Category: Reviews

Bao Bao’s Cozy Laundromat is the latest game from solo developer Destroyer Doggo, and it is an idler game, which is something that you leave running on the side while you do other work, such as writing a review for Bao Bao’s Cozy Laundromat. 

There is a rapidly growing playerbase around Idler games these days, thanks to the indie hit Rusty’s Retirement, which came out in April 2024. Since then, quite a few developers have tried to bring their own spin to this subgenre of games that sit on your desktop and let you do other things in the background, while still making progress in the game due to automated gameplay.

Idler games are not to be confused with Idle games, which function in a similar fashion, but offer complete automation. You can close idle games and still see progress when you open them up again. Idler games on the other hand, require you to keep the game open in order to see progress, but the core concept of automatic gameplay still applies here. These definitions are not set in stone, and even some developers use these two terms interchangeably, but this is just me trying to differentiate between the two subgenres. 

If you’re not going to watch the entire video, here’s a summary: Bao Bao’s Cozy Laundromat is a charming introduction to the idler game subgenre. Featuring a visually pleasing pixel art style and soothing lo-fi music tracks, this is a game that invites you to leave it open on your desktop while you work. The game controls being limited to a menu instead of being tied to the items can feel a bit strange and make the gameplay slower, and the inclusion of limited time events introduces a sense of FOMO in an otherwise relaxing game, but these things are not a dealbreaker, and you can completely ignore the limited time events to avoid FOMO anyway. If you have never played an idler game, then this one is a great place to start. 

This is a review of the base campaign for Monster Hunter Wilds. It doesn’t talk about the endgame or any other content that takes place after the credits roll. This video is targeted at players who are new to the franchise.

After hitting more than 1.3 million concurrent players on steam in the first few hours of its release, Monster Hunter Wilds is now a monstrous hit for Capcom. That doesn’t mean the game isn’t without a few issues. In fact, on day one, the game received a mixed review rating on steam, primarily due to its poor performance on PC. We’ll get to that later. 

The game itself has been receiving mostly good reviews, as it lives up to the standards of the 20-year old franchise, while also being accessible enough to welcome new players.

For those who don’t want to watch the full video, here’s the summary: The base campaign is short, enjoyable, and quite easy, at least compared to the previous two games in the series. These games are meant to be played for a long time, so finishing the campaign is only step one towards experiencing the game. I’m currently not aware of what is included in the endgame, but media outlets have suggested that it has content worth another 15-20 hours.

If you’re playing on PC during the launch window, do make sure you will actually be able to run the game smoothly, or else wait for some performance patches. Apart from the PC performance hiccups, there is little to complain about Monster Hunter Wilds. It is an excellent introduction to the series for new players, and offers many quality of life improvements to returning players. On the whole I enjoyed the 12-13 hours I spent on the campaign.

Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a narrative adventure from Don’t Nod studio, the folks who made the very first Life is Strange game. After handing over that franchise to Deck Nine, Don’t Nod branched off into different genres. 

Now they have returned to their roots, with an episodic narrative game. Unlike their earlier games, there are only two parts to this one, and the wait between each release isn’t too long – the second part is set to come out in mid-April, which isn’t a bad wait.

Alright, so first, the summary of the review for those who don’t want to watch the entire video. This game targets a niche audience, specifically those who loved the early Life is Strange games. It follows a very similar formula, although with much less supernatural stuff going on. 

Also, your enjoyment of this game is going to depend a lot on how old you are, and whether or not you can relate to around six hours of cultural references from the 90s.

It’s a story narrated across two separate years, with the adult characters reminiscing over the incidents that took place in the summer of 1995.

If you don’t have the patience to do a lot of basic exploration and listen to a lot of dialogue with not much else going on, you’re probably not going to like this game.

However, for those who go in knowing what to expect, the story is off to a good start, with the obligatory cliffhanger at the end so that you are eager to play the next part. 

The visuals, voice performances and heartfelt moments in the story are all top notch. However, the overall pacing of the story is a bit slow, and it takes a while for things to really get going. Also, while the story is fine, the dialogues are a bit tough to relate to, since we are following the story of four teenagers. Again, this depends on your own age, I guess. 

My First Gran Turismo is a free-to-play driving simulator that is essentially a demo for Gran Turismo 7. It is targeted specifically at a group of players who have never played racing games before, but have been curious about them. This demo is designed as a friendly introduction to Gran Turismo, which continues to be the best-selling franchise in the history of PlayStation consoles.

This review doesn’t really need to exist, because why watch a review of a demo when you can go download it for free right now?

But…I am making this video for a very niche audience, which includes people who already own the full version of Gran Turismo 7, but are curious to see if My First GT can act as a lightweight alternative to the bulky GT7. And the short answer is, no, not really. 

Developer Polyphony have been very careful not to include too much content in this demo so that once you are done, there’s little reason to come back. But, that doesn’t mean existing players of GT7 shouldn’t give this demo a try, because you can still finish it in a couple of hours or less, and walk away with 18 free cars that you can sell in GT7 for a neat amount of credits. Apart from that, it is not the GT7-lite experience that some people were expecting.

Secrets of the Spire is the second DLC for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and it is a lot of fun, as long as you enjoyed the base game. I said the same thing for my recent review of the new Star Wars Outlaws DLC, and it’s not a coincidence. Both DLCs were developed by the same Ubisoft subsidiary – Massive Entertainment. It’s no small feat that two teams within the same studio were able to release two high-quality DLCs in the span of a week.

Sadly, similar to Outlaws, Frontiers of Pandora also has been largely forgotten by the larger gaming community, due to its average launch reviews, so only a small portion of the people who bought the base game will actually discover this second DLC. And once again, Ubisoft’s marketing team is partially to blame. There was no trailer or details on what to expect from this DLC until after the DLC was launched. They did the same with the Star Wars DLC as well, so I’m not sure why they have adopted this strange strategy.

Anyway, Secrets of the Spire is a massive improvement over the first DLC, the Sky Breaker. It finally gives you a new gameplay mechanic in the form of a mounted crossbow, which you can use while flying your Ikran. The new map looks great, and while the story is once again a bit dull, the level design and general gameplay offer a good mix of missions that kept me going. Best of all, at nearly six hours for the main quests alone, this is a much longer DLC than the first one, and is quite memorable as well. 

Wild Card is the first DLC, or “story pack” for Star Wars Outlaws, and it has come out a little less than three months after the base game’s launch. As a reminder, the launch of the base game was criticized so much that it is rumored to have been part of the reason for the delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The key points of criticism were the forced stealth sections, and the general feeling of the world not being interesting enough. While the second part is now too late to change, Ubisoft have done their best to make the first part more tolerable.

Along with the release of Wild Card, a huge title update to the base game was also released, which makes all the stealth sections in the game totally optional. You can still use stealth if you want, but if you get caught, or if you ignore it, you can continue the mission with direct action. This applies to missions in the new story pack as well, and it’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for the level designers, who had to work with this restriction in mind.

Anyway, Wild Card is a brief, standalone Star Wars adventure. Is it going to be nominated for any game of the year lists like the Elden Ring DLC? Probably not. But if you’re among those who liked the positive aspects of Star Wars Outlaws, then Wild Card is a good excuse to get back into the game. 

Last year, I purchased Call of Duty Modern Warfare III at full price, mostly because I had just started this YouTube channel, and wanted to review a big-ticket game to get things started. Sadly, it turned out to be one of the worst video game purchases I had ever made. The campaign was terrible, the multiplayer mode launched with only a collection of remastered maps, and the zombies mode was a reskin of the free game mode DMZ.

This year, I was thankful to Microsoft for including Black Ops 6 in the game pass catalogue on day one, mostly because I thought even if it ended up being terrible, at least I was not spending any extra money. Surprisingly, Black Ops 6 turned out to be one of the best call of duty games I have played in recent times. The campaign was full of twists and turns, the multiplayer mode launched with more than a dozen all-new maps, and the zombie mode…well it did a U-Turn and went back to a round-based format, which is what a lot of fans wanted. So at least at launch, this is a really competent first person shooter that is actually worth paying full price.

Wayfinder has come out of early access and is now available on PC and PlayStation 5, with an Xbox Series release also expected to come out quite soon. The development story of this game has been nothing short of incredible, and it is a small miracle that the 1.0 release of this game is actually available now. Just 14 months ago, when the game suffered extreme server issues at the launch of its early access, and then a drastic fall in player numbers, it was hard to imagine that the game would survive. Watch the video for a full review of the game.

Quidditch is a tough sport to convert into a video game. That’s partially because it isn’t a real sport and is impossible to recreate accurately in real life, unless someone invents flying broomsticks, but also because if some of its rules are implemented, the game could become very boring to play. For instance, if catching the snitch really ends the match at any point, then a seeker could be lucky and skilled enough to end a match within seconds, which isn’t exactly fun. Also, 150 points being awarded for the snitch capture sounds interesting, because you have to constantly be aware of maintaining a good lead over your opposition, but in a video game, scoring 15 goals before capturing a snitch sounds like a chore, again leading to boring matches.

So I wasn’t surprised to see developer Unbroken Studios get a bit creative with the rules in order to make Harry Potter Quidditch Champions a fun game to play. And I would say they’ve succeeded – in the short time I spent playing the game, I did find it fun, and I wouldn’t mind going back to play a few matches every now and then. However, I did play only for around 3 hours, so I don’t know how soon I’ll get bored of the concept. More details in the video.

Immediately after finishing Star Wars Outlaws, I went to Ubisoft’s Youtube channel and tried to find out if there was a trailer or video that accurately depicted how it feels to play the game. I mostly found stylish trailers showing non-stop action, including gunfights, fistfights and space battles. But there was only one video that had the piece of footage I was looking for, and it was a gameplay walkthrough from June 2023. In this video, we can see our hero Kay Vess sneaking through an enemy base, and eventually she gets caught. Then a gunfight breaks out and the action begins. But this rarely happens in the actual game.

Most of the time, what happens when you get caught is that a random enemy will try to raise the alarm, and you need to try to stop them. Then another random enemy tries to do the same, and so on. And more often than not, the alarm does get trigged, and you get an instant fail screen. This sums up the core experience of playing through the story of Star Was Outlaws – a pretty decent game that is let down by its forced stealth mechanics that take away the fun most of the time.

If you’re not going to watch the video, here’s a summary: Star Wars Outlaws is a stealth-heavy third person action game that really doesn’t want you to use the action part for most of the time. When it does allow you to break free and explore the world at your own pace though, it does feel like an enjoyable game. The story is told quite well and actually makes you feel connected to the characters. At a runtime of between 15-20 hours for the main story, and a whole lot more for the side quests, this game is a decent package for anyone who is a Star Wars fan, or plays a lot of Ubisoft games.