooden spaceship and fly into the unknown - trying one insane idea after another just to see which ones kill you the slowest, all the while piecing together a cosmic puzzle that spans an entire solar system!
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Project Zomboid's Build 41 didn't so much launch in December 2021, as it did explode onto the scene. New animations, vastly better immersion, and actually functional multiplayer - it was the update that turned Zomboid from a cult classic into a full-blown juggernaut. In that single month, the playerbase skyrocketed to seven times its previous size!
So naturally, expectations for Build 42 were sky-high. What's going to happen next? How could they possibly top this? The community was beyond excited, and then... nothing.