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Keeping up with the "Clear out my backlog" I wrapped up The Ascent on PC

What got me into this game was the development team consisting of some artist that I know of and so I followed development till release. If you're into that stuff, check out the GDC talk here.

Graphics: 8/10 I put this as the reason why it got me, not gonna lie about it. For the type of game and knowing the size of the team, it's amazing.
Audio: 5/10 A lot of voiced dialog, so that helped. Music gets very repetitive.. like fast, I turned it off after 2 hours.
Story: 5/10 No clue what was going on in detail, it was just go here, kill that type of thing. I am sure there was some shady corpo nonsense since it's cyberpunk adjacent.
Controls: 8/10 Typical dual stick shooter stuff. Some bugs in the sticks if you spin around really fast.
Gameplay: 7/10 I am a sucker for games where you grind and stat build. But should be a 5/10.

There are some VERY questionable boss fights in this game. They range from stupid easy to outright frustratingly hard for no reason. The last "boss" was a joke, just run around a room and flick switches while trying to not die. The balance is not that great on these things and this is where it shows that it's a small team. The basic run around and shoot stuff is cool, but the mechanics and the gameplay are where it suffers. Also why in the hell do you have weapon skins when the weapons are so damn small and the world is so damn dark? The systems were kinda hard to grasp for me to the point where I just went for "number go up good" for everything. Enemies spawning right on you when you're in cover drove me nuts.

This game would be more fun with friends for sure. It goes on sale often, so get it then.

Lamont said:

Keeping up with the "Clear out my backlog" I wrapped up The Ascent on PC

What got me into this game was the development team consisting of some artist that I know of and so I followed development till release. If you're into that stuff, check out the GDC talk here.

Graphics: 8/10 I put this as the reason why it got me, not gonna lie about it. For the type of game and knowing the size of the team, it's amazing.
Audio: 5/10 A lot of voiced dialog, so that helped. Music gets very repetitive.. like fast, I turned it off after 2 hours.
Story: 5/10 No clue what was going on in detail, it was just go here, kill that type of thing. I am sure there was some shady corpo nonsense since it's cyberpunk adjacent.
Controls: 8/10 Typical dual stick shooter stuff. Some bugs in the sticks if you spin around really fast.
Gameplay: 7/10 I am a sucker for games where you grind and stat build. But should be a 5/10.

There are some VERY questionable boss fights in this game. They range from stupid easy to outright frustratingly hard for no reason. The last "boss" was a joke, just run around a room and flick switches while trying to not die. The balance is not that great on these things and this is where it shows that it's a small team. The basic run around and shoot stuff is cool, but the mechanics and the gameplay are where it suffers. Also why in the hell do you have weapon skins when the weapons are so damn small and the world is so damn dark? The systems were kinda hard to grasp for me to the point where I just went for "number go up good" for everything. Enemies spawning right on you when you're in cover drove me nuts.

This game would be more fun with friends for sure. It goes on sale often, so get it then.

Click to expand...

I liked it too... like a Cyberpunkish Diablo. Agree with your points. The DLC mission wasn't worth the money.

Before reading the reviews online I had no idea how a little girl riding on the back of a character in a FPS was gonna work. Well, the game is not really an FPS and the little girl is not really a girl (sorry for spoilers). On the main, I found Pragmata enjoyable, even with its esoteric name. Honestly, the name smacked of the Japanese kind where they just throw some English words together just to elicit an emotional response from a potential buyer: Killing Timeless Engine, Tactics Ogre, Undiscovering Gaelic Wanderer... whatever. Just get to the filling of this cream puff!

And boom, Pragmata hooks you into a desperate struggle for survival on earth's moon with a slick intro that side hustles as a movement tutorial. Neat. The pace is slow at first but welcome: giving you enough time to enjoy the graphics: top notch. The attention to detail is nice, right down to the scratches on your visor that refract light at the right angles. Although the main path felt like rails at times, it's mostly an open game. Exploring is rewarded with stuff to upgrade your equipment, power-ups, and your little companion. SPOILER: she's an android, okay? If you haven't figured it out yet I can't help you out of your bubble. But it's clear from the jump she's not just a human girl. She's got android powers and that's half the game.

See the lunar base went off-line sometime before your arrival. Surprise, that's a bad thing. And, with the advent of micofiliment nanotech that can build anything on the fly, it's about to be inundated with things that don't like you. I take that back: they actually are built to keep the base in lockdown. You're just the virus the machines are driven to eliminate. But why? That's the story, so I won't spoil it here.

(Hold on, I'm getting to little girl's powers.) These robot things come at you with varying degrees of hostility and ability. The game quickly goes from "Oh, I know how to handle these turds" to "What the hell just grabbed me?!" But you learn new skills along the way to put down anything that opposes your lunar walk. The enemies are nicely varied while the base presents its own challenges (like laser fencing). When the game throws these things together the difficulty ramps up considerably. Lastly, in your quest to get to the source of the issue (there's always a source of the issue) you'll be amply rewarded for exploration... even returning to areas you once explored for goodies when the latest upgrade makes a way.

So, yeah, those upgrades. They come in two main flavors: your weapons and the little girl. Weapons are self explanatory: more upgrades = more pew pew! But the little girl is where the game separates from its peers. Her powers not only help you explore the base but also assist in laying the wood to your robot assassins. She can "hack" mechanical killers and leave them vulnerable to your weapons, for example. With other upgrades hacking causes them to overheat, allowing for a cinematic power strike that eliminates all but the stongest foes. I won't spoil the other things. The variety here gives way to character "builds" that ensure a somewhat unique experience the second or third time through. Nice.

All in all I liked this game. Its AAA quality shines. Graphics are awesome. Movement is tight with an XBox controller connected through Bluetooth. Sound is great on my PC headphones. And it runs like a dream on my GTX 4090. I did fell like it DID bog down somewhat toward the end: Like shit was just thrown at you to make it more difficult. That's okay, I get it. It's a common trope of PC games with a great story: bad guy almost gets you... until he don't [sic].

If you like story-driven FPSs with some RPG mechanics this game surely won't disappoint.

Story: 95%
Graphics: 95%
Sound: 90%
Robot thingies with that red stuff on them: They can go to hell! (if you know you know)
Control: 95%

Yeah, this is a solid 93%+ game. An A on my list. I probably won't playthrough it for a second time but the first time was quite a ride! I enjoyed it very much.

Crimson Diamond:

It's a game the hearkens back to the Colonel's Bequest, a Sierra typing-parser adventure game. Colonel's Bequest is a murder mystery made by Sierra in 1989 and is one of their last examples of the EGA text-parser adventures. Fantastic game. Probably should play and review that one later.

Instead of being Laura Bow, you're Nancy Maple - the Canadian Laura Bow. You're a mineralogist student who's being sent to the small Canadian town of Crimson to see if it's true that they have diamonds there. You stay in a lodge that's been closed for over a decade with a fellow traveller that you meet, Kimi; and another mineralogist named Albert. In addition to these travelers, there are:

Evan - the lodge owner
Nessa - Evan's sister
Corvus - Nessa's lawyer
Margot - Evan's live-in girlfriend
Jack - the lodge's groundskeeper
Nathan - one of the local native Indians

Soon after, you discover that everyone seems to have their own agenda and motives and it becomes quite clear that the ranking bad guys are Nessa and Corvus. It seems that Nessa's trying to get ownership of the lodge and land so that she can get all the diamonds that are supposedly there.

Overall, I say the game is just... Okay. There was a lot of hype around it being the first of its kind being released in a while. Once the hype fades though, you're left with a bewildering game. First off, there's only a couple of murders in the game (one of which may or may not happen depending on what you do). Second, the game 'feels' off a little. Nancy's walking animation isn't smooth. It's jerky. This may seem like a trite complaint, but when you're used to the smooth animations of the Sierra games since back in the 80s (on your 486 computer no less), it's a glaring issue.

Third, the game is a text parser but also features a mouse interface for walking only. It's a weird hybrid. I appreciate the path-finding in this game (earlier EGA SCI games that used the mouse were horrible for this - IYKYK), but I almost wish it continued and went all the way with the mouse interface. Also - you can't use the word "use" in this game. Very frustrating. Instead of "use icepick", for example, you have to correctly guess the verb that the developer wants you to use to interact with something with the icepick. It's not always obvious which word is the "trigger" for an action to happen.

The music is pretty good. The composer used a real MT-32 to make the music, which was the high-end option of Sierra games back in the day. If you've ever had one you'll instantly recognize it. However... And I hate to be petty... The composer just kept it to the standard default patch bank of the unit. As far as I can tell, it doesn't use any custom sounds. This is another issue because some of the tracks have some odd instrument choices. Why am I calling this out? Because there's an entire community built around this kind of thing with patches, utilities, etc. to use. Hell - even I could have shown the guy how to load custom MT-32 stuff. It's not hard, and it opens you up to a vast expanse of sounds for the taking. I appreciate the gesture, but it was clearly made by someone who isn't part of the retro adventure community.

Story is just okay. There's a little bit of 'woke' in there. I won't spoil it because part of the game is figuring out who's who and what's what so that you get the good ending.

Graphics are great. Laura Bow had fantastic use of the limit 16-color EGA palette and Crimson Diamond does too. Great use of dithering to create shadows, highlights, etc. It all pops. So well done on this front.

Overall, it's a decent first effort. The 'woke' elements put me off of the game a little (I'll put some of it down below so that you that you can click and see it), so I don't know that I'll support any future efforts.


In the 'good' ending, Evan gives the lodge and land 'back' to Nathan and his native Indian family. Because according to the game, it's clearly the 'moral' thing to do. There's also a bit of 'white people stole this land from us' vibe going on here.

Gears of War E-Day, aka. "Gears of War: Not That Bridge Again"​

PC via Gamepass.

E-Day is the prequel to the other games in the series and it takes place on/around when the locusts show up for the first time. This review is actually pretty simple. By this point, you've probably played a Gears game if you're reading this.

What's unique about it? It takes place in a populated city with other people around at the time. Things feel more organic since you aren't just traversing deserted husks of a place people used to occupy. There are lots of neat lighting effects and brighter colors and more diverse terrain. Beyond that, it's mostly still Gears. You're shooting locusts in the same style of cover combat from the other games in the series.

Graphics: As of the Fall of 2026, E-Day is up there with one of the best looking games I've seen to date. The lighting effects and details are as good as they come. But there are definite traversal hitches here and there. Lowering settings doesn't seem to affect that, although disabling "RTX Mega Geometry" makes things far more tolerable. It only affected my fps 10-15%, but it added constant stutters and hitching. I found 4090 was able to consistently stay above 100fps, but the occasional hitching when entering new areas remained no matter what I tried. There are plenty of games that do a worse job, but there are plenty that do a better job, too.

Gameplay: It's Gears. They randomly added a jump button for some reason. I'm not sure it adds much (and it only selectively works), but it's there. The reload UI also moved for some odd reason. Anybody used to the older games will probably wonder why this was done. Weapons now have upgrades that you can swap out via supply caches located in 1-2 spots per level. They also let you swap back to your preferred weapons of choice, too. You find weapons upgrades in hard cases scattered around the world. Beyond that, it's the same Gears gameplay you've come to expect. Combat feels good and the games does a good job of making battles feel more urgent. Early sections offer a decent challenge, but once you start finding better equipment that dissipates. The newer weapons are useful and appreciated even if the Longshot is still OP. Larger enemies (reavers, frogs, and balloons) seem to kill you super quickly while you can mostly just stand around a pick off normal locusts without much fear. The setting at least makes the various cover barriers feel less contrived, though.

Level design: This is the game's biggest weakness. Some levels are traditional linear Gears levels. Some are open world'ish like in Gears 5. You keep going back to the same areas over and over. You keep backtracking endlessly to the same downtown sections. You go back and forth across the large Kolona spanning bridge on 4 separate occasions. Even when you go someplace new, those missions tend to be shorter. You finally make it out of downtown and hit a European-looking part of Kolona only to be ushered right back to downtown again. It gets old. Especially after the huge sweeping maps that covered multiple continents in Gears 5. It makes E-Day feel rushed and half-hearted. They show Kolona as a large city, but you'd swear it's not after backtracking the same downtown area 3 different times. As you explore, you also start to realize that the game is mostly empty, too. You might be scavenging for weapon upgrades and collectables, but otherwise only about 1/2 of the maps are occupied by anything worthwhile. Most shootouts are in specific, concentrated spots and the rest of the map is just kinda there. Why not spread things out? Give us things to look at? Easter eggs? Even making the battles use more of the maps would be nice.

Story/Writing: The writing is all over the place. One minute they're trying to evoke real emotions with heavy conversations, and the next minute Marcus is speaking like poor man's Duke Nukem. They also sprinkle military slang throughout that someone clearly researched for all of 5 minutes. Stuff like FUBAR and FNG that would have seemed clever and authentic 40 years ago. It's cringey and tacked on. Of the new characters, Mags (the lesbian that seems to be getting random attention) is by far the better of the two. The other, Reyes the Rookie, has a really shaky voice actor who either wasn't given scene context or just doesn't have any range. The writing is good one minute and awful the next. Next to the rehashing of maps, it's one of the game's bigger weaknesses.

So, the game seems at least decent, right? Yeah, it is. The graphics are great, the shootouts are fun (although uneven), and it's more Gears. I feel like it's the worst main entry in the series but it still isn't bad. It's an okay game that suffers from reusing the same half-empty maps over and over, goofy writing/acting, and hitching issues on the PC. That's after 4 and 5, which I feel like were some of the better entries in the series.

It's also worth noting that the game only covers a relatively small portion of the whole "E-Day" event. The game ends with very little being resolved and it only covers 1 day in a single city. It's clearly intended to be one entry in a series of potential prequels. I'm not a fan of that at all, and it makes the game feel even smaller and less significant.

C

Mouse pi.
Just simple fun. Enough story to be interesting, but not important enough to need.

Multiple guns are pretty useless.

I think they could have done more with the baseball mini game.

Lots of underdeveloped mechanics like the store, newspapers, and collectibles.

I still enjoyed playing it and got my money's worth.