Hurr Jackal
October 2026
-
Well Dweller
12.5 hours playtime
41 of 41 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Black Jacket
4.1 hours playtime
27 of 42 achievements
GAME
PASS -
A Plague Tale: Requiem
19.3 hours playtime
22 of 35 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Buckshot Roulette
0.5 hours playtime
6 of 16 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy
8.8 hours playtime
18 of 36 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Neon Abyss 2
19.8 hours playtime
32 of 32 achievements
GAME
PASS -
ANNO: Mutationem
8.4 hours playtime
36 of 36 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Echo Weaver
16.4 hours playtime
22 of 40 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Shelldiver
4.4 hours playtime
12 of 12 achievements
GAME
PASS -
The Séance of Blake Manor
15.8 hours playtime
45 of 45 achievements
GAME
PASS -
ChromaGun
- Well Dweller: Some metroidvanias want their players to suffer. WD really really wants you to finish it, and in going overboard with the tools for you to do so has sanded off most of its edges. There’s multiple difficulty levels, and some configurable damage and timer settings, and more than enough trinkets which ultimately allow you to almost facetank almost any boss, plus locations of every collectable can be purchased. Actually collecting these takes more work, however, as unlike the combat most of the platforming is only made easier through ability upgrades (gained after beating bosses), and even then there’s many fair challenges. There’s also a bunch of save points, including immediately before each boss, and you get the ability to teleport between these fairly early. But if Well Dweller’s art and its first (and only really significantly original) unlock are its strongest elements, and its boss fights are only properly appreciable by those of strong-enough will to resist using the resources the game provides, then it’s weakest in its map design. Map logic is so very game-y, and there’s quite a few places where there are multiple routes that are both traversable with the same upgrades at that stage, and that have essentially no difference in skill needed. There’s also some unlockable “shortcuts”, many of which were pretty unnecessary because of the teleporting. Exploring would frequently leave me a little bemused at the redundant design. It’s possible that speedrunners and min-completionists might appreciate the overly flexible routing, but for a standard playthrough it just seems sloppy. 8-/10
- Black Jacket : Single-opponent Blackjack roguelite influenced by Balatro (and a little Slay the Spire), but different enough to be its own thing. Story was predictable, but gameplay was solid, and the card interactions interesting, though I’m not sure that decks are evenly balanced. Worth beating properly at level 1, but maybe not at the 20 NG+ levels (assuming that story elements are identical for the majority). 8/10
- A Plague Tale: Requiem: I finished Innocence, the first in the series, back in January 2023, and enjoyed it enough to start on this one a few months later, but bounced off it very quickly. I returned to it because Resonance was releasing and this one was departing Gamepass. What I have are a pile of gripes that I don’t think were as significant in its predecessor, and I’m certain that the main character is (deliberately) far less likable in this one, which is a critical problem in a game which needs you to connect emotionally with its leads. My issues include (but are definitely not limited to):
- Requiem is 50% longer than Innocence, and deliberately slow at times to progress story and allow conversations to occur. These should have been edited down, and needed much more restraint. For example if we’re heading to a location, and an enemy says they’re heading there, we don’t need to say “…Isn’t that where we’re going?” There’s a fair bit of stating the bleeding obvious like that. We don’t need nearly as much talking while sprinting for our lives or hiding. Some of the areas could also have been compressed quite a bit without losing much.
- The game is often a stealth game, but you won’t be doing too many stealth kills due to ammo restrictions and armour, and it’s easiest not to voluntarily get into combat, particularly in earlier chapters when abilities are weaker. Companions are useless at believably keeping out of sight: They will hide in the open, climb over barriers towards enemies, and chat while stealthing near enemies. Fortunately none of that attracts any notice. Enemies do change their behaviour when on notice, and this will likely mean that they will come to your vicinity (determined telepathically in some instances?) and move on a new and inconvenient patrol.
- There’s naturally going to be a certain level of suspension of belief needed, because this is a game with sections can be puzzled through thanks to conveniently placed objects and routes, relatively short and sparse grass/weeds is (as usual) perfect for concealment, there’s psychic ability, and there’s not an ecological basis (or even anything like conservation of matter) in the ridiculous quantities of rats there are, but this is weirder and far less grounded than the first game, there’s at least one area (rats nest on the island) where there’s probably way too many skeletons for the location, there’s a sequence where I’m pretty sure you should have needed more than 8 people to be unnoticeable in disguise, and most of the sprints require things to occur improbably. 7/10
- Buckshot Roulette: An unpleasant little post-Inscryption game about playing Russian Roulette using a shotgun and a variable number of shells and blanks, with some objects each round that help stack the odds in your favour. I’m amazed that it didn’t receive an 18+ rating here, given that a core mechanic is shooting yourself in the head (and there are multiple achievements for successfully doing so), but I guess that the wowsers reserve that sort of rating for more enjoyable activities. Maybe there’s more fun to be had with multiple players. 6.5/10 for brevity.
- Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy: Now this, I enjoyed a lot more than Requiem. It’s a prequel featuring Sophia, a secondary character introduced there, which is definitely set in the same universe, but for this they decided that they wanted it to be more Tomb Raider than the first two games, and it’s even more removed from grounded reality overall than Requiem was from Innocence. The game has a higher focus on combat, and those sections are separated out from the stealth/sprint sections. You won’t be doing too many stealth kills other than a few ambushes to initiate a fight. Main gripes for this one are that the overwriting reappears noticeably towards the end, the motivations and actions of the Viper don’t really work for me, that Requiem does not set this up satisfactorily because of what Sophia did and didn’t say/do (yes, there’s a handwave), and above all I loathed something a character choice done in late game (leaving Leni to suffer, and not going back to at least check on/sit with/bury her once Asterion was cleared). 8+/10
- Neon Abyss 2: A roguelite shooter that does not improve on its predecessor nearly enough to make it feel more than a Neon Abyss 1.5, and I feel that NA1 might have been rather more enjoyable. This story is window dressing. Its unlockable side activities are mostly tedious filler. Its screen is frequently hard to read, both from weapon spam, and when there’s a gigantic lingering pop-up that covers much of the screen after you pick up an item. It has a bunch of wackiness and combinations, and is mindless enough fun, but it’s all just rather hollow. Currently “complete” in terms of achievements, but who knows how long that will last with only one character used, and perhaps a quarter of the unlocks still available. 7/10
- Anno Mutationem: AM is a bit of a mess. Its world feels nicely cyberpunk, and its combat is reasonable, though enemies can be spongy. The gameplay, on the other hand, is a melange, and takes quite a while to get past the fetch and scan quests, chatting, and bartending minigame to the main game, which has some of the grammar of a metroidvania but isn’t really. At that point you will be moving between 2d combat rooms and 2.5d navigation rooms, unlocking a bunch of shortcuts which you mostly won’t be using, travelling excessively through corridors, walking slowly from time to time to deal with plot, and unlocking abilities which you’ll need going forward, but won’t really be revisiting previous areas. You won’t have enough resources to unlock everything (though there is an NG+ mode), and unless you are good, you’ll be spending a fair amount on healing items rather than equipment. A bug incorrectly gave me a number of achievements, and the time played also stopped being measured at some point. 7.5/10
- Echo Weaver: A rather clever timeloop metroidbrainia (max 13 minutes) with some fair challenges on your way to discovering its secrets. Combat is very limited and skippable, there are no boss fights, and the time pressure becomes less of an issue as you progress - essentially treat each loop as a limited expedition. There’s a few things I didn’t ‘discover, and a number of others (including various “races”) where the time crunch was too much, but the main-line quest is certainly very doable, with only a couple of rather hard platforming challenges (which get significantly easier with discoveries). 9/10
- Shelldiver: This is in absolutely no way a good game or even a proper challenge, but it is a cute second screen numbers-go-up one that scratches that terrible Skinner Box itch. You take your submarine to shoot jellyfish, mine resources, trade in the jellyfish for shells, and improve your abilities to be able to shoot and trade more jellyfish and mine more resources. 7/10
- The Séance of Blake Manor: A pretty good detective game, though occasionally finding the necessary clue that is blocking progress can be a bit of an irritant when you already know what you need to ask/accuse from other clues/context. Time pressures are really only significant for the first two hours. When I went back to finish up much of what I had missed, the 44 minutes my oldest save had left before point of no return let me save 8 people and complete another mystery with time to spare. 8.5/10
- Chromagun: A psychotic commentator running an experiment as a frame for a puzzle game was likely well and truly tired at its release in 2016 given that Portal 2 was out half a decade before it. The puzzles are reasonably good overall, as you manoeuvre coloured balls onto sensors by painting walls and floors a matching hue. Its biggest design flaw is that some levels chunk unrelated puzzles, which results in extra work if you die at a later stage, but other issues are also ones generally avoided by Portal: The difficulty is a little lumpy so some later levels can be quite a bit easier than some earlier ones; there’s no verticality, so levels can be a bit spread out and opaque; and the physics of a late-game mechanic seem a little random. 8/10 (Steamgifts win)