Tordah

GB needs everyone together in a studio again for spontaneous group antics. Streaming from home is fine, but it loses a lot of what made GB feel unique in the first place. Remember mailbags?

Also, make Quick Looks great again! There are tons of interesting (indie) games coming out almost every week and over the years GB is paying less and less attention to them. It feels like the only the time they cover a game now is if it's a known and beloved series to one of the duders, or it becomes a big enough thing that they *have* to look at it.

I think there is still a lot potential for GB. Jeff B and Danny are great additions to the crew, so I'm remaining optimistic.

I've actually played all 5 games from this developer (Adventure Islands), and they're all quite enjoyable bite-sized games.

Tiny Dangerous Dungeons - Probably the least interesting one for me. It's not bad, but maybe a bit too "tiny" for what I want out of this type of game.

Super Dangerous Dungeons - Solid, fun platformer with unique and distinct hazards in every dungeon "biome".

Duke Dashington - Graphically and thematically very similar to Super Dangerous Dungeons, but very different gameplay gimmick. Every room/level you have 10 secs to beat before dying. Very fun and satisfying to master. Probably my favourite of the bunch.

Total Party Kill - Imagine The Lost Vikings except only one out of your three characters can ever make it to the exit. Some pretty clever puzzle designs here based on that singular gameplay conceit.

Heart Star - Another clever (and very cute) puzzle game based on a singular gameplay gimmick. Reminds me of something else but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

Giant BoomerCast, go!

Wow, definitely the end of an era. Like so many others here I've followed these duders for over a decade now, and it's very hard for me to imagine Giant Bomb without Vinny, Brad & Alex. In a weird way it feels like losing a bunch of close friends.

Thanks for all the countless hours of entertainment and insight.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 1 & 2 both have very low Metacritic scores (55 and 52), but I had a good time with them.

Dead Effect (59) is another great B-game if you like linear FPS games with zombies in space.

I was also surprised to see both Puzzle Agent games didn't fare too well on Metacritic. I loved that series.

Nice blog idea. I've been down the synthwave rabbit hole myself since I first played Hotline Miami and fell in love with the soundtrack and garish aesthetics. I knew there were a couple of these neon tinted arcade racers on Steam, but not this many.

I played Slipstream recently and had great fun with it. It's very arcade-y and simplistic and I dig the deliberately retro and pixelated graphics. My only minor nitpick is that I wish the individual songs on the soundtrack were tied to a specific track to give them more of a unique identity.

Neon Drive just looks awesome and was pretty fun to try and master. It's kinda annoying though that some sections are rhythm-based and some are absolutely not, even within the same track. I get that they want to mix up the perspective (cause it looks damn cool when it happens), but I wish they stuck with either one of the alternatives.

OutDrive is just a boring endless runner that gets old after about 10 minutes.

Interesting list. I've played a couple of them; Fran Bow, Stasis, Little Inferno and some of the Wadjet Eye games (all of the Blackwell series) and liked all of those a lot.

I recognize a couple of titles there that are already sitting in my Steam library so I should probably check those out.

As for recommending something myself I'm gonna drop Nevermind here. I've heard absolutely nobody talk about this game, which is a damn shame. From a gameplay-perspective it's mostly a walking sim with the occasional puzzle-solving, but the bizarre environments and atmosphere feel really fresh and well-made. Everything makes sense from a narrative perspective too, but I can't really go into that without spoiling the experience.

I'm currently playing through Doom 3: BFG Edition on Steam and I've been having a pretty good time with it. I remember the flashlight change they did for this version of the game being a polarizing topic of discussion at the time, but I'm all for it. The atmosphere is really great, and the controls just "feel" really good, even if the shooting doesn't always feel as impactful as one would hope in a id Software game.

Back when the game first came out I remember the horror aspect really turning me off, and I never played it for more than an hour or so. However, revisiting it now I just don't find it scary or stressful at all anymore, so I'm enjoying it a lot more. If anything, I'm finding the monsters jumping out of a vent or spawning behind you constantly to be more annoying and predictable than scary.

About half of my friends list is people I know personally through work, school, or elsewhere. The rest is people I've added because we share some mutual interests, like Giant Bomb folks and achievement hunters, or we've played a game or two online and they seem like cool dudes.

Gone Home + Soundtrack

GLHB!