Recent reviews by Gabe!!

9 years, 70 DLCs and one bankruptcy later, Payday is still somehow one of the most fun co-op games you can play. It's longevity and replayability comes in no small part from its dedicated modding community, creating entirely new weapons, heists, cosmetics, and even accessibility options, and the offline functions of the game ensure a fine single-player experience too. You'll have to splash a bit of cash to access all the content, fittingly enough, but it's a surprisingly casual game to hop right into with a variety of difficulties and playstyles. You might find yourself playing Payday for more hours than one person ever should, if you don't quit due to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DIESEL ENGINE CRASHING FOR THE 5,000th TIME.

It's alright.

A cautionary story about the dangers of escapism that might leave you with a severe case of sad as well as brainrot after finishing it.

If you're a connoisseur of immersive RPGs like Earthbound, LISA, or Yume Nikki, OMORI provides a big and vibrant world to explore full of secrets and an insane amount of flavor text, (and good soundtrack to boot) and won't disappoint. It's a very well-paced game that can turn on a dime between humor and horror and will play with your emotions as much as the turn-based battle system does.

A fantastically unique deductive reasoning puzzle game and narrative that will make you wish there were more games like it.

Your only excuse not to get this is if you're a lubber who can't stare at the 1-bit resolution style for the hours it will take you to try to piece together the story.

Now that Black Mesa is out of its mod iteration/early access/16 years of development, its safe to say that this remake is a great way to re-experience Half-Life for those who love replaying the game and those who get hung up on graphics. Xen being expanded goes to show how good Crowbar Collective is at taking creative liberties (one too many plug puzzles aside)

If you're going through the Half-Life series, this is something you shouldn't miss.

A very unique puzzle game that requires a ridiculous amount of lateral thinking and makes your brain hurt. The sheer amount of puzzles made from the many different mechanics ensures you'll be coming back to level after level when you wake up in a cold sweat after the solution clicks.

an excellent addition and introduction to the monster hunter series. solo or w/ friends, crushing monster skulls has never looked or felt better. some mechanics from the previous games have been removed in favor of accessibility, but overall the gameplay is the same. the upcoming expansion iceborne will add even more content and replay value.

just make sure you play generations ultimate at some point to get the OLD WORLD EXPERIENCE

An incredibly lengthy game filled with detailed enviorments complete with a meticulous story. Especially for the SOURCE engine, the atmosphere is amazing. To label this as just a walking simulator doesn't do it justice. pick it up if you want to spend a day losing yourself in the game's comfy world taking photos of broken infrastructure and listening to the suave deep voice of your Finnish (actually Hungarian) protagonist.

Half-Rats: Parasomnia is one of the best GoldSrc mods to come out this year, bringing on many unique features to distinguish it from its prequel, "A Fever Dream".

*An inventory system allowing you to store different items with special abilities.
*Intricate melee combat than you wouldn't expect from Half-Life, including blocking blows and kicking. (deja vu)
*Solid voice-acting by the verbose "Ague", who is also a talented musician, several of his songs especially help immerse you in the 'late 1800s' atmosphere the game is emulating.
*Several creative boss fights, each utilizing a different kind of game-play to test your abilities over the course of the game.

As with most Half-Life mods, it can be expected to be much more difficult than what the series is normally balanced around, that is, plentiful supplies and a clear linear direction. You will be back-tracking every now and then and conserve health and ammo carefully in Half-Rats, so expect a challenge.

However, Half-Rats is plagued by a few big flaws , one of which is the limited 'lantern' oil, making it difficult, if not downright impossible to find the way forward in cramped dark spaces, unless oil is hoarded. Some mechanics are also underutilized, like lighting candles as an alternative light source, or the unimaginatively named "Half-Cat", who's sole purpose in one map is to open a door and curbstomp vermin. In addition, out of your arsenal, two weapons are potentially missable, and can never be found later in the game, which can make combat feel repetitive and dull. Lastly, some later levels have very questionable design, i.e, not being able to shoot an enemy behind a mounted gun, and instead have to take a convoluted route of running without cover dropping a log being carried by a crane on top of it, or a boss fight involving breaking tiny support beams while being attacked relentlessly.

Putting aside these flaws however (that are bound to be addressed by the receptive developers and perhaps improved in future updates), you have a genuinely original setting for a free mod with a minimum of 6 hours worth of gameplay, not counting what suprises a new game+ might have!

where's bedlam

even on release it's still underwhelming

"it's like cookie clicker, but with headcrabs"

at most you'll get an hour entertainment smacking headcrabs with your crowbar and experimenting with the power-ups/ handling of different types of headcrabs, but after a while, it just becomes tedious and boring. co-op adds about another hour of gameplay, then it's over.

out of the 6 available maps, only two, HCF_labmoar and HCF_range are in my opinon, fun to play, otherwise the rest of the maps are just small rooms with not much room to maneuver, such a shame there aren't other gamemodes like TDM or DM ):

the pre-steam-release mod was released in 2010, so community-made maps/ future official maps are likelya no-go, regardless, it's free, and will provide some entertainment, which is more than what can be said for other HL1 mods out there.