cobysev

Note: I set this game to display in 4K resolution, but it enabled a resolution scale and wouldn't scale larger than 1080p for some reason. After I beat the game, I realized I was in borderless windowed mode. Changing it to fullscreen granted the full 4K resolution. So these screenshots are all going to be 1080p instead of my usual 4K.

Death From Above takes place in the Ukrainian town of Nenatsk during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. You play a Ukrainian drone operator who is captured by invading Russian forces. But you're freed by a little old lady whom the Russians took for granted.

You grab a drone and a bunch of grenades and set out to clear the region from Russian invaders.

You can customize your drone and its pilot. As per usual, I switched to a female drone pilot. I also chose a camo pattern for my drone with Ukrainian colors and a Ukrainian flag trail behind it. Not very good camouflage in real life, but colorful and fun for a game!

You set out to restore communications with your military unit. There's an antenna nearby, guarded by several Russian military members, so you move to engage them. You can switch between your pilot and your drone, and for the most part, you only fight with your drone. Your pilot can't pick up a weapon and engage the enemy, so you want to keep them tucked away somewhere safe. Your drone has some seriously good range on it though (and unlimited battery life), so raise it high enough in the sky so as not to be seen by enemy forces and go scope out the target area ahead.

You can also turn on thermal imaging to make people and vehicles show up easier. Good for finding those stubborn forces hiding in the woods.

An interesting detail is that every time you kill a Russian combatant, their body immediately sprouts sunflowers. The sunflower is Ukraine's national flower, and if you haven't heard the story, there was a Ukrainian woman recorded on video who approached an occupying Russian military member and offered sunflower seeds to put in his pockets, so his dead body would blossom sunflowers. (Source)

Once you restore communications, you receive a message from Special Forces HQ, asking you to clear out Russian forces in the nearby village. From this point, you'll receive messages from HQ after each mission, directing you toward your next mission.

Also, you'll see a wanted poster of Putin on the wall in this room. Make sure you improve the poster for a huge score bonus. There are several of these posters to be found around the map. Don't forget to deface all of them!

To take out enemy forces, you switch your drone to a bomb view, giving you a target reticle directly below your drone. In this mode, you can drop your grenades on enemies.

Also, you can ask troops to surrender using the drone.

I've only had one guy surrender to me so far, but I got blown away by a tank before I could accept his surrender. The tanks just sat there idly, unmoving. I didn't realize they were armed and ready to target my pilot as soon as she wandered close. Oops.

The Russian troops were looting washing machines from homes, but after you clear out the enemies, you can pick up the washing machines with your drone and drop them onto designated pallets for homeowners to reclaim when they move back in. It doesn't matter which pallets in an area you drop them on; they get beamed up into the sky every time you drop one off, as well as giving you a score bonus.

Once you take over a Russian command post, you'll find the FPV drone. It acts like a guided missile; when you launch it, it shoots rapidly in the direction you're facing and blows up whatever target it hits.

You have some control over its direction, but it needs space to make big turns and it has a very short battery life that will drain in seconds, so make sure you're prepared when you launch it toward a target.

I should mention that you have unlimited ammunition in this game. Despite blowing up the FPV drone on each use, it will respawn in your inventory after a few seconds. Also, your regular drone can only hold 6 grenades at a time, but every time you fly it close to your pilot, it automatically refills all your grenades. So go nuts and take down as many enemies as you can from a safe vantage point!

By the way, the soundtrack for this game is awesome! Starring all Ukrainian bands. You can download it on Steam. The title song, also called "Death From Above," was made and performed by the band Antytila. They have three versions of the song: an English version, Ukrainian version, and a 21-minute instrumental version. I've been playing this song on repeat for months now; it's my favorite on the soundtrack!

There's also the band Surface Tension, who released their single "Завтра (Tomorrow)," both the original song and an instrumental version.

The band Odarka Zyrko released their single "за тобою (Behind You)," also the original version and an instrumental version.

Finally, there's GO_A with their single "Kalyna," which is the Ukrainian name for the guelder rose. It's a prominent symbol in Ukrainian culture, showing up in a lot of their media. This is probably my second most favorite song on the soundtrack.

You can hear "Death From Above" playing on radios scattered all throughout the game. But in the first village you come across, if you follow the sound of music, you'll find the actual band jamming in a house! Sadly, you can only watch from a single window. I had to take 2 screenshots to get all the band members in there.

This game actually benefits Ukrainian forces in their ongoing war. The publisher, Lesser Evil, claims that 30% of their proceeds are donated to two organizations helping the Ukraine war effort: "Come Back Alive" and "Army of Drones." Once they've earned back their production costs, they'll change their donation amount to 70%, using the remaining 30% to continue improving this game.

So if you want to show support for Ukraine (while also experiencing what it's like to operate a combat drone in occupied territory), I highly recommend playing this game. It's only $10 on Steam, or $16.46 for the supporter's edition, which includes this rockin' soundtrack and more skins for your pilot and drone.

If I had anything to complain about, it's that the controls currently can't be changed. I'm used to using Shift and Ctrl to go up and down in helicopters in other games, but you use E and Q to fly your drone up and down in this game. It took me a while to adapt to their controls, and I kept getting them confused and dipping into enemies instead of flying away. Developers, please let us change the controls!

Also, the game is relatively short. The whole game takes place on a single large map, but you are directed toward missions in specific regions of the map. There are 8 missions in total (plus a secret warship mission!). If you rushed through it, you could probably beat the whole game in an hour or less. But you earn points toward your total score for every little thing you accomplish in game - every enemy you kill, every vehicle you destroy, every flag you raise or propaganda site you discover. Heck, every washing machine you return gives you a boost to your score. So if you were to run around doing everything you possibly can... well, it took me about 4 hours to complete, and I know I missed a bunch of stuff.

Your total score gives you a global ranking, which you can see on the main menu. I started last night at #5,549 (I had previously played the first mission then quit), and by the time I beat the game, I was #194 globally.

So long story short, this was an extremely fun game with an amazing soundtrack, if not a bit short on gameplay and clunky controls. I hope they continue to improve on it and make it much more enjoyable. Lesser Evil, on their Steam page, claims, "We are uncompromisingly anti-authoritarian, anti-prejudice, and pro-democracy. We publish video games with clear political or social intent and messaging. We publish games that take a stand." So even though it's a short game, it's meant to deliver a message against fascism. And I think it did a pretty good job in getting that point across in the span of its gameplay. Slava Ukraini!

Cult of the Lamb is a cute game about building, maintaining, and running a cult in order to overthrow the four Bishops controlling the Old Faith. But is there such a thing as a good cult...?

You play as The Lamb, about to be put to death by the four Bishops. They've eliminated all of your kind to prevent a prophecy of "The One Who Waits" returning. With your sacrifice, the prophecy will be impossible to fulfill.

As soon as the blade lands, you wake up in a strange land, in front of The One Who Waits. He's imprisoned by four chains. He says that the Bishops, in trying to keep you from him, ended up sending you directly to him. He claims that he will grant you life again if you would start a cult in his name. Your choice is either "yes" or "absolutely." No middle ground option, I see.

He gives you his Red Crown, which revives you and grants you the power to command the loyalty of your followers and strike fear into the hearts of your enemies. You awaken at the sacrificial grounds, renewed with life, and fight your way out, taking out some of the Bishop's cultists along the way.

On your way out, you run into Ratau, a former vessel of The One Who Waits. He was instructed to help you with starting your cult. He will pop in and give you advice and guidance from time to time.

He also instructs you to save a poor soul about to be sacrificed. The grateful sacrifice will be your very first convert.

From here, you learn how to build your own cult grounds. It takes some work! You can't just leave your cult members to their own devices; you need to check in on them, provide food and shelter, task them with jobs, and overall just ensure they're happy and loyal so they continue to praise and worship you.

The more loyalty they have, the more power you build and the larger you can build your cult. Placing a shrine in the middle of your cult grounds will give your followers a place to pray and grant devotion, a sort of currency that you can use to upgrade various aspects of your cult.

You will also need to build a temple in order to give sermons, enriching your followers and also collecting more devotion from them.

Cultists can be tasked with collecting resources, which are needed to build up your cult grounds. But you also need money and more followers, both of which can be obtained by fighting your way through the lands of the Old Faith.

You ultimately need to end the lives of the four Bishops in order to release your imprisoned leader, so working your way through each of their lands is your overall goal. But it takes time to build up a cult and gain power, so you will slowly work your way up to each Bishop. As you gain more followers, each of the four lands will open up so you can travel through them for resources, money, followers, and power.

Good luck in building a faithful following! And remember:

Did you know you can save Doretta's head in the Escort Duty missions? I make it my goal to always return home with her. No dwarf (or machine) left behind!

Deep Rock Galactic is my second-most played game on Steam, with about 546 hours. Which may not seem like a lot for you hardcore gamers, but with almost 3,600 games in my Steam library, it's impressive that I've put that much time into a single game. Their Halloween event just wrapped up this morning, so apologies for the Halloween decorations in some of these screenshots.

For the uninitiated, Deep Rock Galactic is an FPS bug-shooting and resource-gathering game, with dwarves as the playable characters. Except you're on a space station, mining minerals from Hoxxes IV, a scorched, tidally-locked planet orbiting the blue star Creus. Every mission, you board a drop pod and are dropped deep into the caverns of the planet to accomplish some sort of mining expedition.

You can have up to four players per game, and there are four classes to play as: the Driller, Engineer, Gunner, and Scout. You can play on a team with any combination of classes you want; you're not stuck with just one of each. There are also tons of cosmetics you can deck out your dwarf crew with. Here are each of the classes with my own custom cosmetics:

The Driller specializes in drilling tunnels and igniting alien bugs with his flamethrower:

The Engineer crafts sentry turrets to protect the team and can shoot platforms against the wall for easier vertical climbing:

The Gunner is the tank of the group, laying down heavy suppressive fire, and he can also shoot ziplines across rooms for the team to traverse:

And the Scout is the lightweight, able to travel quickly across the caves with his personal zipline and illuminate the darkest rooms with a powerful flare gun:

As you can tell, I've sampled all the classes, but I play almost exclusively as the Gunner. It's a running joke among my friends that I'm gold-obsessed (because I'm always making them harvest all the gold they can find in each mission), so I leaned into it and decked out my gunner in all gold. He even juggles a couple gold nuggets at the end of each mission.

There are nine separate types of missions to play, scattered randomly across 10 diverse cavernous regions within the planet.

You can either select random missions to play, or you can pick an assignment from the Assignment Board, which will have a series of specific missions you need to accomplish in order to achieve the assignment and collect its rewards. There is always a Weekly Priority Assignment and a Weekly Core Hunt, both of which have several missions to complete in order to reap the rewards.

There are several robots that aid you in your missions. First and foremost is the Mining Utility Lift Engine (aka M.U.L.E., or "Molly" as the dwarves refer to her). She's a walking mine cart, collecting all the minerals that you mine so you don't have to be weighed down during your missions. There is no limit to the amount of resources she can carry, so call her over to you and regularly empty your bags!

Then there's the APD-B317 (aka "Bosco"), who is a flying drone that helps solo dwarves with their missions. If you're not on a team, Bosco joins you. You can point him at minerals and he will automatically dig them up for you. Pointing at blank walls will cause him to illuminate the space for you. And if threats appear, like alien bugs, he will automatically engage them. Although he has weak firepower, so don't expect him to take on all threats on his own. You can change his appearance and color scheme on the space station, as well as upgrade his abilities, so have fun customizing him for your missions!

Finally, there is the Drilldozer (aka "Doretta" or "Dotty"). She appears only in escort missions, where you have to protect her (and refuel her) while she slowly ventures toward an Ommoran Heartstone.

Doretta will take damage from bug attacks, so make sure you hop on top of her and repair her damage as you go. Once she reaches the Ommoran Heartstone, she will begin drilling into it (when you're ready) and you need to protect her from waves of bug attacks, as well as several defenses from the Heartstone itself.

Don't forget to find and collect her head after the Ommoran Heartstone explodes open! She's still "alive," and I'm sure she appreciates being brought home.

Every mission has a primary objective and an optional objective, which can be seen at the top right of your screen while on the planet. The optional one is usually collecting a particular resource, but not always.

The main mission ranges from harvesting minerals or alien eggs, refining liquid resources, eliminating giant deadly aliens, and salvaging lost equipment left behind by dead teams. Every cave is procedurally generated, so you never play the same area twice. It's always a unique mining expedition.

Deep Rock Galactic has recently started doing seasonal content, and the seasons have brought more missions to the game, including industrial sabotage against a competing dwarven mining company, and deep scans, to pick up rare minerals buried very deep beneath the planet's cave structure. As well as various events to encounter within the missions.

The best part about their seasonal content is that you can always acquire all the season rewards, even if you're just starting the game today. Not only can all unclaimed cosmetics be found in various chests scattered throughout the game, but you can actually select which season you want to play and earn the rewards from that season. You're not forced to jump into the latest season. Which is awesome, because there are story missions connecting all the seasons together. You can play through them relatively quick and get caught up with what's going on with the in-game lore. Or just enjoy the unique events that only happen during specific seasons.

So grab a beer at the bar, dance to some jukebox tunes on the dance floor, kick some barrels into the launch bay (to annoy the bureaucrats in Mission Control), then go explore some bio-diverse regions of Hoxxes IV!

I think Subnautica was the first crafting game I ever played, and I didn't really understand the genre, so I found it frustrating and slow. I prefer my games to have an ongoing story, and this... didn't. Not to say there isn't a story here, it just takes a backseat to the gameplay, which is exploring and crafting.

The game opens with you jumping into an escape pod. Something's wrong with your spaceship, the Aurora, so you're abandoning ship. As you fly away, you watch a massive explosion erupt from your former ship. The blast damages your escape pod and you're hit in the face with a metal panel. When you come to, your escape pod is on fire!

You jump up from your seat and grab a nearby fire extinguisher. Putting out the flames, you realize your secondary life support system and radio are both broken. You need parts to build a repair tool. You climb out of your escape pod to find yourself floating on a water planet, with the wreckage of the Aurora nearby.

In desperate need of resources, you dive into the ocean and start exploring. At first, all you can do is pick up a few resources found on the shallow ocean bed. But with the right kind of components, you can craft a scanner at the fabricator on your escape pod.

The scanner allows you to scan almost everything in your environment, collecting data from this strange alien world. It may also help you to unlock new crafting recipes. You find scattered wreckage all over the ocean floor, and scanning broken components will help you to reassemble their recipes so you can craft them yourself.

Once you've found the necessary resources, you can build a repair tool, which you can then use to repair your secondary life support system and radio.

Almost immediately, your radio picks up a message. Listening to it, you hear survivors of another escape pod. They're nearby, and under attack from a giant sea snake of some sort.

You swim out to their location, only to find the remains of their escape pod. You pick up a PDA left behind in the wreckage and download its data, which will give you the crew's log.

Your own PDA has been communicating vital information to you throughout your journey so far. Around this time, you may hear her say that the Aurora's drive core is going critical and is about to explode. You can actually watch the explosion from the surface, just make sure you're not swimming anywhere near it at the time.

From here, you're just responding to radio signals, exploring and collecting resources to build more and more advanced technologies, and eventually, you can build an entire underwater base to live in.

I didn't get much further than this, because this game is so incredibly slow for me. I enjoy the crafting game Satisfactory because all the resources I need to get started are right nearby, almost within eyesight of my landing pod, and I can scan for the location of more resources as I start to branch out. Plus, your hub gives you instructions on what to build, so you have some direction to progress toward.

Subnautica, on the other hand, just dumps you in the water with no explanation and expects you to just swim around and collect stuff until you figure out what to do with it. The first time I played this game, several years ago, I spent maybe 2 hours swimming in circles, unsure what I was supposed to do. Eventually, I realized that I needed to repair my escape pod, and then I started getting radio broadcasts.

But even then, every escape pod I tracked down was wrecked with no survivors. It was just demoralizing for me. I was hoping for some sort of plot, or an eventual rescue or something. But instead, I found myself just floundering about in the water for hours, not really sure what I'm doing or if this gameplay is going anywhere.

Not to mention, this is a survival game, so on top of trying to figure out what I'm doing, I was also trying to figure out how to find food and water to stay alive. And despite being a game about exploring an alien ocean, I could barely be under water for 30 seconds before I was drowning. It took an exceptionally long time for me to find appropriate resources to build more advanced oxygen tanks so I could stay underwater for longer. I couldn't ping for resources, I kept getting lost or turned around under water, and I could never find exactly what I needed to progress in the game.

I know this game is exceptionally popular and I rarely ever hear a bad thing about it. But I personally just can't get into it. I gave it a second chance last night, and I progressed much faster than I did my first time playing, but it was such a slog. I have no idea if it gets better later, but it's frustratingly slow and I just can't enjoy it.

Pacific Drive is a fantastical driving/survival/crafting game, where you are sucked into a reality-altering unstable zone, with the only working car the trapped residents have seen in ages. This is a very story-rich exploration game.

In 1947, the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state became a staging ground for developments in a new technology. Unfortunately, it didn't go as planned, and by 1955, the government had walled off parts of the peninsula. 30 years later, after expanding the radius of the walls many times, the government finally sealed all access and abandoned it. No one ever found out what happened inside the wall. All was quiet until you happen to be driving by in 1998...

Finding the road blocked by the wall, you turn off on a dirt road parallel to the wall, hoping for a path through the region. The ground in front of you starts shifting and morphing until you drive near it and it pops back into stability... until a large enough burst of energy kills your car's engine completely.

You sit in dark silence for a moment, until a massive burst of red glowing energy suddenly swells next to you, dragging your car off the road and into the vortex!

You wake up on the ground, surprised to see bits and pieces of your car floating through the air. The slightest tingle of radiation courses through the air around you. You realize that you're inside the walled-off peninsula now.

Wandering down the path, you find an old station wagon in a garage, flashing its lights at you. Over its radio, you hear someone chime in. They've detected strange but familiar energy readings coming from your vicinity. They identify themselves as Tobias Barlow and Francis Cooke.

The vehicle is extremely beat up, rusted, missing several panels, two doors, and the front left wheel. You find a wheel sitting nearby and install it yourself. You try the engine and surprisingly, it starts up!

You can't respond to Tobias and Francis, but they're tracking the energy your car is giving off. They instruct you to drive a few miles up the road to a safe zone, before the incoming instability scrambles you. You pull up to an auto shop, right as your left front wheel falls off again.

This shop belongs to Dr. Ophelia Turner, or Oppy, as the two guys call her. But without working vehicles, the shop has been mostly abandoned for years. When you turn on the power in the shop, she's alerted to a trespasser and threatens you over an intercom. But Tobias quickly sends out an emergency broadcast, insisting that you're there on official business for them. Oppy is annoyed, but intrigued that you have a working car. She lets you patch it up in her garage and assists you in your journey, if only to help you find a way back out through the border walls and out of her hair.

This will become your staging area for the rest of the game; you'll always return here after each mission. This is also the only place you can save your game. You can't save during a mission; you either need to complete your mission and return home, or abandon it.

At this point, the game becomes a crafting game, except almost exclusively for your vehicle. You learn how to repair, build and replace parts, and even upgrade and add components. You can also upgrade various stations in the garage, and even upgrade your gear to better protect yourself in the wild.

Oppy instructs you to use this strange "repair putty" on the damaged parts of your car. It's a pale green glowing goop that seems to magically restore parts to their full strength! It's in limited supply, but you can always make more at the workbench. This is how you repair your car as it gets beat up in the field.

She also has you fill your trunk with cardboard boxes and a craft mat. The boxes will be your excess storage, outside of your backpack. The craft mat will let you build tools and resources on the road. Your tools have a limited durability and will break after so much use. But as long as you have resources on hand, you can easily craft another one from the trunk of your car.

Finally, Oppy has you install an Arc Device in your passenger seat, her own personal invention. This will be your map, as well as a guide to warn you as anomalous storms approach. It auto-rotates to face you no matter where you're standing, so you can glance over at it while driving, or you can run up to the passenger window and view it quick.

Also included is a status screen on your dashboard, which will inform you of the "health" of your car's parts. As you take damage, each component will turn from green to yellow to red, then gray as they break off the vehicle. Be sure to repair your car as needed!

There is a giant map on the wall of the garage, and Oppy is able to remotely access a projector to display data on it. This is where you'll pick your missions. She instructs you to go find parts to build an antenna for the garage; otherwise, you'll never be able to travel far. The zone within the walls is unstable and entire regions could be erased entirely, or reconstructed into another land that didn't exist previously, so you need to be able to receive data about each region before - and during - your travels there.

It's explained to you by Tobias that your car is a Remnant, which is essentially a shabby cast-off item imbued with strange properties, that randomly appears within the zone. He gives the example of a broken microwave that freezes food instead of heating it, or a rusty paint can that produces every color of paint in existence. Your car gives off this same energy, which is exciting for him because it's been several decades since the last remnant appeared, and it remains to be seen what strange properties your car will produce.

Most of the game is spent exploring regions and scavenging all the parts you can find. You're told that most all of the zone is abandoned and each region could cease to exist if a wave of instability passes through, so you might as well loot everything that's not bolted down. Be aware of aggressive machines roaming the lands. These floating guys in particular will just grab your car and drag it into the woods before abandoning it.

While out scavenging for parts, I ran into these creepy mannequin-like guys stuck in the ground. They pulse red from the head or chest, and if you bump into them, they explode. The creepiest part is, if you get close enough to them, then look away, when you look back at them, they'll be much closer to you. You never see or hear them move, and they never attack you or anything, but if you're not paying attention near them, you might turn and walk into one suddenly. You need to stare them down while backing far away, so they don't pursue you behind your back.

Once you've completed your objective in each zone, you need to find and grab a stable anchor, a round glowing ball sitting on a large semi-circle device, and feed it to your Arc Device. It will cause some instability in the vicinity when you pull it, so be careful.

Grab as many of them as you can! Your map will point them out in the region. There are always a few of them scattered around, and you use their energy to unlock more advanced technologies and blueprints back at the garage. So the more you find, the quicker you can upgrade your crafting capabilities.

Once you have at least one, you will be able to use the Arc Device to open a gateway directly back to the garage. But only activate it when you're ready to leave, as it will quickly collapse the stability in the region. Make sure you know where the gateway is and that you're relatively close to it, Then once you summon it, drive like mad into the giant sky beam! Be prepared to do a bit of off-roading for this part.

As you explore, you can find paints, decals, and other trinkets to deck out your car. Plus, keep upgrading its components to make it stronger and more efficient. Here's my car after applying some glow-in-the-dark decals, adding off-road tires, and replacing all of the panels and doors with steel.

This has been an extremely entertaining game so far! I'm enjoying the open world exploration, scavenging parts off other vehicles or wherever I can find them, and of course, I love driving games! That's your main mode of travel in this game, so you'll be doing a lot of it. Your car is your lifeline, so stick near it at all times!

This game is pretty in-depth, and with 11 hours of gameplay already, I've barely scratched the surface of the plot. I've been so preoccupied exploring around and looting everything that I can get my hands on, that I haven't actually made it very far into the story yet. I'm debating taking a brief hiatus from posting these so I can really enjoy this game.

Little Kitty, Big City is a cute game where you play a cat who fell out of their owner's window, way atop a high-rise apartment.

Miraculously surviving the fall (thanks to some well-placed obstacles and a bird you cling to), you find yourself on the street level several blocks away, unable to find your way home.

The bird admonishes you for your poor flying skills, then offers to get you a fish when you insist you're too tired and hungry to climb all the way back up your building. But you need to pay him in "shinies," which you can find lying around all over the city. You will need to find 4 total fish around the city before you'll have the stamina to climb your way back home.

From there, you're traveling around the city, interacting with other animals and collecting cute hats to wear. You either find the hats lying around in places, or you can pay 5 shinies to the bird at a vending machine and he'll get you a hat out of the machine.

You rescue a rambunctious tanuki stuck in a pipe and he professes to be an inventor. He offers to let you be his test subject for interdimensional travel.

He's been messing with the spacetime continuum and has connected all the sewer pipes through a sort of wormhole. This is your fast-travel in the game, so you can cross the map quickly without having to run across the whole city.

He calls it the Petwork™ and insists you unlock each one with a single bird feather.

Another cat will teach you how to sneak up and pounce on birds, causing them to drop a feather. Don't worry, it's a catch-and-release game; you let the birds fly away as soon as you catch them.

You also meet a duck who has lost his four children. You agree to track them down for him, but be warned that he won't take them back until all four are accounted for. So you'll have a trail of ducklings following you everywhere until you find all of them.

Another fascinating character you'll run into is a chameleon who can't change his colors to match his surroundings. He's convinced you're a magician (like he is!) because you can always see him. He gives you riddles, then "hides" and you have to track him down across the city.

There's also a beetle, who is the manager for Taffy, a wealthy social influencer cat. The poor guy is stressed beyond belief and hanging by a thread. #JusticeForBeetle! He gives you a phone, which you can use to take selfies. In Steam, snapping a selfie will actually take a screenshot.

There are a few other cats who will teach you how to behave more like a street cat, unlocking different cat reactions you can use throughout the game.

And that's pretty much the jist of the game. There are a few other characters to meet and plenty of small puzzles to figure out. Ultimately, you need to get your stamina up so you can scale your building and get home. Which will be a challenge in itself, even with a full stamina bar. But there are plenty of fun things to do around the city on your way there.

Or just find one of many nap spots all across the city and take some time to relax.

I was almost forced to take a hiatus from posting today! I was up all night playing this game, when around 5 AM, my PC popped and shut off suddenly. It felt hot, so I just left it to cool down and went to bed. This afternoon, it wasn't booting back up, so I opened it up and blew all the dust out of it (it was due for a cleaning anyway). Nothing looked broken, so I flipped off the power switch and flipped it back on... and it started right up! Woo! Adventures in custom-built PCs...

Anywhoo... today's game is The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. This game is like a blend between Satisfactory (minus the automation) and Deep Rock Galactic, with a Lord of the Rings theme. It's a crafting game, but takes place deep in the mines of Moria. You can play solo, or play online co-op with up to 8 players on PC or 4 players on console. The mines are procedurally generated, so no single gameplay will play out the same.

You get to custom-build your own dwarf to play as, including their appearance, name, and origins. Of course, I like to play as women in my games (my mother was a strong, independent type, so I'm drawn to strong women in my life and games), so I made my dwarf a woman. I named her Nordri. I seriously debated giving her a beard (that's an option!) but it made her almost indistinguishable from the men... so clean-shaven for now! You can edit your character any time from the main menu, so you're not stuck with a single look for the entirety of your gameplay.

Gimli declares that it's time to stop waiting for Durin's potential return and that the one true home of the dwarves, Moria, needs to be rebuilt. He calls on dwarves from all regions of Middle Earth to converge on the Misty Mountains and help excavate it. But for some reason, they can't get through the Doors of Durin.

While attempting to use explosives to blow their way in, you end up falling through a fissure that opens up and land deep in the mines. Unable to be heard by anyone, you decide to make your way to the Doors of Durin from the inside.

Along the way, you find Aric, a Raven of Erebor. He's also trapped in the mine, but some "ill curse" prevents him from leaving. So he scouts ahead for other routes out of the mine while you forge ahead on your own.

This is where you get your introduction to crafting and building. Crafting helps you build tools and weapons, while building will create structures that you can use to improve a home, or in this case, climb a wall.

You make your way to the Doors of Durin, only to find them sealed with a shadowy curse from the inside. No wonder no one could get in! It looks like you need to venture further into the mine and find a different exit.

If you explore in the halls near the door, you'll find signs of the Fellowship!

Venturing further into the mines, you find that it's orc-infested. They're pretty cowardly on their own, choosing to run instead of engage you, but be careful of packs of them roaming in the middle of the night. They can be aggressive when they're prepared and in larger numbers.

You run into Aric again and he suggests you rebuild an old camp nearby, so you have somewhere to shelter and prepare food. You fix up an old stone hearth, a furnace, and a forge, and you now have the basics for crafting! You can find mushrooms, berries, and some other plants growing around the ruins, and you can kill roaming rats and wolves for meat. All these resources respawn pretty regularly, so you're never in short supply.

You need to eat at least 2 meals a day to keep from getting hungry. If your hunger bar runs out, you'll take the occasional small bit of damage to your health. You also need to sleep at least once a day to prevent exhaustion. Your stamina bar will get smaller and smaller the more tired you are, until you can barely trudge from one place to another. Sleeping will fast-forward the clock 6 hours.

There is a day and night cycle, and the luminescent stone ceiling in the mines will mimic the time of day, so it's extra dark and cold at night and decently bright during the day. Make sure you keep a torch on you at all times, to keep your courage up in the darkest corners. There are small buffs you get depending on various situations, and you'll see them in the bottom left corner of your screen. Also, certain meals will give you an additional buff if you eat them at certain times of the day.

Occasionally, a pack of orcs will attack in the middle of the night, targeting your current camp. Be prepared to fight them off before they break everything. I learned the hard way to build a wall to keep out the orcs. The first time I came under siege in the night, they just walked in and wrecked my stuff.

Fortunately, you can make a hammer that will restore damage to structures; both your own constructions and to the ruins of Moria. If you spent enough time, you could technically fix up all of the ruins, single-handedly restoring Moria!

If you find damaged statues, be sure to rebuild them. You'll get recipes from some of them which will expand your crafting capabilities. I've mostly received improved armor and weapons from them so far.

Of course, what would a game about dwarves in a mine be without some mining? You need to mine ore in order to smelt various types of metals for armor and weapons, as well as some fancy furniture and structures later on. While mining, you get the option to sing an inspirational tune, which will give you a buff. There are various songs that may be sung and your character may comment on the songs too! They put some serious effort into this detail instead of just designating one mining song that you always sing.

I once found a barrel of ale in the ruins of an old tavern, and it was still good! I drank and sang merrily for a bit, which gave me a little buff.

There are more than just endless dark ruins in the deep. You can find other places, such as an Elven Quarter to explore, and the Great Forge of Narvi, which you can repair to gain more forging abilities.

Keep pressing deeper into the mines to find more advanced crafting and building options, and be sure to move your camp forward as you go. I learned the hard way that sticking with my original camp meant hoofing it a long ways back to drop off supplies or forge new supplies. Eventually, I learned that I need to make a new hearth and rebuild my camp, then move my supplies forward so I'm not spending 90% of my game time running back and forth.

This would probably be easier with multiple players, as you can move all your resources quickly. I had built up my original camp so much, I had to make at least 3 trips to collect everything. I was also stockpiling resources instead of using them, so that made it more difficult to move.

This was a very fun game! It just released in August, so it's relatively new and still being tweaked by the developers. I haven't had any issues with it yet, besides my beefy desktop computer overheating for the first time ever. But that was after 7 hours of continuous gameplay, and I maxed out all graphics settings, so I may have been pushing it a bit on this one.

Otherwise, it was very enjoyable, not only exploring Moria, but getting to fix it up and restore it as I go. Definitely scratched that itch for a good crafting game that Satisfactory gave me. And like I said, mining resources, tunneling through caved-in halls, and fighting occasional roaming enemies felt like a medieval fantasy version of Deep Rock Galactic, another game I thoroughly enjoy. I give The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria top marks!

Road Redemption is a unique game, in that it's a motorcycle racing game, but also a fighting game.

There is some lore, presented with a single screen of text. According to the Steam store page, this takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, ruled by a brutal dictator. Biker gangs rule over segments of the country. You're part of the Jackal gang and basically racing against other biker gangs through their territory, pursuing an assassin for the bounty.

Every once in a while, some other Jackals will show up to help you (see first screenshot with the peace symbol over a Jackal's head), but you're on your own for most of the races.

This is a game of stamina. There are 17 total races across 3 gangs' territories, and your status carries over to each one. Any loss of health, nitro, and if you've unlocked it, your jump boost, all carry over to the next race and require you to replenish them during races.

You either pick up resources on the road, or kill other gang members to collect resources. Or you can also gain a small bit of nitro every time you have a "close call" with an oncoming car. Just steer so you nearly miss oncoming traffic and you'll be rewarded with some nitro. Which is needed to catch up to the racers in the lead; you'll never gain on them otherwise.

There are two main types of races: 1.) a straight race to the finish, either finishing in 3rd place or better, or just survive to the finish line by a certain time limit; or 2.) enemy takedown, which requires you to eliminate a certain number of enemies before the finish line. Sometimes the cops show up alongside the gangs to fight everyone, sometimes the cops are the takedown enemy.

Cars are especially hard to take down. Explosives are pretty much the only way I've found to stop them. During takedown races, they'll also plow through oncoming traffic, denying you that needed nitro boost to gain on them. It can be very difficult if you're stuck behind a car with no nitro left.

The last race in each territory is a takedown enemy race against the gang's leader. They're pretty tough and you need to kill them before you reach the end of the race.

There is one random event that may take place called "Hallucinogenic Chemical Zone," which will have cars and trucks randomly spawn in the sky and fall onto the track, creating hazards to navigate around. None of these vehicles have their parking brake on, so if they land on their wheels, they'll slowly roll across the road, making it harder to determine the best path around them. You never know which direction they'll start rolling until it's almost too late to change direction.

After each race, you spend the money you earned taking out enemies or meeting the objective to upgrade your current stats or replenish health or nitro.

Whether you win or lose each race, you'll automatically continue on to the next race. But your health bar will shrink if you lose the objective.

The races continue until you die. Then you get to spend all the XP you've earned on permanent upgrades, which will make it easier the next time you play. You likely won't beat the game in your first playthrough. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even beat the first territory until I'd upgraded my permanent stats quite a bit. I've replayed the campaign race many times over and I've finally made it all the way to the assassin, but I still haven't beat him. Gotta keep upgrading my character!

Before each game, you get to select your bike and character. Both come with various stats and weapons, so pick what works best for your play style. You can unlock more bikes and characters as you accomplish certain criteria throughout the game.

I like to play with Admiral Uganda (a Captain America knockoff) because he has 35% resource gains from regular kills, 140% resource gains from shield kills, and 115% max nitro. He also doesn't use guns, which is fine with me. I'm terrible at aiming a gun while also steering my bike, so I mostly fight with close-range weapons that only require a button press to use.

There are other joke characters like Santa Claus, who's a pacifist and can't kill anyone except for bosses; Helloween Rider, a Ghost Rider knockoff; PC Master Racer (see screenshot above); or Theranos, a blonde woman with Thanos' golden gauntlet. Plus a ton more to unlock.

My personal play style is to just kick other bikes. It sends them flying off to one side, and if you time it right, you can kick them into obstacles or off bridges and kill them instantly. Much easier than hacking at them with a sword or beating them with a lead pipe, etc.

Most races are on roads cross-country through mountains, snowy terrain, or post-apocalyptic cities. But the most interesting races (in my opinion) take place across building rooftops. You spend the entire race speeding from rooftop to rooftop, and it's easy to knock people off to their doom. Or fall to yours, if you're not careful. These levels are where the jump boost comes in really handy, keeping you airborne longer if you don't time a jump between buildings well.

Then there's the extra rare rooftop race through a hallucinogenic chemical zone! Don't get hit by falling cars while soaring across rooftops!

I've mostly described the campaign mode for this game, but there is also a 4-player split-screen mode where you can play together or against each other, or you can play online with other gamers.

There's a DLC you can buy on Steam called "name a character" that lets you put a custom name into the game itself. You'll notice that every time you take someone out, it shows their name across the bottom of the screen, then scratches it out in red. Supposedly, these are all names added by other players over time. So the next time you play, keep an eye out for cobysev...

I normally don't like games that force me to replay them over and over, grinding just to level my stats enough to continue the plot (I'm looking at you, Hades). But the gameplay is so enjoyable in this one, I can't help but play it over and over. I don't even care if I don't finish; the racing and fighting is so much fun! Every time I play this game, I end up doing nothing else for the rest of the day.

October is over, and that means I'm back to playing all variety of games, not just horror or Halloween-themed games. But I did miss one day in my daily October marathon, and I said I'd try to make up for it.

So... consider this game to be a happy medium. The Invincible isn't exactly horror - more sci-fi mystery/thriller than anything - but it is kind of a personal fear of mine: being stranded alone on an alien planet with amnesia, limited oxygen, and no certain escape. I definitely shared in the anxiety and fear that the protagonist suffered at times on her journey.

The Invincible is a blend between a walking simulator and a visual novel. You spend most of the game walking from one point to the next and performing some basic tasks along the way, while also communicating back and forth with your ship's commander. It's not a particularly strenuous form of gameplay.

There are dialogue choices, but for the most part, the game plays out the same regardless of your choices. Although certain choices can open up deeper philosophical discussions into the theme of the plot. Also, investigating the areas around you might help you learn more about the planet itself, which provides a richer story experience than just trying to get to the end of the game as quick as possible.

Also, as the game progresses, your story path is documented in comic form, which you can pause and read at any time.

This game is actually based on a Polish novel of the same name, published in 1963 by Stanisław Lem. Although I would recommend not reading the summary of that book, as its main plot gives away most of the mystery in this game's story.

The Invincible opens up with Yasna waking up on a rocky desert planet, with no memory of where she is or how she got there. Her radio is broken, her locator beacon is missing, and she's all alone. The only thing going for her is that she seems uninjured, and her space suit and oxygen tank are still intact.

She checks her notes and discovers she's there with her team of researchers. Using her logs and hand-drawn maps, she triangulates her approximate position, then sets out to find their main camp.

Along the way, bits of her memory start coming back to her. She remembers her research ship's commander, Novik, who is known for making rash decisions. Previously, his insistence on making an unscheduled stop for a valuable mineral cost him a broken leg and severe pain.

Now, the team was finally on their way home when Novik awoke them early from cryogenic sleep. He made the decision to stop at yet another planet, Regis III, because he has intel that it's potentially valuable to the Alliance, and he wants to find out what is so valuable that it would draw them there.

The book followed characters from the Alliance aboard their massive ship, The Invincible. This game, however, follows a small research team of the Interplanetary Commonwealth, an opposing faction. So it's important to Novik that they do their research quick, then get off-planet before the Alliance arrives in their deadly ship.

Yasna reaches her team's base camp, only to find one of the members in a stupor, babbling unintelligibly. His vitals are all normal, but he's unresponsive and helpless. Yasna takes his radio and is finally able to speak with Novik, who is aboard their spaceship orbiting the planet.

Novik has been unable to reach the team for a while now. He's grateful to speak with Yasna and instructs her to find the rest of the team. She catches up on their research notes and sets out to round up the team.

The team was investigating a strange metallic structure sticking out of the ground. It proved impossible to unearth, and scans with their metal detectors showed it stretching underground like tangled metal roots. One of the research team, Dr. Gorsky, ventured off in search of the end of this metal root structure, so Yasna pursues his trail.

She bumps into a damaged probe and, with the help of Novik, is able to boot it up. Using the probe, Novik is able to remotely control it and assist Yasna more directly on the ground. You get the opportunity to pick its name, if you like.

Pursuing her team, Yasna explores complex metallic structures, finds herself lost in underground caverns, and even has run-ins with the Alliance!

Finding all of her team members and getting off-planet proves to be a challenge, with setback after setback. It's up to you whether she'll find the courage to proceed, or succumb to hopelessness and depression.

This was a fantastic story that explored deeper philosophical topics on life and biology, evolution and invasion, and of course, the will to survive. It's an easy-going game, where the most dramatic twists and turns come more from the dialogue than the action. If you want a simple sci-fi game that lets you ponder life's greater mysteries instead of shooting aliens, this may be for you.

Plus, you get to drive around in a little rover! How cute is this thing?

Happy Halloween! I had planned to play one of my favorite games this month, Alan Wake, but @[email protected], the other screenshot poster here, already made several posts about that game recently. So in order to generate new content, I'm posting a tangentially-related game, and another absolute favorite of mine, Control.

This game is loosely based on the SCP Foundation, a fictional secretive organization that contains anomalous or supernatural items and entities away from the eyes of the public. They Secure, Contain, and Protect (SCP).

Their wiki linked above is a creative writing project, where anyone can sign up and submit their own creative writings on supposed anomalies that the SCP has encountered in the world. And they have a Creative Commons ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA) for all work posted to the wiki, so anyone is able to use it for their own creative projects. As such, a lot of SCP-related video games have been popping up lately. If you search on Steam alone, there are about 75 games with SCP in the title, and that's not counting derivative works like Control.

Control starts out simple enough. You play a 28-yr old woman by the name of Jesse Faden. She's been looking for the Federal Bureau of Control for 17 years, ever since they kidnapped her brother, Dylan, in their childhood. The shady secret government organization has eluded her all this time, but Jesse just happens to find them in New York City and enters to an empty lobby.

The place seems deserted, except for an odd janitor with a heavily-Scandinavian accent, named Ahti. He asks Jesse if she's here for the job interview, because he's in need of an assistant. He points Jesse toward the Director's office.

The first thing you might notice is that you're trapped in the building now. When you turn around, you realize that the hallway you came down just dead-ends, as if there was never a hallway there in the first place. Also, some of the offices and meeting rooms in the hallway don't seem to have any doors leading into them, just windows. Welcome to "The Oldest House," the office building which is an ever-shifting anomaly in itself.

You enter the Director's office and find the Director dead on the floor; an apparent suicide. Jesse is compelled to pick up the handgun lying next to him, where she suddenly finds herself pressing it to her own temple. You hear distorted voices who refer to themselves as "The Board," and they test whether you're capable of wielding it.

Jesse is transported to the "astral plane," a bright white space with disjointed black and gold marbled cubes to walk on. A giant inverted pyramid looms ever-present in the background.

You fight some faceless humanoid enemies, learning to harness a limited psychic ability to attack them. When you find the gun in the astral plane, you learn how to take down the faceless enemies with it. You have a limited clip of ammo, but it regenerates infinitely, without the need to manually reload or resupply.

When you've completed the training, Jesse is appointed the new Director by The Board. All of a sudden, you're in charge of the Federal Bureau of Control! Portraits can be found already updated with professional photos or paintings of Jesse all around the building.

You also start to find official documentation scattered around the offices concerning various Objects of Power (OoP), including your own service weapon. Just like SCP documentation on their wiki.

Almost immediately, Jesse finds herself exposed to an invasive hissing noise that feels like it's trying to invade her soul (See first screenshot). She's able to withstand it, but it takes over other Control agents and forces them to attack her. Fighting your way to the Central Executive room, you find a marked circle under an inverted pyramid and realize you can use your psychic energy to dispel the "Hiss" from the area and restore the distorted space to its normal state.

Survivors call out from a nearby shelter and Jesse gives them the all-clear. The assistant to the Head of Research, Emily Pope, comes out and immediately recognizes Jesse as the new Director. She's stoked that Jesse's able to withstand the Hiss without specialized equipment and she's excited to perform some experiments to test Jesse's abilities.

Pope quickly becomes your go-to for any information you need about this strange place. She explains that the building has come under attack by a deadly and invasive anomaly that Jesse helped dub the "Hiss," and since Jesse is the only one who seems able to resist and fight back, she's needed to help clear sections of the building and rescue other survivors.

Jesse is also desperate to find her brother, but Pope doesn't have access to that level of information. She suggests Jesse rescue the rest of the former Director's team scattered throughout the building and they should be able to fill her in on what happened to Dylan.

From there, the game is spent running back and forth across the various floors of the building, rescuing people, fighting the Hiss and liberating areas, and learning more about Control and what they do. You can find various sources of media scattered throughout, including documents, tape recordings, and video recordings.

Not to mention, some more OoPs that bind to Jesse and enhance her abilities. You can telekinetically lift and throw objects, rapidly dash through the air to evade enemies or reach far-away platforms, construct a shield out of psychic energy and physical objects, and even fly! Keep progressing through the game to find these OoPs and bind them, then enhance their powers through missions and side quests. Eventually, you'll be practically invincible!

Amongst the video recordings, there's a cheaply made kid's puppet show called the "Threshold Kids" that has episodes randomly distributed all over the building. It goes over various anomalies and supernatural situations, as if it was meant to explain complex topics for young children. It seems simple enough at first, but there's something creepy and off about it, and it gets very dark and existential in later episodes. I love the world-building it brings to the game!

I mentioned Alan Wake was tangentially-related to this game. That's because the development studio of both franchises, Remedy Entertainment, included documentation you can find in Control that explains Alan Wake as an Altered World Event (AWE), with Alan's typewriter being a suspected OoP! And if you play Control's AWE expansion after the main campaign, it sets up Alan Wake II.

I love SCP-related content, and the Federal Bureau of Control is a whole SCP-like organization, with rich and detailed lore dealing with supernatural and otherworldly objects and powers. And then adding lore to tie two separate game franchises together in the same universe? I absolutely love it! This has been one of my all-time favorite games since it released and I'm really excited to play Control 2 whenever it finally comes out.

By the way, the Alan Wake Franchise bundle is 80% off on Steam, so you can play the first game and its spinoff game for only $5, then save a few bucks off Control by buying the Alan Wake/Control Franchise bundle. Or wait for a better deal; Control was only $8 for a couple weeks last month, so keep an eye out for their next sale and get it super cheap.

My one gripe is that Alan Wake II was published by Epic Games, which means it will probably never come to Steam. I'm adamantly against using Epic Games, as they have very anti-competitive practices with the gaming community. So unless someone else gets PC publishing rights, I may never get to play Alan Wake II. (Note: I don't own any current-gen consoles, so playing it on console is out) The rest of the franchise is published by 505 Games or Remedy Entertainment themselves, including the upcoming Control 2, so I can enjoy everything else in the meantime.

I had another game I planned to play last night, but then the first Red Dead Redemption finally released on Steam yesterday, including its Undead Nightmare story mode, and I found myself up all night enjoying the zombie western horror fest! Finally! It only took them 14 years to port it to the PC.

I'm going to be talking exclusively about Undead Nightmare today. I'll go over Red Dead Redemption another time, but this extra content is basically its own game, with a story that veers off from the main game's campaign. Treat it like an alternate universe to the main game.

Undead Nightmare takes place after the main campaign of Red Dead Redemption, but before the epilogue. Honestly, you could say it's an alternate ending to the game that replaces the epilogue with a dark twist.

John Marston, the protagonist of the main game, sends his boy to bed and is settling in to bed with his wife when Uncle shows up, bloodied, deranged, and violent. John knocks him out, then goes to get his shotgun. But Uncle isn't down for long, and he chases John's wife out of the house, getting a solid bite on her throat before John returns and guns him down.

John's son comes running to his mother's aid, only to be bitten by her! They both rapidly turn into the undead, and John hog-ties them to keep them from hurting anyone else. He leaves them tied up in the bedroom, then promises to return once he's found a doctor.

John goes to the nearest town to find it overrun with the undead. He helps the few remaining citizens liberate the town, then asks random survivors what's going on.

One girl mentions that her mother came back long after being dead and buried, and ate her dad's face off! She recommends burning coffins at the local cemetery to keep the dead from rising again. And also suggests she had an evil uncle who was buried there.

Considering her contempt for him and the loving message scrawled on his tombstone, it hints at the dark kind of relationship they may have had. Also, she mentions all the horribly abusive things that her own father does, but dismisses them because "he's a good man!" So her uncle must've been a truly terrible person.

From here, you're going from town to town, helping people survive undead attacks, following rumors about what might be causing it, and trying to find an end to the nightmare so you can cure your wife and kid.

In the original campaign, there was an easter egg where you could go way up north into the mountains and find a family of Sasquatch hiding in the forest. In Undead Nightmare, you get a quest to hunt them down.

After killing several of them, you find one crying against a tree. He can speak! He begs you to end his life because "some maniac" has killed all of his friends and family and he's the last of his kind left. It's up to you whether or not to end his life.

There are several other mythical creatures to be found roaming the lands, like chupacabra, black horned goats with red eyes, unicorns, and even the Four Horses of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not to be found.

You can wrangle and tame the first three horses, then the horse Death will appear in the wilderness to be tamed. Death is automatically awarded to you when you complete the whole storyline too. My favorite is War, because it's the only one with a fiery mane. The other three just look like regular horses with creepy eyes.

My original horse was just a normal horse... until I encountered an undead bear, which knocked me over and killed my horse. The next time I called for my mount, this undead horse showed up! Turns out there are some tame undead; although the undead horses have a bad habit of ignoring commands and doing their own thing sometimes.

There are many theories as to what's causing the undead to walk again. Some have some merit and warrant investigation, but others are completely outrageous.

Still others are so wrapped up arguing over what to do in this new chaotic world that they don't pay attention to their surroundings...

The most interesting theory I heard was that this was just a thing that happens every couple hundred years. A sort of cleansing ritual or something.

I bought Red Dead Redemption ages ago, specifically for this Undead Nightmare content. But I didn't want to jump into a story-rich game without knowing all the characters and lore, so I rushed through the campaign as quick as I could.

I later regretted it, as I felt like the campaign was much better than this zombie storyline. Sure, you get a quick tour of all the characters from the campaign and see how they're handling the "zombie apocalypse." Hint: most aren't handling it well. But the undead story just feels like it was tacked on last-minute, with very few story missions and a lot of side quests to keep you running back and forth across the land.

Don't get me wrong, Undead Nightmare is a lot of fun to play if you want to run around and shoot zombies in a "spaghetti western" setting. But I much prefer Red Dead Redemption.

I went into Call of Cthulhu blind, not knowing anything except that it's somehow connected to the Cthulhu mythos. Not only was it another period piece supernatural detective story like yesterday's game, Kona, but it also stars a private investigator who was a former veteran. This time, though, it takes place in 1924 and our protagonist is a veteran of the first World War. You play Edward Pierce, a down-on-his-luck P.I. who is struggling with insomnia, alcoholism and PTSD from his service in the war.

The game opens with Pierce lying in an underground cavern, panicking as he realizes he's soaked in the blood and guts of mutilated marine animals. He escapes, only to witness faceless cult members attacking a faceless intruder on their ceremony. Then they come for him...

He awakens on the couch of his office. Just a nightmare. A client comes to his door, the father of a famous painter, Sarah Hawkins. He wants Pierce to investigate the mysterious death of his daughter and her husband and son. Supposedly, they all burned to death in a house fire, but the police blamed it on Sarah. They said she went mad and killed them all. Her father doesn't believe it and asks Pierce to uncover the truth.

Pierce travels to Sarah's former home, an island off the coast of Boston called Darkwater, which has been mostly forgotten by the mainland. It's home to a small town of fishermen, as well as the wealthy Sarah Hawkins and her family. While trying to investigate Sarah's old warehouse, Pierce runs into the local muscle, a woman named Cat. She doesn't take kindly to him snooping on her territory.

Did I mention this game has dialogue choices? Depending on how you handle situations (and in what direction you level your character's stats), you can change the course of action in the game.

In this instance, I got my ass kicked by Cat. But, as you may remember from my former posts, I like to play the altruist in my games. I got the option to sneak into the warehouse again, but I was also given a chance to talk with Cat directly instead, and I was polite and honest enough with her that she decided to help me out instead of kicking my ass again. She actually escorted me to the warehouse this time!

In the warehouse, you switch into detective mode, which allows you to scan for clues and piece together the crime scene. Kind of like the visions in Kona, except instead of glowing, moving silhouettes in a dark space, they're transparent, unmoving silhouettes in a frosty space.

The local police burst in and kick Pierce out, but through dialogue choices, I got them to not only give me more valuable information, but also give me a lift to the decrepit Hawkins mansion on the island. Which did NOT burn down. Hmm...

Exploring the mansion, Pierce eventually finds an underground passage and ends up falling into a cavern full of mutilated marine animals... the same one from the nightmare at the beginning of the game! Panicking, Pierce attempts to escape, only to experience the same cult scenario play out similar to his nightmare earlier. While running for his life, he's knocked unconscious by falling debris.

From this point, the line between fantasy and reality starts blending. Pierce wakes in an insane asylum, breaks out, and then has to confront the indescribable horrors that he's witnessed. Finding allies to his experiences is difficult though, as most end up insane or dead. Or some people he witnessed being murdered will instead show up healthy with no memory of being harmed. Edward Pierce finds his grip on reality slipping and he needs to solve the case quick, before he falls into complete madness...

There's a lot of lore throughout the story, and despite my lengthy explanation of the plot, there are tons of details that were omitted, to avoid spoilers. Plus, your choices can lead to slightly different outcomes. There are actually four different endings to this game, depending on interactions and how intact Pierce's sanity is by the end.

Like a lot of horror games right now, Call of Cthulhu is currently 80% off on Steam, so take advantage of the seasonal deals if you like this kind of thing. Apparently, this game is the latest original story in a (non-related) series of "Call of Cthulhu" video games, which are independently licensed works based on an old tabletop RPG of the same name, which itself is loosely based on the H.P. Lovecraft short, "The Call of Cthulhu." So my initial impression, that it's "somehow connected to the Cthulhu mythos," is a pretty good summary of this game.