amphibious_ReViews

Since its release, Monument Valley intrigued me. The gorgeous minimalist aesthetic combined with the fascinating Escher-inspired puzzles sat in my periphery for years. However, I guess I was never interested enough to drop any coin on it. I only ended up playing it more than 10 years after its initial release because it was included with my Netflix subscription. While I didn't like it enough to feel compelled to buy it outright now that I let my Netflix subscription lapse, I still had a genuinely good time playing it.   Monument Valley has you directing Princess Ida across little puzzle boxes of physical and gravitational impossibilities to return strange artifacts to their pedestals. You'll be responsible for choosing where Ida should go, as well as manipulating the terrain to discover and create new pathways for her. While most of the puzzles take no more than a few minutes, they frequently introduce new features and obstacles, so they remain engaging.   The eerie impossibil...

The Stanley Parable is an absolute roller coaster of a game. The less you know about it, the more you'll get from it, so reader discretion is advised. While I never played the Half-Life 2 mod that spawned the franchise, I did get the standalone release around a decade ago and absolutely loved it. That was before I was writing reviews, so I don't have any written proof, but my memory is still pretty clear. In fact, I liked it enough that I let my boss play it in the office conference room during a holiday party while we waited for the Jackbox group to coalesce (he's over forty years older than me, but he still got a kick out of it). That appreciation for the game never left me, so when the Ultra Deluxe edition was announced for consoles, I knew it would be in my collection someday. With nearly all of the content from the original (only one section of the game has had a major adjustment), alongside more than 100% more new content, this is easily the definitive Stanley Parable...