Chronos: Before the Ashes ( PC (Steam) – Action, RPG – 2020 ) + TRAILER

It's interesting when you accidentally stumble upon a representative from games you're not that well-versed at. That was Chronos: Before the Ashes and how it just might be a gateway title of choice into Souls-likes. Rough around the edges and very compact in scope, but a decent appetizer to see if this sort of thing appeals to you.

As apparently seems to be the norm in the parts, game intentionally keeps things vague. What opens on some sort of shaman narrating about their people and lifelong goal to defeat the dragon in ritualistic manner around a campfire leads to our protagonist, male or female, waking up on a shore next to a decidedly very not-fantasy laboratory. Or so you think until you see a big red crystal floating about. Touching it transports you to some sort of fantasy land where they're used as transportation devices. Needless to say there's a connection here as you find notes and scant few non-hostile individuals willing to share their thoughts on the matter. Knowing little you buckle up and continue your quest...

There are couple of things worth noting here.

First is Chronos' gimmick - every time you die, you age a year. Aside from getting a perk every decade, your stat growth which you CAN manually adjust with points on each level up, apparently inclines away from physical prowess as you get older. I couldn't confirm this seeing as I finished the game at 35 and could have probably shaved ten years from that provided I wasn't as greedy or prone to rolling off dangerous high places. Further differences from similar titles would be absence of some ephemeral currency you lose on death so you want to recover it and ability to continue your game precisely where you quit from. Transportation stones pull double duty as checkpoints in case you do die and enemies respawn, however. If there's no currency to speak then what's progression like beyond allocating stats on level up? Well, you find weapons and better shields over your journey and former can then be upgraded via shards. Better start praying to RNG gods because those drop randomly from enemies. No new armor sets are to be found so better get comfortable with your green tunic and red scarf. At least there's enough weapons of slow and light inclination.

I already mentioned it in the opening, but this is a short game. This translates into making every area and enemy type count, of which there's a decent offering. Most features present will be well established to anyone remotely familiar with these games so I'll just briefly list them; light and heavy attack, block and parry, very few healing items replenished on death, generally deadly enemies that can do you in, etc. One neat addition I liked are four magical stones you come across that unleash a special ability when the bar is full. Said bar gets fuller faster the better you are at playing the game aka time you parries and evades or press the attack. Just one can be equipped at a time which mitigates the fact the very last one lets you siphon health when dealing damage effectively sidestepping the healing item limitation.

Are there negatives to Chronos: Before the Ashes or am I just waxing poetically here? Depending on how you look at it, but you could argue a lot we take for granted is off to some degree. Your movement is clunky and deliberate leading to many situations where overextending yourself with just that one more attack can end poorly. There's enough annoying enemy types to become noticeable the further you get. Heavily-shielded types are especially excruciating as I can see someone playing with slow weapons just giving up. Although not an issue personally, but there are light puzzles in the game that could be frustrating to someone looking for a more straightforward action game. Some are "take object to the next room" and yet some will have you matching patterns or connecting beginning/end points with lines.

My final recommendation is wary, but positive. Unless you're more experienced with Souls-likes in which case this just might be an awkwardly executed first effort.

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Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series ( PC (Steam) – Adventure – 2017 ) + TRAILER

I'll cut the usual preamble short and just say if you're familiar with the Telltale formula you already have an opinion on Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy The Telltale Series. In a general sense, at least. What I will get into is where the game stands in relation to established framework, other Telltale titles and should you bother.

Following the Guardians of the Galaxy, as lead by Peter Quill aka. Star-Lord to, well, whoever bothers to remember his moniker, we start with a rather peculiar premise - Guardians defeat Thanos the Mad Titan. Yes, THAT purple raisin guy. Just before they kill him our big bad seems to have had a stroke of luck by finding the Eternity Forge, some sort of artifact the gang then takes since it seemed to be so important to a galactic-level threat. After the Guardians are done celebrating their victory and deciding who they're going to sell Thanos' body to, to pay off their bar tab, true power of the Eternity Forge is revealed for it can bring dead people back to life. Bad news? Well, it's a double whammy as Peter dies before being resurrected, emotionally damaging his already unstable team in the process and Hala the Accuser waylays the group determined to take the artifact and restore Kree empire. In the background of all this Peter is getting weird visions of his deceased mother that don't exactly match his memories of her...

It's possible marginally more cohesiveness went into writing this game as compared to most of Telltale's efforts which they penned on episode-by-episode basis, and usually to the detriment of the story. That's not to say all five episodes were created equal. Far from it, actually. Game left a negative impression on me until it was salvaged by the last two episodes. Ironically, it was not the humor Guardians of the Galaxy is known for or soundtrack choices which largely fell flat, but instead some genuinely touching scenes that ended up selling the game to me. I'm not sure what that says about your project when it mostly comes across as knock-off Tales from the Borderlands which preceded it.

Looking at characters themselves they don't exactly go beyond their already established personalities you may be familiar with from the movies, but I like how you can actually talk to them. Gives your crew more room to breathe even if some like Drax can quickly wear out their novelty given time to do so, for example. Seeing some of their memories as you progress through the episodes and revealing their true selves behind posturing and bravado was the highlight of the game for me. It would've been nice to see more of that rather than how many quips a minute writers can cram in. I guess that comes with the property and refusal to upset the status quo, though.

Gameplay-wise? I'd have to refer you to the opening paragraph. Appropriately enough, QTE-driven action scenes take the form of all Guardians of the Galaxy fighting as a team rather than you controlling Star-Lord and others getting relegated to the background. What little else you'll be doing is holding forward/occasional lazy input and making sure to pick those correct dialog options because "the story is tailored by how you play" although we can debate all day long how true that actually is. I did notice some potential major forks later on, but given A) this is a licensed property and B) Telltale scripts don't REALLY do such major departures, I would guess they all converge sooner rather than later.

So Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy The Telltale Series still gets a recommendation after all that? I changed my mind as I played and not even the incredibly naive finale managed to sour it. At the end of the day this is a high adventure in space with a band of misfits who have to learn to live together while risking their lives guarding said galaxy. Not necessarily the best use of the license, but if Telltale games are already your drug of choice go for it.

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Coffee Talk ( PC (Steam) – Visual Novel – 2020 ) + TRAILER

I wouldn't really call Coffee Talk a coffeehouse simulator so much as relationship counseling center, but both aspects have their charm even in their uneven nature.

You play as the barista running the eponymous place special for one thing - it's a coffee shop open only at night. As your regular Freya points out this means you don't make nearly as much money as you could, but you don't seem to mind. Playful jabs imply you're loaded. Speaking of Freya she's the first character you see and one who will frequent the shop on nightly basis. Highly energetic freelance writer of short fiction for the local newspaper her potential developments in career prospects spark the premise for the game. You see, she's been approached with an idea of writing a novel. What's her pitch? To use stories, identity protection enabled, she hears at the coffee shop for inspiration. After acquiring tentative agreement on your part begin two weeks of customers visiting with their dramas, story arcs and orders to brew.

Coffee Talk is a straightforward game with not much to comment regarding the GAME department. Boiled down to basics it follows a simple loop of "customer enters, says what they want to drink and you use a combination of three ingredients out of nine to create the drink". Putting it that way is incredibly impersonal, though. You don't start with all the ingredients at first and I was stumped couple of times. Sure, customers generally give you clear instructions, but from time to time they themselves are unclear on what to order or give you vague instructions. Keeping in mind you can cancel five orders per-day this isn't really an issue so experiment away. After you finish the Story mode you unlock Endless mode in case you want to spend more time brewing.

Narrative department, however, is where the game truly shines and is carried by character writing. There's no main story per se since you're a barista watching things unfold on the other end. Freya is your constant, and I was surprised the game included her new fiction pieces as days went on, but it's all the others who are sources of stories. Did I forget to mention this is a fantasy world set in the equivalent of 2020? Well, I just did. This translates to odd pairings like a vampire model and werewolf hospital admin with their shared history, or an unlikely partnership between a half-orc and mermaid game developers [maybe] blossoming into something more. A lot of topics are touched upon usually mirroring real life struggles. Classism, racism, and just people being people. Fantasy element adds extra angles to familiar issues. Ultimately, game rides or dies based on how much you care about the characters and I largely did. Gala, wise and collected werewolf, was probably my favorite with the impression he leaves on other character(s) with his words.

Easiest way to think about Coffee Talk is to imagine a VN with pixel graphics and rudimentary potion mixing. If you're interested do check out the Workshop as there are mods adding full voice acting to the game.