Category: Reviews

Detective Dotson is a cozy adventure game about a reluctant Detective, who must put aside his dream of being a movie star and take on the role of a detective to solve the mystery behind his dad’s death. 

I received a review code to play this game early, and after more than a year of following this game’s development journey, I’m pleased to say that the team at Masala Games have delivered an impressive experience that I’m happy to recommend to anyone who likes playing narrative adventure games. However, there is a catch – you need to watch a 60-minute movie before playing the game in order to truly enjoy it. We’ll explore more of this unusual condition in the review.

But first, a summary for those who won’t watch the entire video. Detective Dotson is a fun game that is full of interesting ideas, charming characters, and succeeds at delivering a cozy adventure that you can play at your own pace, while exploring a richly detailed world along the way. 

The game splits its levels into cases, each of which offer a different puzzle to solve in the streets of the city. At launch,  the number of cases might feel less, but these cases get more complex as you keep making progress. Depending on how much time you decide to spend on the mini-games, your initial playthrough can take up to five hours. The developer has promised to introduce more content later this year as a free update.

There is a tie-in movie, which comes included with your purchase of the game. The story of the movie essentially sets up the game, and is a highly recommended watch, as it offers a far more thorough introduction to the game’s world, and it is a fun experience on its own with lots of humour and action. 

You can of course skip it entirely and dive straight into the game, but the movie is such a crucial part of the experience that you may end up being confused if you play the game directly. 

Tape 2 for Lost Records: Bloom and Rage continues the story of Swann Holloway and her three friends who have a memorable summer in the year 1995, but then something mysterious happens that causes them to grow apart and not speak to each other for decades. Part of the mystery was revealed at the end of part one, when we find out that one of those friends, Kat, is suffering from cancer, and that chapter ended on a cliffhanger.

Before going into the full review, here’s a quick summary. If you thought Tape 1 was slow, you may not be happy to know that Tape 2 is also quite slow. On top of that, it is also quite short, at least compared to Tape 1. The good news however, is that the story does wrap up quite well, although to no one’s surprise, there are multiple endings based on your own choices. This does give some replayability, to see if you can get a better ending after your first playthrough. 

The rest of the game is pretty similar to Tape 1, so I will keep this review short by skipping two sections – Visuals & Performance, Sound & Music – these are the same as Tape 1, although I will highlight that there are a few bugs in the launch window, one of which caused me to restart a scene and lose some progress. The texture pop-in issue also continues here, similar to the first part. Hopefully these will be patched soon, but these issues are quite minor. 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle originally came out in December 2024 for the Xbox and PC platforms, and is currently gearing up for a release on PlayStation 5. This felt like a good time for me to review this game, as I missed playing it during its initial launch window. Since this is one of my longer reviews, I will keep the introduction short and skip straight to the summary, for those of you who won’t watch the full video.

And the summary is that this game is really, really good…as long as you keep your expectations in check regarding the “action” part of this action-adventure game. For the most part, it is more of an adventure game than an action one, but even during the most intense action sequences, there is less of combat and more of the cinematic action sequences that we have come to expect from franchises like Tomb Raider and Uncharted, which ironically, were directly or otherwise inspired from the Indiana Jones film franchise.

The game is visually stunning, features excellent voice acting, all of which back up a well-written story that keeps you interested throughout its modest runtime of 12-15 hours. However, that’s only if you stick to the main story. For those who like exploring everything a game has to offer, I’ve seen people report playtimes of 40 hours or more. 

For PS5 players wondering if they should get this game on day one, it definitely matches the high standards set by some of PlayStation’s best single-player franchises like God of War, Spider-Man or The Last of Us. The start can be a bit slow in terms of gameplay, as there’s more puzzles than action, but the pace picks up gradually in the second half and it’s an amazing ride all the way till the end.

South of Midnight is the third game from Compulsion Games, and the first game to be published by Xbox Game Studios after they acquired Compulsion Games way back in 2018. 

For those who won’t watch the entire video, here’s a summary. The game looks and feels great, with a strong emphasis on the narrative, which is set in the American Deep South. After playing several games set in Japan or Europe recently, this setting immediately felt fresh and memorable. As someone who is completely unaware of that region’s stories and culture, this game felt like a well-narrated story introducing me to various folk tales and cultural elements. 

That experience itself is worth the price of admission, but on top of that, there is also a decent video game built-in. Now, the gameplay part of this video game does fall a bit short, which is probably why it didn’t get outstanding reviews from the critics, but the other elements are so well made that the gameplay fades into the background. And the relatively short runtime makes it easier to digest the sections of the gameplay that aren’t necessarily fun, and lets you focus on the parts of the game that are quite fun and interesting to explore.

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.