Activities
Yesterday
November Assassination #5 (SG Win)
Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!
If you ever wondered what's the importance of sound design for a videogame, play this and you'll get it.
A great introduction to the Frog Detective series. Great writing and awesome character designs. It ended before it god old, and it never got stale. It has charm for itself and to give away and then there's still some left. Don't expect much of a game, but enjoy and cherish the hour you'll with this experience. Sure, it's short, but this information is available everywhere. So if you buy it and play it and then come here complaining about it's length, sorry to say but the joke is on you.
October 2025
A sort of analog horror where you watch a kids tv show to uncover horrifying secrets. The interaction between watching the tapes and being able to interact with them and the world around you is pretty neat. There is unfortunately not much backtracking as moving onto the next tape will remove previous tapes and bar your way for past puzzles, but it’s sort of the idea to start a new game with the knowledge you have from a previous run. Scares are decent enough and the uncanny and analog horror to build suspense.
Recommend? Yes, a decent and short game with reasonable enough puzzles… though some secrets may require a guide as there is some out of the box thinking.
Captain Firehawk and the Laser Love Situation
Another Deep Space waifu-like, another disappointment. I saw the reviews for this but was still drawn in by the 90’s anime style. That’s all it really has going for it though as the game really fails on all parts. Levels feel repetitive, all bosses recycle the same attacks, no particularly engaging music, boring animation, and awful writing. The writing in particular is bad as it will often have characters repeat almost entirely what the other person said feeling a bit like AI scripts and even then the actual exchanges are boring immature exchanges. Also, unlike DSW you HAVE to destroy all of the clothes before defeating the boss or you just lose. It’s really annoying as you are just casually buying time until the camera brings you to the spots you missed.
Recommend? 90’s anime aesthetic aside, the game is just bad.
Well… this game took me over completely… With the release of Hades II I thought I would give the first game a try. After all, SuperGiant Games always did solid work with amazing art. Though the rogue-like aspect always threw me off until now. Man, this was addictive. Engaging gameplay with a multitude of weapons and abilities at your disposal. The various boons you could get from the gods helped vary the gameplay, though some did feel mismanaged. Even with the limited number of bosses I couldn’t stop myself from immediately starting another run, just one more room, just gotta see what I can get, what dialogue I can trigger, quests complete, and what modifiers I can overcome with which weapons. Though this is rogue-like/llte it is very much on the “lite” side as you carry over a lot of progress and bare minimum can advances quests without even finishing a run. Speaking of dialogue… there is SO MUCH. Like a lot a lot for every character, for ways you do runs, weapons, boons, etc. All voice acted brilliantly, mind you. Each character is stylishly designed and matches their voices well.
Recommend? Despite the low boss variety and occasional confusing quest progression, it is a crazy addictive game that will have you invested in both it’s gameplay and characters.
10/10 Would go to the Underworld again. Need Nyx, Meg, Alecto, and/or Than in my life (or most of the cast really).
Clock Tower: Rewind
0
4
7
5
Classic Point and Click horror adventure that has you running from a scissor man in an unknown building. The sprite work is pretty smooth and surprisingly effective in the horror sense. It’s pretty easy to get softlocked, particularly on the first time through where you run into a dead end. This is where the “Rewind” feature comes into play but I often found that by the time I’m at a dead end… the rewind just doesn’t go far back enough to save me. Luckily the game is pretty easy to run back and the use of saves will help you mitigate this. Like any point and click, the game has some pretty obtuse solutions and some interactions aren’t always clear. Add the fact that you can easily transition into different ending paths that moderately change how you progress without much clue as to how. Still, it’s an interesting and relatively short adventure. The enhanced port does have an amazing animated intro along with some great music.
Recommend? Generally, yes. Though I preferred Clock Tower 3, this is a fun little adventure that more or less holds up all things considered.
Parasite Eve
Replayed
Coming back to this reminds me of just how unique it was for the time in terms of combining horror and RPG. It also makes me realize how messy the game is. Dungeons and maps that get closed off when finished, limited inventory of a survivor horror in a item drop heavy RPG, enemy encounters being location based instead of random, a lack of direction in the overworld, and more. Still, I can’t help but love it (likely some nostalgia bias there) and I’m excited to finally play the sequels in the coming October.
Recommend? Kinda. Gotta love Active Time Battle RPG’s and wacky horror games.
Silent Hill 2 Remake
0
0
2
25
Pleasantly surprised despite Konami’s and Bloober’s history. A fairly faithful near 1:1 recreation of one of the most influential survival horror games in history now with modern graphics. What the game does best, which is arguably the most important, is sound design. It’s what Silent Hill does best and really immerses and disturbs you as you play. I remember just simply admiring the opening sequence of the game with all of the little sounds you could hear in the fields and town, and that was just the opening. The game is also visually stunning though in some areas the darkness may obscure that. The combat is also more focused which maybe a problem for some classic fans and makes the one combat trailer make more sense. We now get dodges and accurate aiming. With this improvement, enemies are now far more deadly as their attacks now track. It almost seems impossible to do a combatless run because of this.
Though it remains fairly faithful, there are some changes outside of graphics. Some puzzles and battles have been changed to fit the more modern control scheme while some story elements are a bit more straight forward as to maybe alleviate some confusion for newer players. For anything that has been changed, the game lets you know as there are interactables that callback to previous puzzles and encounters. The characters are pretty true to the original. Some are as prominent as they used to be while others are far more disgusting. One of the other big new changes are there are new endings to get, though you’ll have to go through the game at least one time before getting them.
Recommend? Yes, a wonderful comeback that gives hope for the future of the Silent Hill series and the rest of Konami’s IPs alike. Though it’s a shame it takes a remake to do it. In no way does it replace the original but it is a nice new way to re-experience a classic.
Nov 11 2025
★20: October 2025
Nov 10 2025
Ninglors Log 414
October Progress:
6
PPU monthly:
done
October Additions:
5
November Progress:
PPU monthly:
undone
November Additions:
Games finished this week:
FINAL FANTASY XV WINDOWS EDITION 
58 hours, 46 of 97 achievements
Present from 2022
Escape From Mystwood Mansion
4 hours, 20 of 20 achievements
Present from 2025
The Expanse: A Telltale Series
5 hours, 13 of 35 achievements
Won/Gifted Games:
Everafter Falls – Win \o/
Unavowed – Ty SevenDeck <3
Bought Games:
Currently playing:
So much from me :3
Have a lovely week!
Queen Ninglor
Nov 09 2025
I need to figure out the fancy formatting yall use, but in October I finished:
- Vampire: the Masquerade - Coeteries of New York
– I liked it, i wish more of the choices mattered, but it was a fun little visual novel - The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
– I liked it even more. Choices mattered and it felt way more like the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Books I enjoy so well. - Styx: Master of Shadows
– This was genuinely great. I suuuuucked at it at first, which made me feel olde, but by the end I was vibing. I def’ly plan to go back and 100% it.
I also got started on Beholder, BioShock Remastered, Distant Worlds: Universe (completed to PA criteria), and Quantum Break.
The only Oct Challenge Me! i finished was Styx: Master of Shadows (on a related note, if anyone has figured out how to get their controller to work on Psychonauts in a Linux environment Id love to hear the details).
All in all, I think it was a pretty solid first month on BLAEO. It was nice to play (and finish some) games that would prolly still be collecting dust. Unfortunately, October was a pretty lucky month for me on SG, so my backlog actually increased lol
October 2025
Late for October’s status update. Nothing spooky about it.
Finished
What a grind fest! Getting good enough weapons to complete harder levels is praying to to RNG gods. Then you needed to complete all story missions in the same difficulty setting. So if you finish one in hard and the rest in normal, game won't mark story finished in normal. In the end beat the game in normal + hard on ranger and on normal for wing diver. In hindsight, ranger felt inferior class. Game was clearly designed for multiplayer or more mobile units. It almost felt like and insult after having been playing as ranger for so long. :D
Finished with this one. Could continue grinding more of the difficult challenges but turned more or less immortal in basic game. Its a decent survivor game.
Okayish game that could have had slightly more depth into it. Now builds got slightly stale and kept repeating themselves.
Progress
A bit late but these are the games I completed in October
Good enough game, though I feel it could have been a lot better, it simply didnt stuck much with me I guess.
Probably a bit of that is my fault though. I played this not having checked the first game (people said it wasnt necesary) but it feels I probably would have enjoyed some more things if I had.
Really fun game.
Both lore and the world are very bizarre and a bit scary but the whole story keeps a vibe of a fairy tale.
Gameplay can get possibly a bit repetitive (you need to constantly “farm” energy to throw the dice that decides what weapons, traps and other stuff you can summon) but is otherwise very creative and fun. Even though the game can be overally very easy.
Nov 07 2025
The month of October was a very productive month for my backlog assassination. I’m moving soon and my PC has been packed so I was only able to play on my Steam Deck for nearly the entire month. This prevented me from streaming on Twitch and playing certain games, but also forced me to play some games that I otherwise wouldn’t have. I’m writing this post on mobile so I will not be as detailed as I have been before.
I was able to beat 11 games in October, and I managed to get 100% achievements in 7 of those games. All of the games except for one of them, Lil Gator Game, were part of the October PAGYWOSG event.
Games I beat in October: LEGO® DC Super-Villains, Costume Quest, Maid of Sker, and Terror of Hemasaurus
Games I 100% completed in October: Void Scrappers, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Human Resource Machine, Lil Gator Game, There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension, Pinball Spire, and Machinarium
I enjoyed most of them but I didn’t really care for Costume Quest, Maid of Sker, or Terror of Hemasaurus. I still finished them but I had no interest in cleaning up remaining achievements. Pinball Spire and Void Scrappers were better than I expected.
So far in November I have completed two games with 100% achievements but I will cover those in a separate post at/after the end of the month. By then I will have moved from Massachusetts to Connecticut and I’ll be back on my PC. Take care, assassins!
November Assassination #4 (Backlog)
Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!
Having just beaten Ori, it's easy to see why this game is so beloved. It is an incredibly beautiful and well-paced game that does most things right, but I think it suffers a bit when put under the microscope in a few aspects. Not enough to make it bad, not enough to warranting a thumbs down or not recommending it, but enough to prevent it from being a masterpiece.
First, praise where praise is due. Let's start with the visuals, which, for the most part, are absolutely top-notch. It's been a while since I've seen a 2D game look that good. The parallax and depth of field is insane, always gorgeous and making you feel you're actually inhabiting a real world, not a 2D slice of one. The environments are varied, and the animation for all characters (but in particular for Ori) is mindblowing. The gracefulness of its movements is something you don't see every day. Effects overall are also really well done. My only criticism in regards to visuals is also a criticism I'll come back to when talking about combat - there's a bit too much visual noise at times to allow for effective combat/platforming. This was mostly an issue when enemies shot projectiles at me, and I either couldn't see them against the background or against all the visual effects already on the screen. While this is not game-breaking in regular gameplay, I can see that being a MAJOR issue if you're going for the no-kill achievement.
When it comes to sounds, there's nothing groundbreaking here, but what's on display absolutely delivers. Ori mostly features an orchestral score that dictates the mood of each scene and action sequence without being too intrusive. It's beautiful, it's haunting, it can get your heart pumping in the right moments, and in summary, works. It does what it has to, but is not a soundtrack you'll be remembering for ages, I guess. Could be good background music for studying or meditation, but hardly rises above that.
The lore is partially delivered via short sentences and long visual storytelling. The devs excel at 'show, don't tell', and it's pretty easy to follow what's happening and get invested in the world and its characters. I was still a bit confused about what really set all the events in the game in motion and I'm not sure I know the answer to that, having beaten the game, but that never prevented me from enjoying the story or getting excited about its developments. Personally I don't think Kuro works as a great villain / antagonist, but that's probably more a matter of personal preference. Last but not least, I thought the endign was a bit abrupt - I was sure there would be a final dungeon after you beat the three legacy ones, but no, credits rolled when I was still craving for more. The pacing towards the end is a bit unclear and I think the tension doesn't build as high as it could if you're expecting that kind of final challenge gauntlet, so the whole endgame experience was a bit jarring for me, but I can also see that being an issue for how conditioned I am with Metroidvanias pulling the point-of-no-return-last-dungeon trick over and over.
And finally, the area where I reserved most of my criticism - gameplay. I always review Metroidvanias saying they have three jobs that MUST be done right - combat, movement, and exploration. Exploration is the easiest so I'll start there - Ori is fine. There is a lot to find around the world, and most of it is not super hidden, so you immediately know there'll be backtracking. The map is really useful in keeping track of it for you, but the abilities that you get to unlock further exploration feel a bit tacked on - it's like, you know there's a breakable wall as soon as you start the game, and eventually you get the breakable wall ability, so it's a key fitting a hole and not an eureka moment. It works, but is not incredible.
Movement is 8 or 80: moving around with Ori is a blast for most of the time, in particular as you start to combo abilities. Bash is one of the most incredible moves ever created, and combined with double jump and hovering, it's a lot of fun. What brings movement down for me is that some areas (in particular chase sequences) don't communicate really well what they want from you, requiring prior knowledge of the obstacles in order to avoid them. I hate when you get to a point and die to an unfair obstacle without any chance to avoiding it, and I hate when the game uses that as a way to teach you what to do in the next attempt. A fair game will always let a skilled player clear a challenge like that in the first go, and Ori refuses to do that in pretty much all escape sequences. It's a bit frustrating that such a good moveset is hampered by somewhat obtuse level design, but it's not enough to abandon the game.
And finally, combat. Which is the weakest link. Combat is just not satisfying here, and I'm glad it's not a bigger part of the game. What you do is spam the attack button, since enemies are spongy from the beginning to the end of the journey and you don't get significant improvement on your combat options outside of Bash. To make matters worse, there's not a huge variety of enemies. There's the guy that jumps and you run under, the armored guys that rush you, the guys that rush you and explode, the slugs that don't move and shoot bullets you can bash, and the slugs that move but which bullets you cannot bash, the frogs and the owls. And they just keep repeating over and over and over with different palettes but the same strategies. To make things worse, some projectiles are bashable and others aren't, so even bash is not dependable throughout the game. Combat is at its best when you're taking full advantage of your moveset to avoid enemies mid-air and hitting them with their own projectiles, but very often you'll be on ground having to hold on to ledges to take poke shots at enemies while barely seeing their attacks. Again, it works fine for a regular gameplay, but I can see that being infuriating in a one-kill playthrough.
Overall, Ori does many things right and while hard, can be a good first Metroidvania for people getting into the genre. It's beautiful to look at and to listen to, there's an engaging and well told story, exploration is fine, movement is quite expressive although level design frequently plays against it, and if you can endure combat here, it mostly only gets better in other games of the genre. It's a great game that stops a few steps away from being a timeless classic.
Report – November 7, 2025
Action RPG / Soulslike
Right, back into the Iron King DLC.
Adventure / Story-Rich / Episodic
Continuing onto Episode 3 of Season 1.
Simulation / Strategy / Airline Management
The core mechanics are very simple: you manage airline routes and handle passenger traffic. I had a good amount of fun with it, and it’s satisfying when everything runs smoothly. However, there’s one downside — the Campaign mode feels nearly impossible to finish. The game doesn’t have any difficulty settings, and from my experience, Campaign might as well be set to Hard/Brutal by default. In Campaign, you have 6 minutes to unlock a random country. When you unlock it, the time gets extended by another 6 minutes. The problem is the randomness: If you unlock a small, nearby country, the new routes are cheap and easy to manage. But if you unlock a large country, several airports appear at once, and you need to connect them immediately — otherwise one airport overloads → game over. On top of that, there are random events like: Airports shutting down • Airport level reductions • Sudden suitcase “bankruptcy” events All of these can collapse your economy instantly. I eventually found a pattern to survive the early game, but I still couldn’t get past around ~15 countries before the randomness caused a fail. Overall, the game is enjoyable — just don’t take Campaign too seriously. Play Free Mode, build your airline network at your own pace, and you’ll have a much better time.
Action / Supernatural / Third-Person Shooter
The storytelling and visuals in this game are amazing — together they create a strong, surreal atmosphere that really pulls you in. The NPCs are surprisingly lively too. I especially liked Ahti the Janitor — the moment I met him, I honestly thought he might end up being the final boss 😂 I do wish the Service Weapon had more form variations, or at least looked a bit more impactful in some modes. Also, the map design can be confusing — the layout often feels like a maze. Personally, I think the game might have been even better if it leaned more toward a linear structure, or at least clearer navigation. But even with those issues, the experience as a whole is excellent. Great atmosphere, great style — I really enjoyed it.
Horror / Time-loop / Narrative
It’s a time-loop story, where you die over and over again until you reach the end. I really love this concept — funny enough, my first ever win on SG was Life is Strange, which also plays with time loops. What a coincidence! The game’s horror aspect isn’t too scary (the devil creature’s design is a bit tame — maybe due to budget limits), but the gore feels disturbingly real. The story, choices, and atmosphere are all done really well — they kept me curious the whole time. The plot twist was solid too, even though I could kind of see it coming. I got 1 of the 4 endings, but sadly, there’s no option to replay from key decisions, so you’ll need to start over to see the others. Hopefully, they’ll patch that in later. Overall — recommended!