June & July 2025
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SILT
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Please, Touch The Artwork 2
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Wall World
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Nobody Wants to Die
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Alwa's Legacy
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Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery
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Rusty Lake Paradise
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Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction
15.7 hours playtime
no achievements
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Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction
13.43 hours playtime
44 of 48 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Little Kitty Big City
6.5 hours playtime
27 of 39 achievements
GAME
PASS
- SILT: Really atmospheric puzzle-adventure game, with its possession mechanic and the underwater setting making for some reasonably fresh gameplay. (8.5/10)
- Please, Touch The Artwork 2: Hidden object adventure, though an oddball charming one given it uses real artwork as its fodder. Even better, IT’S FREE!! (8/10)
- Wall World: Mining/shmup roguelite. Ultimately not enough variety of experience as a roguelite, particularly with the DLC, and would have been better to have doubled player damage/speed/drilling and also doubled the invasions and reshape the difficulty curve. There seem to be a limited set of objectively better choices for upgrading particular weapons and gear with the limited resources available (7/10)
- Nobody Wants to Die: Transhumanist adventure that proudly wears its Bladerunner-influences, though ultimately most of its choices seem to only have cosmetic story consequences. The detective mechanic is a fun take on Arkham Knight’s detective mechanic, but it’s ultimately not real detection. Nevertheless, worth a play (8/10)
- Alwa’s Legacy: Metroidvania - much like its predecessor but not as fresh/good (7/10)
- Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery: The art and music is far stronger than the gameplay – which is a bit of a melange. Puzzles mainly straightforward (particularly the painting mechanic), with the exception of the escape room sequence which spikes difficulty a little. I did not love the story, but I can see this being a game that may well resonate with others (6.5/10)
- Rusty Lake Paradise: Another weird entry in the Rusty Lake adventure series. Mostly reasonable puzzles for the world (7.5/10)
- Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction: A mix of stealth and corridor shooter. Surprisingly good combat AI for such an old game (though it doesn’t handle hiding for a long time well) – and certainly feels better than many a newer game. Level design feels somewhat compressed - as though there’s tension between what they’d like to have done and what they had the RAM on console for. One unforgivable design decision to make an enemy unkillable without any justification in order to progress its story. I really didn’t like the 24-inspired-torture interrogations. (7.5/10)
- Crypt Custodian: 3/4 view metroidvania/platformer, which could have been 3/4 the size and 3/4 as grindy without losing a thing – the trend of adopting soulslike currency to buy upgrades/cosmetics needs to stop! Otherwise, nice variety in choosing the set of buffs to use and some ok bosses (7.5/10)
- Little Kitty, Big City: Exploration collectathon - no way I was completing the grind for all achievements. Fun NPCs, and its animation captures the sense of being a cat (7.5/10)
Lot of 7-7.5s in my scoring, but nothing was absolutely outstanding these months, and 1-6.5s often just end up remaining as DNFs
This comment was deleted about 1 month ago.
Lots of interesting titles there. I particularly have Silt, Wall World, Behind the Frame and Rusty Lake Paradise in my backlog/playlist, and Nobody Wants to Die, Alwa’s Legacy and Crypt Custodian in my wishlist. It’s great to read your small excerpts, help me to balance and prioritize them based on what you experienced. Thanks!
Cheers - and good luck with your August assassinations
I fell off from Splinter Cell after Chaos Theory, but Conviction apparently has horrendous reputation among the fans who think the stealth really got shafted. Co-op campaign was seemingly great, though.
Only one in the series I’ve played – but given I prefer stealth to action I may just have to try others sometime.
Like I said I didn’t see the entire series through, but it was going from strength to strength until Chaos Theory, and that one’s widely considered to be its peak.
Ah a huge congratz for Splinter Cell conviction ! Still didn’t finish this one (gave up at torture interrogations yes) !
What they want you to do: move the thumbstick to drag your victim to a carefully selected location and press the right button to progress the interrogation.
What I ended up doing: Ignore careful control of the thumbstick and just hammer the button until it was over and done with.
I remember there was controversy about this when the game was released, and with a similar interrogation scene in a Call of Duty. It put a big damper on the depiction of torture in video games. Though maybe one day i’ll finish it anyway, it’s still a Splinter Cell game and I’m curious about the storyline. Did you like the plot ?
It’s the only Splinter Cell I’ve played (I wouldn’t mind IOI taking some of the gameplay lessons from this to mix with their Hitman experience for the new James Bond game) - it’s quite possible that the plot would have had more weight with someone who’d played the series but for me it was pretty unremarkable.