August 2026

Lacuna: This was a really good game. Great story, art, music. I just wish it was longer, though. I thought it ended pretty fast. The puzzles weren’t that hard to do and I think some of the plot twists were pretty obvious, not that either of those are a bad thing per se. But yeah, had a great time with this game. 8/10.

Resident Evil 4 Remake: I was pleasantly surprised that it could run on my hardware. My CPU’s old and I recall the first time I tried the demo, it was stuttering a lot, but I think turning off Ambient Occlusion did the trick and removed the stutters. I thought it was great. There are a lot of things they improved upon, and I do prefer this one’s combat over the original. Ashley and Luis felt like better characters.

There are things that I thought the original did better though. The villains felt better then, they were kind of boring here especially Saddler. I missed Leon’s banters with the villains back in the original game. I didn’t like Ada and Wesker’s voice acting either. I thought Ada’s voice felt flat but I did think it’s getting better in her DLC (haven’t finished it yet but from what I’ve heard thus far, it sounded better) so could be a voice direction issue. Wesker, I thought his voice in general is fine, but it’s not Wesker. It felt like a generic try-hard villain. I really dislike the direction they went for his voice. I also wish they gave us a “Classic Ada” outfit. I understand they’re trying to make the remakes more grounded in reality (and her new outfit worked if that’s the goal) but the dress was too iconic.

Still a 10/10 though. I think right now, I still prefer RE8 (just really loved the atmosphere/setting and villains), but that might change once I start to 100% this game. I recall I didn’t like RE8 that much at first either then I went for a 100% run and I was sad when I finally finished it (except for that game’s mercenaries, screw that, did not enjoy playing those).

Beholder 2: I didn’t really like the gameplay that much. I thought it was too repetitive and boring. The story and setting itself didn’t really intrigued me. Sometimes it just felt edgy/shock humor for the sake of being one. Also, I’ve never played the first game, but I’m pretty sure if I had I’d probably give this game a lower score. I could see myself being very annoyed at what they did to the protagonist at the first game. Anyhoo it’s a 5/10. I’m glad that it wasn’t very long and that they didn’t really force the gameplay (mini game?) on you too much.

Penumbra: Overture: I’m not sure how I feel about this game. It wasn’t really scary and the enemies are too easy to kill. They weren’t the smartest NPC either. It takes a while for them to actually notice you. The story was… fine. It ends on a cliffhanger. When I looked it up, apparently the Penumbra series was supposed to be episodic and this was the first episode but they ended it in the sequel. I’m intrigued with what happens next though. Light spoiler: I didn’t really expect the reveal in the end. 7/10.

Blacksad: Under the Skin: Great story, but sadly the gameplay sucked and it was a terrible experience. Poor optimization, sluggish movement/janky controls, bugs. It just stutters a lot (to be fair, my hardware sucks but I’m seeing people online with decent rigs report poor performance as well) and the protagonist’s movement is so bad. He walks so slow and sometimes you need to be extremely precise to interact with some things you need to progress. He just sometimes doesn’t turn in the way you want him to so you miss what you’ve been trying to interact with for the past 5 minutes. There was also a section where you control a flashlight and that was one of the worse parts in the game to play. And two mildly annoying things: when the game starts, the music is 100% and takes a few seconds to remember your settings. And turning off controller vibration does not turn it off either. The voice acting is a bit of a hit or miss. Some of the characters are decent. I like Blacksad’s, but some of the other VAs are terrible and I wish I could just read their dialogue and skip their VA. Sadly the dialogues are all unskippable. The story is genuinely great though and it gets better as the game goes on. It just sucks that the game itself is terrible. 8/10 for the story, 5/10 for the overall experience.

Chrono Trigger: I think it’s a good and very well-made game especially considering when it was first released. I had fun playing it but ultimately, I don’t think I loved it as much as I was hoping to. My expectations going in were just too high because of how people talked about it online. I was expecting an amazing, deep story but it was more simple than what I was expecting. Not that that’s a bad thing, they did the story well, but I was expecting more. When it ended I just thought “that’s it?”. That’s on me though. I really should’ve had a lower expectation going in.

I loved pretty much everything else besides the story and the combat though. Speaking of the combat, I hate the active turn-based thing. I wish it wasn’t timed. But I appreciated the lack of random encounters. The art is legit one of the best pixel arts I’ve seen, and the OST is also one of the best ones I’ve listened to recently. I never got tired of them (and I’ll be honest, in a lot of games I play nowadays I tend to mute the music because I get sick of it looping). It was also fun to explore the different time periods (the one in 12000BC really impressed me when I first got into it). 8/10 for now. Not sure if the rating will increase as I go through the endings and 100% it, but we’ll see.

• Beholder 2
  

  11 hours playtime

  19 of 52 achievements

• Blacksad: Under the Skin
  

  19 hours playtime

  18 of 39 achievements

• CHRONO TRIGGER
  

  56 hours playtime

  3 of 13 achievements

• Lacuna
  

  8 hours playtime

  12 of 25 achievements

• Penumbra: Overture
  

  7 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Resident Evil 4
  

  20 hours playtime

  17 of 46 achievements

Goals for September 2026

All of these besides Rain World are Play or Pay picks (Rain World is a PoP win). I’m hoping to 100% as much as I can. I don’t think I’d be able to 100% Cuphead and Middle-earth though but I’m hoping I could beat them before the cycle ends.

• BioShock Remastered
  

  6 hours playtime

  7 of 65 achievements

• CHRONO TRIGGER
  

  56 hours playtime

  3 of 13 achievements

• Cuphead
  

  19 hours playtime

  6 of 42 achievements

• Middle-earth™: Shadow of Mordor™
  

  8 hours playtime

  9 of 74 achievements

• Rain World
  

  10 hours playtime

  5 of 47 achievements

• Spirit of the North
  

  6 hours playtime

  4 of 24 achievements