Spooky Games I Played in October - 2025 Edition

 So, I started my October gaming late.  A big part of that is I was trying to get Tomb Raider working and then I was like "well I should put off on doing any games I'll want to write about so I can fill in my backlog of drafts".  I have so many drafts, y'all,  And then I spent a while playing Fluidity, which is a game some of you may know for being one of the premiere WiiWare games and those of you who do know will probably know how awful that game gets.  So my plan to do a bunch of spooky games in October didn't pan out this year.  I need better planning, clearly, and also to not play a game like Fluidity which is, y'know.  Special.

I figured I'd catalog my Halloween games in one blog post, I think that's the thing that makes the most sense here.  Maybe (probably) I'll regret not writing about some of these games individually and maybe that will encourage me to write more in-depth pieces about some of them, I don't know.  I already know the first game on this list is something I think I'd like to write about in more detail down the line but who knows!  I just thought it'd be fun to have them all collected together like this since it's something of a "Halloween games marathon" of sorts.  Here we go!

Game 1: DREDGE

Starting off this Halloween season REAL strong, we have Dredge.  An incredibly unique little spooky game, Dredge is one of the best Lovecraft-inspired games of all time.  While Dredge is scary at times, I think the thing it really nails about the tone it's going for is how unsettling Eldritch horror typically is.  There's just this constant subtle wrongness to the world in Dredge, even as nothing is really happening, as you're just sailing around the islands of this dark sea you're hit with the weirdness.  You'll encounter strangers who want you to fish for them so they can consume the organs of the fish raw or fish up an abomination that is mutated in a way that makes it upsetting or unnerving.

Dredge is a fishing RPG that takes place primarily out on the open sea.  You play as a fisherman who has recently crashed into a mysterious little island in the sea.  The island, named Greater Marrow, has a small New England-esque town situated on it (also selling the Eldritch vibes) and has offered to take you in and give you a new boat to replace your crashed vessel.  In exchange, you will replace their local fisherman, a guy who has very recently disappeared under unknown circumstances leaving the town without food or income.  It becomes quickly apparent though that not everything is as it seems.  At night a mysterious fog rolls in, blanketing the entire sea.  A fog so thick, so intense, that normal light does little to peak through it.  Furthermore, this fog preys on your anxiety, on your fears.  As you get more stressed, more isolated, more sleep deprived, the fog causes supernatural occurrences to begin.  

Eventually you will meet a mysterious Collector with a book, a Collector who tasks you with scouring across the ocean to find lost treasures of unknown significance.  This will bring the Fisherman to many different locations across the ocean, solving many people's issues.  Along the way the Fisherman will battle unknowable monsters from the deep, gaining powers and upgrading his ship to better survive the horrors lurking in the depths.  And slowly he will piece together the central mysteries of the dark ocean he sails: what has happened to anger the ocean so?  Who is the mysterious Collector?  Why does he desire these artifacts that were scattered across the ocean?  The answers to these questions are actually amazing, like, I can't and don't at this time want to talk about the twist in Dredge because this is supposed to be a quick and easy casual little review but the story is great and the twist is so well done.

A thing I adore about Dredge is how it handles its horror.  Dredge, as I've mentioned, goes more for unnerving than trying to scare you.  It's a very atmospheric horror, one that treats the horror as existing just over the horizon, waiting for you to go just insane enough before it attacks.  One of my favorite things it does is early on when you're not out on the open ocean, rocks will just appear out of the fog that do not exist in the day time.  It took me a long time to even realize that this is what it was doing and it's such a cool mechanic, the idea that you're so stressed and sleep deprived that the sea itself seems different.  Around the Marrow islands in the center of the map too there is a sea monster that roams about, but it's never clear if it's even really there.  It, and a lot of the sea monsters in this game actually, appear to immediately disappear after they've attacked the ship.  I swear, I even saw another ship, turn into one of the monsters.

It's also just a perfect love letter to old sailing stories because of this.  It fully invokes the tall tales you'll hear sailors tell, tales of islands that aren't there, storms that appear and disappear in a blink of an eye, and monsters that seem to vanish immediately.  Very literally the sea, angry for some unknown reason, is playing tricks on you, trying to make you feel unwelcome, and one of its tactics is to drive you crazy.  And the way it combines these classical sea monsters, these absurd nightmare creatures from the depths, with a Lovecraftian flair is just wonderful.  It's an incredibly effective way to do a fishing horror game, I'm a huge fan of its atmosphere and its tone.

I also love the world in Dredge.  Dredge takes place across multiple island chains in this vast patch of ocean, each of which contains one of the treasures that the collector is seeking, and each area is entirely different.  And I don't mean in the way that most video game areas are different, I mean that they do not feel like they belong together.  They all seem to exist within their own time periods, their own universes almost, feeling sometimes as if they're separated by centuries if not millennia.  Like the sea itself is pulling them all here, forcing them to converge at this specific point in time, imprisoning them all here for their transgressions against it.  I know this isn't literally what's happening, but it just feels so strongly like all these pieces in this sea are wrong somehow.  It adds so well to the unsettling tone.  God, I loved this game, maybe I should write about it more in depth.  9.2/10

Game 2: Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment

I'm surprised I've kept up with Shovel Knight like this, to be honest.  I like Shovel Knight, mind, I think it's a fine video game, but I don't love it.  I have found myself kind of gravitating away from "retro revival" stuff as I've gotten older, what once seemed like a fun way to revive old styles of video gaming now seems exhausting to me.  It feels like the indie space, once so rife with creativity, is now oversaturated with people who only want to make games to relive their own nostalgia.  And I've grown critical and very cynical of retro gaming as a result.  It also doesn't help that I myself have no nostalgia for NES games and most of my love for NES games comes from other people's nostalgia so I kind of associate games like Shovel Knight with "trying to relive other people's nostalgia" for me.  But I have kept at it, I liked Shovel Knight and I liked Plague of Shadows more, I think they're both very solid video games and I figured, since I own all the DLC anyways as I purchased Shovel Knight forever ago, why not just keep the ball rolling.  Man am I glad I did, because, no joke, Specter of Torment is one of the best sidescrollers I've ever played.

Specter of Torment serves as a prequel to the events of Shovel Knight.  You, as Specter Knight, are tasked by the Enchantress, the main villain of Shovel Knight, to recruit her an army for her plans of global domination.  This requires you to go kick down the doors of the 7 other main Knights from the best game of Shovel Knight and force them to join the Enchantress' army through, you guessed it, physical violence.  Along the way you will uncover the backstory of Specter Knight, a surprisingly touching and tragic story of brotherhood and the damning force of arrogance wrapped up in the trappings of Shovel Knight.  I was actually very impressed by the story in this game, not because it's like one of the greatest in gaming but because it's such a different place to take Shovel Knight which still fits within the universe.  It's way more dark and macabre, fitting nicely with the character in question.

I want to first highlight the soundtrack of Specter of Torment because it has the most extensive work done to it.  The other Shovel Knight campaigns all have their own unique soundtracks to them, don't get me wrong, but in the other instances it feels more like "remixes", like you're taking the base sounds and just changing them up a bit to fit the new character's journey.  Specter Knight gets entirely new compositions, often times setting new tones and giving new context to the levels.  I really enjoy in particular how, contrasting Specter Knight's darkness, the themes seem somewhat brighter and happier across the board.  Whereas in the other campaigns, the Knights of the Order of No Quarter were were the beasts that the heroic Shovel Knight or the duplicitous Plague Knight were slaying.  But the music in Specter of Torment really sells this idea that you are the thing that's wrong here, that these people are just living their lives normally and you, the phantom lapdog of the dark sorcerer, are invading these people's lives to corrupt them.

The music is not the only thing that has changed in Specter of Torment, however.  Yacht Club Games has done just an insane amount of work on Specter of Torment, tbh, it's insane they initially released this as a free DLC.  It feels like an entirely new game.  At least half the bosses have entirely new stage designs and those that don't have very reinterpreted stages.  This is, partially, due to the vast different in Specter Knight's movement but it again sells this sort of theme permeating the game.  This idea that the world was different, more natural, and you are this corrupting influence on it.  The phantom that haunts this world and turns it dark.  It's really funny how much weight and pathos they've given Specter Knight, the second boss in the game.

Specter Knight's movement is also incredible.  It's such a unique gameplay style, I've never played a game that functions quite like Specter of Torment.  Specter Knight is very aerial, his kit is much stronger in the air than it is one the ground, and a giant part of this is his very unique aerial attack.  When he's in the air, he immediately targets enemies and interactable objects close to him and will slice through that targeted thing at an angle.  This is the primary platforming challenge in this game, you will have extended sequences of objects you will have to slice through at specific angles to progress and/or obtain hidden treasures.  Furthermore, he has a wall run and wall jump, allowing ol' Specty a lot of interesting potential for obstacles.  This movement, this incredibly unique gameplay, is by far the reason why Specter of Torment fully clicked for me as much as it did.  I love how satisfying this feels to play, it's so good.  8.7/10

Game 3: Night in the Woods

Three absolute bangers in a row, you love to see it.  Night in the Woods is a game I've seen before, several years ago I saw at least a couple stream playthroughs of it, but it's been on my "to-play" list for like half a decade now myself.  It's like one of THE indie games, it's honestly surprising to me that it doesn't make it on more "greatest games of all time" lists given how beloved it is.  It's definitely one of the best examples of the narrative driven indie adventure game genre, a genre that is admittedly oversaturated but Night in the Woods stands out.  It's also such a perfect October game, it's not only literally about October but it has the perfect vibes for the season too.  Let's jump into it.

Night in the Woods exists in a world filled with anthropomorphic animals instead of people.  You play as Mae Borowski, a 20 year old woman who has returned to her hometown of Possum Springs after very recently dropping out of college.  Mae is deeply depressed and retreats whenever anyone asks her personal details about this decision.  Very quickly she reignites her friendships with her two childhood best friends; Gregg, a jovial queer man who is in the process of saving up to leave town with his boyfriend Angus, and Bea, a cynical young woman who has had to take up responsibility for her family's livelihood after the death of her mother and her father having a mental breakdown.  Mae, at first, spends most of her days exploring around town, talking to random strangers, forming friendships with locals and choosing to hang out with either Gregg or Bea.  But not too long into her return, she discovers that all is not as it seems in Possum Springs.  A series of bizarre dreams and mysterious headaches consume her, she feels like she is being called to by some entity from beyond the mortal plane, and as it goes on, she must get down to the bottom of the conspiracy that is at the center of Possum Springs.

I want to first highlight how well Night in the Woods captures the small town in Autumn feel.  Possum Springs is the kind of town that especially exists in the Applachia region (which I believe is where Possum Springs is actually located).  It was once a booming mining town but then the mine shut down and it's now slowly becoming a ghost town as more and more citizens vacate it.  The town toes that line of being both beautiful and dead, the ground is covered in leaves, animals roam freely, it feels as though people are more and more fighting with nature instead of coexisting with it, the town is being reclaimed.  Beautiful autumnal scenery surrounds boarded up storefronts and decrepit apartment buildings, it's an all-too-familiar sight for people who grew up in small towns.  It's such a specific but meaningful vibe, I adore it.  Like the world is as beautiful as it is cruel.

Small town decay is like the central theme of this game as well.  I don't want to go into it too much, I might write about Night in the Woods separately (kinda regret not doing a gaming diary about it, alas), but everything in the game is about this town dying.  How Mae interacts with her friends, her family, the people who live in the town, it's all related to a town trying very hard to not die in the face of an impending death.  People often repeat a lot of similar statements, how it used to be that getting a job was supposed to provide for your family but now you can have two people working full time and still be in danger of losing the house.  It's depressing.  Even the horror of this game is tied back to small town decay, it's a truly well executed theme and it's the primary reason why I want to write an individual thing about Night in the Woods.  Stay tuned for that, maybe.

I also really like how well this game captures the culture shock you have returning to your hometown and trying to just pick up where your life left off.  Mae was only gone a year but the town she returns to is wildly different from the one she left.  Places that she loved have closed or are closing, people have skipped town, those who stay are those who are stuck here.  It feels like she's entering a new universe entirely.  And it's especially a problem as Mae tries to just pick up where she left off with friends who have changed.  Mae is honestly kind of the bad guy in her friends' stories at points, they are trying very hard to be adults and Mae comes back in and they begin behaving like children.  It's like that thing where like, you can be the most confident person out in your life but as soon as you go home you're still how you were under your parents' roof.  Mae being back causes her friends to fall back into old patterns and habits and gah.  It's so good.  Definitely need to write about this.

There's so much more I would like to talk about with it but I do kind of just want to write a full thing maybe and I don't want this blurb to be too long so I'll leave it here.  I do have my problems with Night in the Woods mind, there are sequences that I have trouble relating to because I'm not in my early 20s and depressed (I'm in my early 30s and depressed instead).  These characters wax philosophical about existentialism a lot and I'm just like "you're still a child, stop acting like you know things".  And I would be lying if I said the gameplay was particularly interesting, the narrative clearly came first here and the gameplay is like fine, it's just some light platforming to serve the narrative in various places.  But I did really enjoy this game, it is just barely being kept off my top ten list and I would love to come back to it someday to explore the other routes available in it.  8.9/10

Game 4: Until Dawn

Would you look at that, an actual horror game for October.  I guess Dredge was a horror game too but like, this is more designed to be "scary" than "unnerving" or "atmospheric".  Low key, I wanted to get more of these kinds of games this year but I spent half the month playing Fluidity before I decided I wanted to do a spooky games marathon.  I had like Alien: Isolation and Resident Evil: Code Veronica queued up on my to-do list and now it doesn't look like I'll have time to get to either them, depressing.  There is always next year though!  Anyways, unless I find more time, Until Dawn looks like it's going to be THE horror game for this year.  Let's get into it.

Until Dawn takes place in a isolated mansion deep in the Canadian Rockies.  The game starts with a prologue where you are at an annual party in this mansion and a prank goes very wrong, causing two of the girls to wander out into the forest and disappear.  One year later, the group reunites on the anniversary of the girls' disappearance, trying to keep on with their annual tradition for the sake of the girls' brother who clearly needs this.  However, almost immediately strange happenings start occurring.  The power is blown out in the mansion.  The group finds themselves stalked by a psycho who knows just a bit too much about them.  And strange sounds echo throughout the forest, sounds that resemble a woman's screams.  The group will have to keep their wits about them and stay as safe as they can until the storm can break and they will be rescued.  They must survive... until dawn.

Until Dawn plays like a super big budget version of a TellTale game.  You switch between the eight members of the group throughout the game, viewing each members' perspective of certain events and having small areas you can explore while you're playing as them.  Throughout the game you will have to make decisions, some of them split second, to progress the game.  Until Dawn calls this the "Butterfly Effect" system, each choice you make will inevitably impact events far down the line.  It can be as obvious as "assaulting a guy causes the group to be more cagey around you later on" or it can be as obtuse as "not throwing a snowball at a bird later causes a character not to be caught when they're hiding from a psychopath".  It's a really interesting way to handle a horror game, building it so readily on player choice.

That being said, Until Dawn is definitely a little clumsy in this regard as well.  An unfortunate truth of basically any game that relies on player choices is that, if not done with a lot of consideration, it starts to become really obvious.  Like your outcomes matter, don't get me wrong, it's just that the game is maybe a bit more obvious about what characters are non-essential and can die early than others.  Emily, a character who has the option to die in the late game if the player is not careful, spends basically the rest of the game not saying or really doing anything, awkwardly standing in the background of cutscenes.  Matt and Jessica are two characters who can die VERY early on and because of this fact, they're just like.  Fully absent from the game from before the halfway point to literally the end game where they have one sequence together if you saved both of them and then the game goes "they both survived, I guess".  Like, it's just very uncanny that you just have characters who are either absent for long stretches for seemingly no reason or just standing in the background of shots saying nothing and not interacting with anyone.

Also speaking of uncanny, the motion capture is like.  Fine.  Sometimes it's very wonky, but for the most part these characters are perfect renders of the actors who play them.  The biggest issue is honestly Mike (played by Brett Dalton), who sometimes, no joke, looks like he has the chin from the Justice League reshoots where they have to CG Henry Cavill's lower face because he had a mustache he wasn't allowed to shave.  But the thing that makes them feel kind of iffy to me at least is actually the voicework.  The cast don't do bad jobs (except for Rami Malek, his performance is very bad, he's like a wooden board), but it is the common story of a live action actor having to voice act and not getting proper direction so they come across as little flat.  Like, all these actors have done other work and I know they're good, it just genuinely feels like a direction problem.

As a horror experience I also feel like Until Dawn is very touch and go.  It starts out really strong, while it relies very heavily on jump scares, it also does a decent job of building a nice atmosphere.  You're isolated, something is stalking you in the woods, a psycho is in control of the manor, etc.  It's all very spooky.  But as it goes on and we get more and more revelations and closer to dawn, it starts feeling a bit too actiony?  It doesn't do a great job of upkeeping its tone in the final act, it gets very fast paced very quickly once the big reveal of what's actually happening here happens.  It also feels like it takes itself too seriously, to be honest?  This entire setup is very much "fun campy slasher movie" but it feels like it wants to be more of a serious horror project.  I've seen people play the spiritual successor to this game, the Quarry, and that one honestly seems to more understand what it is.

Despite all my criticisms with Until Dawn, though, I did enjoy it well enough.  I think it's perfectly fine, a totally middle of the road video game.  There are some characters I really enjoyed, some really fun worldbuilding, some decent scares.  Peter Stromare's Dr. Hill is just fantastic, what a great mad scientist character, I can see why they wanted him specifically back for the film adaptation even if they totally reworked everything about his character.  I'm glad I played it but I'm not super passionate about it.  I guess they can't all be bangers, this Halloween marathon had so many strong games already one of them was bound to just be okay.  6.8/10

Game 5: Castlevania

This is possibly the biggest blindspot from my retro gaming era: I have only played one Castlevania.  And it was the Sega Genesis' Castlevania: Bloodlines, the way more actiony beat 'em up-esque Castlevania.  I was really into the retro gaming sphere for a while because, honestly, I'm just old enough and have been online for long enough to where that's all the YouTube gaming sphere was at one point.  A confluence of NES/SNES nostalgia, the difficulties obtaining capture cards and the ease at which emulation was becoming available to people caused a lot of early internet gaming to be based in classic video games.  Couple that with the rise of the Angry Video Game Nerd, and retro gaming was far bigger than it probably should've been given, in hindsight, it was mostly a bunch of 30 year olds waxing poetic about how games they played when they were 8 were so much better.  And with the AVGN being so popular, Castlevania would probably be the first introduction I had to older games.

Castlevania has one of the most brilliant classic gaming setups.  A near perfect basic plot structure that can be molded to a million stories.  You play as Simon Belmont, the most recent member of a long line of monster hunters called the Belmont clan.  The Belmont clan has a sacred duty to uphold: every 100 years, Dracula, the famed fictional vampire, will arise again within his massive castle in Transylvania.  Their job is to storm the castle, overcoming Dracula's forces, and defeat the man himself, putting him down for another 100 years.  It's such a good storyline, it can be told 100 times in a bunch of different ways and the Castlevania series has used it to great effect over the years in both the game series and in adaptation (the Castlevania Netflix series is a good adaptation, fight me).

Unfortunately there's just also not a lot to say about Castlevania.  This is a true blue NES game, it does a very specific thing.  You just walk through stages, you have an attack, you have items that use ammo, you have a stiff jump than you find annoying but grow accustomed to quickly.  It's totally fine, you know, it's an NES game.  It's one of the greatest games of all time but no one who didn't grow up in the 80s will be able to click with it easy.  A story as old as the end of the NES era.  I don't think I liked Castlevania that much but I do want to play more Castlevania games?  Like from where I'm at, in 2025, firmly out of my era of being obsessed with retro games, I find how basic Castlevania is somewhat endearing but mostly frustrating.  But it's also such a strong core that I imagine I'll really like the subsequent Castlevanias?  As it stands though, I just think it's fine.  6.3/10

Game 6: Year Walk

I never expected to play this game.  So, for those who don't know, the way I tend to select video games to play is that I build a curated list of games from my backlog and then use the random selection tool on Backloggery to decide what I want to play off that list.  This list is made up of a combination of important, influential, or particularly great games, games I've heard other people talk very positively on, or just games I've always wanted to play and/or have started to play and now wish to beat.  It's a list that includes both Persona 5 and Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure.  Year Walk did not initially fit into any of these categories.  I've never heard anyone talk about it as a particularly important or influential game, I had no idea what it really was myself, and while I have friends who have played Year Walk, it's not like a game that regularly comes up.  It's one of many games where I bought it in a Humble Bundle and just kind of forgot about it.  That is until I found out who made it.  Year Walk was an early game by Swedish game developer Simogo, who worked in the mobile space for a long time and would go on to create both one of the greatest rhythm games of all time, Sayonara Wild Hearts, and one of the greatest puzzle games of all time, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.  Understandably, Year Walk shot up on my list after that information.

Year Walk is loosely based on an ancient Swedish tradition titled "Arsgang", a divination ritual where, as the year turns over into the next (normally Christmas Eve or New Years', hence the translation of "Year Walk"), you walk among the trees following specific instructions and encountering all manner of supernatural beings.  In this particular instance we take control of Daniel Svensson, a young Swede who is about to undertake the year walk.  He is in love with a young woman named Stina who tells him that, once the new year comes, she will no longer be able to see him as a man has offered to propose.  Daniel opts to continue his plan to take the year walk despite her insistence not to as he now, more than ever, wants to discover his future.  He leaves Stina and returns home to rest, awakening to a version of their town cloaked in darkness, the lines between the natural and the supernatural fully blurred.  Now haunted by various entities from Swedish folklore, Daniel must endure the horrors of this wood to complete the ritual, find his future, and return home.

Year Walk has fantastic atmosphere.  It really uses its very minimalistic art style to great effect to sell the spookiness of the folk horror.  The game feels very isolating, the majority of the color palette being just white.  I don't know about y'all but like, winter environments are such a cheat code for horror for me because it's so easy to sell the isolation needed to build an atmosphere.  And because the color palette and art style is so similar looking, it immediately draws attention to any wrongness present in the world if/when it arises.  There's especially one moment in the game where you have to hunt down ghosts by freeing them from the places they died, and you do so by finding and following blood trails.  Just that little bit of red added to the monochrome of this game does a whole lot, it's very simple but very effective.  The creatures from Swedish mythology featured are also just nightmares, the way the game chooses to depict them is deeply unsettling.

This being a Simogo game, you know it has to be very clever in its design.  If you've ever seen a playthrough of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, you know what I mean, this studio are like the kings of incredibly clever puzzle design which pushes the boundaries of what can be done in a game.  They are the masters of the puzzle box game design and Year Walk really shows how early that arose.  Every single bit of this game is a piece to the grander puzzle of the walk.  There's a lot of great puzzles in this game, mind, but I want to draw attention to what I think is probably the best one I could talk about without spoiling the big twist in the story since these mini-reviews are supposed to be spoiler free.  I won't reveal the full puzzle or the solution either but there is one puzzle that breaks the fourth wall by having a necessary part be found within the reference book the player has access to for cross-referencing the folklore present in the game.

I'm also just very happy that I got to play the WiiU version of Year Walk.  I don't know how exactly the mobile and PC versions of Year Walk play, but I think the WiiU version is probably the most clever of the three.  Bizarrely, Year Walk is one of the best uses of the Gamepad I've ever experienced.  This like less than two hour horror game manages to utilize the Gamepad to be not just a map, but a notepad so you can take notes on puzzle solutions, and a reference book to the game's lore, AND an always available hint system.  Not only that, bur from what I can gather they pretty drastically changed the penultimate puzzle to better take advantage of the WiiU Gamepad.  There's a puzzle that requires you to delve deep into the WiiU's infrastructure itself.  I'd be sad if that puzzle just doesn't exist anymore because of the WiiU eshop shutting down because it's easily the best puzzle in the game.

Year Walk is great.  It's one of those games where the primary problem with it is that it's short.  Like it has all the makings of a masterpiece, it has a good atmosphere, a good story, great puzzles, clever gameplay, it's kind of a full package.  Except for that fact that it's like two hours long and is kind of hampered by that fact.  It manages to pack a lot in, of course, and a game being exceptionally short doesn't immediately mean it's worse than a longer game.  But I do think that I would just love Year Walk more if there was more to Year Walk to love.  Thankfully, that sort of happens because a lot of this game is definitely in Simogo's later masterpiece, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.  As it stands though, very good game, glad I got to play it, 8.3/10.

Game 7: Yume Nikki

And so we end off with the last spooky game for 2025.  What a game to end it off on, huh?  Once upon a time, "indie gaming" was way less of a genuine chunk of the games industry and way more of a grassroots thing.  People throwing up freeware games online that they made as a passion project, or designing an entirely new, fully original NES game.  These are games with legendary presences, many know about them but few have ever played them.  And if any game has left a lasting impact, an early indie game that truly shaped the gaming industry and who persists in the discussion to this day of "the greatest indie game of all time", it's Cave Story, of course.  But second only to Cave Story is the original RPG Maker horror game and one of the most influential games on the walking simulator genre, Yume Nikki.

To try and quantify what Yume Nikki is "about" is frankly insufficient.  Yume Nikki isn't really about anything.  There is an ending to the game, one which gives the entire thing a very sad tone and, mayhaps, can contextualize a lot of the weird imagery within Yume Nikki.  But this game is really more about what the player feels about it, what they experience.  Yume Nikki is an abstract series of images that the player experiences at their own pace and in their own way.  There are collectibles to collect, some of which can apply special effects that help you progress in other areas, the vaguest structure that gives Yume Nikki a distinctly gamelike quality.  But to focus too much on it as a game, as a literal series of objectives, is, put plainly, reductive.  Yume Nikki is a vibe, a world for the player to explore, to feel an infinite space of surrealism that is both disjointed and infinitely connected.  It's been widely regarded as a masterpiece and, frankly, I agree.  I guess spoilers for my final score, but I love Yume Nikki a whole lot.

Yume Nikki is a master class in abstract, surrealist imagery.  The world of Yume Nikki exists within the dreams of the main character, the name of the game literally means "Dream Diary", and it really effectively conveys the idea of a Dream World.  The world is mixed between order and chaos, sometimes there are recognizable structures, bits of geography that give you just enough to ground you, to give you landmarks to track your location.  But it's also just totally off the rails.  The world endlessly repeats with seemingly random geography, all the while some truly bizarre imagery appears either in the world or in the background.  I love all the weirdos in Yume Nikki, they have this like old Doodle vibe but with a hint of Japanese mythology thrown in too.  And I also love that the majority of them are not interactable.  They just don't do anything but be weird because like, this is a dream.  Why would they follow any sort of logic?  It's a very visually provocative game, wild it was made in an old version of RPG Maker.

Talking about Yume Nikki is, inevitably, going to result in what you feel while you are playing it.  Admittedly, I feel kind of insufficient to talk about this.  I love discussing video games as a medium of art, mind, I've done a few posts on this blog about video games as art by now.  But I will admit I find that easier to do with the games I've covered up until now as they are instances of how the gameplay of something creates a narrative work that could not be replicated in other mediums.  Because a lot of how I was trained on media analysis comes from narrative mediums, film, television, and books.  So I tend to focus very hard on games as narrative art.  More traditional mediums, painting, sculpture, even music to some extent are lost on me.  They're more abstract mediums, there are less rules to latch onto, less to analyze in concrete terms.  You more feel a piece.  And feeling over thinking is definitely something I struggle with.  And so Yume Nikki already kind of feels like it's laying bare a weakness of mine, a place where I'm insufficient.

I also just feel a profound sense of sadness about Yume Nikki.  Not just because of the game evoking that emotion in me through its finale and what it could mean.  Yume Nikki almost represents a place where I cannot walk anymore.  This game is primarily famous as a sandbox, a place to explore, find things at your own pace and in your own, experience its world and find meaning yourself.  I just lack the time for this kind of game anymore.  There are too many games I want to play, too many experiences I want to have, for me to spend the time trying to play Yume Nikki as it was played back in 2004.  It's very sad, Yume Nikki is a beautiful work of art, one I do adore to death, but... I can't adore it like it needs to be.  It's depressing to me.  A tragedy of irony.  I want to experience so many great works of art that I can't truly experience a great work of art.

That being said, I do think there is some manner of thematic logic to Yume Nikki.  Knowing where this game goes, you almost start to piece together all these dreams.  A lot of the main character's dreams are, if not outright nightmares, very scary still in a more surreal way.  But they're also primarily about isolation.  Either in familiar or unfamiliar settings, the main character is alone, wandering endlessly through a world that only seems to acknowledge she exists to try and contain her.  It's very poignant, there are many indie games that tackle themes of depression and isolation but a lot of them are about communicating that fact, it has weight to some sort of narrative, it's a trial for them to understand or overcome.  Yume Nikki is more about just how it feels, what the experience of having these thoughts and feelings is like, how the world looks and feels to you while you're going through this.  It holds up surprisingly well in this way.

Yume Nikki also just like makes me want to create, I can't really explain why.  Like I've had the desire to write a proper piece of narrative fiction for a long time, I have a whole doc of concepts and stories I've thought about but haven't ever wanted to delve into out of just being like "I don't know if I'm able to do this".  But in the past 24 hours, since I finished this game, I've been like actually wanting to start writing some of these.  I don't know how to start yet but Yume Nikki is really giving me some fire, hopefully I don't let it burn out like I kind of always do.

Yume Nikki is one of the best games I've played in my life.  It makes me deeply sad that I don't have the time to meet it like it wants to be met, see it like it wants to be seen.  It's a truly wonderful experience, a masterpiece in games as art.  I'm so glad I didn't let myself be intimidated by its freeform nature.  If you've never played Yume Nikki, please do, I guarantee you that one or more of your favorite games of all time owes a lot to it, just actually one of the most important video games of all time.  Even if we may not be destined to remain together, I will think about Yume Nikki for the rest of my life. 9.7/10

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Thank everyone for reading.  Hopefully next year's Halloween marathon, should there be one, brings us more spooks, more vibes, and more great games.  I really enjoyed doing a bit of a Halloween-a-thon, actually, it felt super fulfilling to finish so many games in a set period of time and give more brief reviews of them.  Far cry from my gaming diary stuff.  Here's to hopefully many more years of this blog and many more years of the Halloween-a-thon.

Rise of the Tomb Raider - A Gaming Diary

Review:

Rise of the Tomb Raider, the second in the Tomb Raider reboot series by Square-Enix and Crystal Dynamics, is truly something special.  Taking what worked about 2013's already great reboot of Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider adds a considerable amount to the formula by having a greater focus on puzzle solving and exploration.  There is just more to do, more collectibles and artifacts to find for world building or just interesting little niche observations, there's a high number of tombs to explore with fun puzzles to solve, overall this feels more like a "Tomb Raider" than its predecessor.  But it manages to keep the excellent stealth action gameplay of its predecessor completely intact, feeling like a far more refined product overall, it's a great time.  It's not a perfect game, mind, I certainly have my gripes and nitpicks with it, as you can tell from the diary, namely the story just being kind of okay.  But of this sort of micro-genre of "Uncharted-likes", I think this one is easily the best, even beating Uncharted itself.  9/10

Diary:

6/20/25

I feel bad for laughing at this game right out the gate, because this is a very serious game, like, it's meant to be taken seriously.  But the ice axes have just become such a meme to me at this point, I can't take it seriously like.  I might be misremembering because the movie came out so long ago, but I remember the Alicia Vikander Tomb Raider film made getting the ice ax a big triumphant moment because it's an icon of the first reboot Raider game.  Since then I haven't been able to take the ice axes seriously.  They're a good gameplay mechanic to have, mind, I'm not saying they're a problem.  It's nice that Lara isn't restricted by geography as much as her contemporaries in this same subgenre because she can scale up the sides of things better without needing to grab onto things all the time.  It's just not something I can take seriously anymore either.

It feels very nice to be playing reboot Tomb Raider again.  I was a pretty big fan of the first reboot Raider game (so much that I own it three times), despite being a pretty obvious Uncharted ripoff, I think it's excellent.  To be honest, I kind of think Tomb Raider 2013 is better than all of the Uncharted games I've played.  Like, I like Uncharted 1 and Uncharted 3, can't stand 2, but in my opinion Tomb Raider just succeeds at being a more fun game.  Narratively, it's nowhere as good as the Uncharted franchise, Tomb Raider 2013 is quite messy if anything, but the reboot Raiders just have more fun and interesting gameplay to me than the Uncharted franchise, idk.

Speaking of narrative, I feel like this game is trying hard to be less... yikes... than the first game.  Tomb Raider 2013 has a bad habit of forcing Lara to go through extreme circumstances to progress for seemingly no other reason than to put her in a situation where she's being put through something beyond human capability.  Back in the day, some content creators I no longer watch speculated some unsavory reasons for it.  I think it's moreso that Tomb Raider 2013 is engaging in the common but somewhat problematic trope in fiction that to explain why a woman is strong, you need to force her to go through excruciating circumstances.  Rise is much better about this, I suspect unfortunately that it's partially because Lara is already established, but so far we aren't putting her through hell every couple scenes so.  Improvement.  Instead her character's whole thing in this game is trying to prove both herself and her missing father right with regards to supernatural happenings and secret ancient organizations, which, while not a new story by any means, feels much better.

Something I immediately enjoy a whole lot about the second game is the greater focus on like proper "tomb raiding".  While I enjoy the first game, it wasn't super interested in the Tomb Raiding aspect of Tomb Raider.  There were some tombs to raid and puzzles to solve in them that were fun, but like.  It was mostly a cinematic third-person action-adventure game, there was way more gun fights and way less archaeology.  The second game corrects this by just having a greater focus on archaeology.  Lara now has a language system that you can level up as you go on, as she reads more of a language, she gains a greater knowledge of the language, allowing her to translate increasingly more complex artifacts.  Speaking of artifacts, there are now artifacts hidden everywhere on the map for Lara to collect, centuries old documents, lost murals, hidden treasure caches, etc.  It feels like a much more whole experience because of this, like the team really went out of their way to make this what Tomb Raider should be in the modern day.  It's a shame they never got to follow up on it because Square Enix forced them to make an awful Avengers game that had the consequence of sinking the Tomb Raider franchise.

I am not, however, a huge fan of how the game restricts basic mechanics until the tutorial for them pops up.  This is kind of just a problem with game design for a lot of the HD era, mind, they lock off basic mechanics to you until you learn how to do them and it's frustrating.  Sometimes it makes sense, I don't necessarily like it but like.  Lara not being able to craft poison arrows until she has an obstacle that she needs to poison does make sense.  But like, they won't even let this woman hide in the bushes until they give you a tutorial for it, it's actually insane.  I'm glad games don't do this anymore, it's very frustrating to know a mechanic exists and then drive yourself crazy trying to figure out how to activate it only for it to be locked behind a tutorial you haven't accessed yet.

6/25/25

I've now officially gotten the all too important Tomb Raider reboot experience of "trying really hard to be sneaky, failing miserably, and scrambling getting caught in a gun fight".  I love the stealth gameplay actually.  Like, I'm bad in high intensity situations, I've played so many action-adventure games to know that I can and will almost definitely fail if I attempt to go in guns blazing.  Stealth makes it more like a puzzle to be solved, approaching a situation and figuring out the most effective way to confront the group of enemies to get through, which plays to my strengths much more.  I'm also just very bad at aiming and so I kind of immediately fumble when put into a gunfight.  This is probably one of the main reasons I don't like Uncharted as much as these games, come to think of it.

The greater focus on archaeology in this game really does add a lot because of the numerous documents hidden throughout the world to collect.  It feels like we aren't just experiencing one story, but dozens.  There are tons of compelling micro stories hidden around the map that add a lot of context to what is happening in the present day.  The story of the Byzantine soldier having to chase the heretical prophet deep into the mountains of Siberia.  The story of the Mongols fighting against the Greek invaders to their homeland.  The story of a Soviet engineer writing to his family who is set to join him, wondering if or when they will make it to him.  The world feels so complete with all of these little notes added to it, and it really makes the various artifacts we find throughout pop more with all this added context to it, like they're truly part of the grander narrative.

Due to the setting of Rise of the Tomb Raider, I find myself comparing this game to Uncharted 2 more than I really want to.  As previously mentioned, despite Uncharted 2's reputation as not just the best Uncharted game, but also one of the best games of all time, I think it's rather bad.  There are a number of reasons for this but a big one is how the game chooses to communicate its location.  Uncharted 2 similar to Rise of the Tomb Raider takes place entirely within the mountains of East Asia, but it chooses to present this area in a very dull way, making Nepal look very grey and sad.  And I think Rise shows that it didn't have to be this way.  Rise manages to make the snowy mountains of East Asia pop amazing, even though the color scheme is primarily white and grey, it's very vibrant and interesting to look at.  It almost feels like a flex on Uncharted, tbh, like we're literally going through utilitarian Soviet Ironworks and it still looks interesting.  I was already like "Rise is probably my favorite of this type of game" but it showing up Uncharted 2 like this really is putting it over the edge.

That being said, the white and grey do make it a little harder to figure out where to go if you're facing a cliff face.  There's a lot of discourse now about the yellow paint that shows people where you can climb in games and how people hate it despite it being objectively good game design, and I think Rise is a perfect explanation of why.  Lara can scale certain rock walls with her ice axes, and the game indicates what she can scale by the wall being an off white.  In the first game, this was pretty easy to spot most of the time, but in this setting it becomes very difficult.  I've scanned through areas multiple times trying to figure out how to proceed only to, on my third comb over with my detective vision, realize there's a climbable wall right there.  A cool solution I think the game should've done is have the cliff faces be marked by the indigenous tribe living in the mountains that Lara meets on her journey.  That would've been a good lore bit and also solved the "can't really see the cliff faces" problem.

I'm really sad Rise of the Tomb Raider has been so slow going, it's like I can't find time to sit down and play it.  I really am loving it, this is a real top 10 contender so far and I'm only a few hours into it.  I look forward to playing more of it when I can find a couple hours to stop and play it.  I've actually been really wanting to get into the Tomb Raider series as a whole, and thanks to Amazon's free games I own the entire series at this point.  Unfortunately I don't have a PC that could run Shadow so that's kind of off the table for now, but the other Tomb Raiders, the classic ones, are easily on my list.  I'd even be interested in playing the like PS2 ones, the ones no one likes or talks about.  Maybe someday!  The list is real long is the problem.

6/29/25

From my limited knowledge of the Tomb Raider franchise, namely being the original Angelina Jolie movie, the 2013 reboot game, the 2018 Alicia Vikander movie, and the episode of obscure Disney Channel sitcom Life With Derek where they, in 2008 or whatever, have the timely debate on whether or not Lara Croft is empowering to women, it seems like this woman gets betrayed a lot.  It's no wonder that she turns into a go-it-alone type, I swear.  I do think this game does a good job of making this wound feel fresh.  Like, this one was, effectively, her mom.  This isn't just like a friend or a colleague, this is a person who was, apparently, playing the long con to betray her family, so long in fact that she was Lara's main maternal figure her entire life.  And was literally banging her dad, so she was kind of actually Lara's mom.  And I like that it does matter to Ana that she's known Lara her entire life, that she's pushing for the main villains to recruit her, make her see their way of things, not kill her.  She doesn't want to admit it to herself, but she cares about Lara more than she's willing to admit.

It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize that the Assault Rifle is an automatic weapon.  I felt so stupid when I finally realized, like, of course it is, that's the whole point of an assault rifle.  Here I was sneaking around trying to get headshots with it.  I'm thankful for a big automatic weapon like this, as I have previously mentioned, I am really bad in a gun fight.  I tend to freeze up in the midst of more active combat in honestly any shooter, happens in Splatoon, happens in Fallout, happens here.  So just giving me a weapon that lets me really even the playing field in more intensive combat encounters is super helpful for me.  I still tend to lose in those kinds of encounters but, you know.  I'm better equipped for them.  Though my aim is awful and I burn through ammo constantly.

Potentially hot take, actually, I know it's a hot take, lots of people complain about this but uh.  I kind of love sections where the game strips away all your resources from you and you have to start from 0, fighting your way through to get your equipment.  I don't know, you'd think I wouldn't because you know.  I'm famously bad at video games, I've said it a million times in this blog, but like.  I don't know, there's just something to having a peak of power and then having to start back over again, re-evaluate your strategies, play with new toys, that sort of thing.  Granted, it can be argued that Rise does this too early, we're not even at the halfway point it feels like and we've gotten this sequence, but like.  I really like it.  I like having to rethink my strategies and, honestly, it's a great way to introduce new mechanics like the assault rifle or the explosives crafting.  The Gulag was a very fun sequence, what can I say.

I got VERY distracted in this section.  I don't normally bother with DLC, it's a very rare game that can make me want to come back to do post game content, I'm very much a "when it's done it's done" gamer.  But the game popped up a mission with the title "Baba Yaga" and you know what, I'm there.  I want to fight Baba Yaga.  It is very silly though that Lara is kind of taken aback by the possibility that a witch exists, like, that's the most eccentric thing she's even encountered and it's like, girl, you're up here in Siberia hunting for the secret to immortality, I think a witch is pretty tame all things considered.  Granted, there is a 0% chance it's a real witch but like, if there were, this is like not even in the top 5 weird things that reboot Lara has encountered, let alone Lara Croft as a whole.

The Baba Yaga storyline is great so far, though.  The Batman Arkham games have given us a lot, the way they shaped open world games and especially superhero games cannot be overstated, but my favorite part of their legacy is that we have these weird, trippy, pseudo-horror sequences in action-adventure games now.  It's usually a fun time, a chance for the devs to get away from their usual game's setting and themes and go all out on being weird.  The Baba Yaga toying with Lara, forcing her to go around and around in circles until she's completely lost, chasing a vision of her father, forced to relive the trauma of her father's death all over again in a shockingly real vision.  So good.  And then the Baba Yaga and her infamous house looks amazing on top of that.  Baba Yaga gives such strong forest witch vibes, decked out in her eccentric clothes and wearing a deer skull on her head.  And the house is just fantastic, I love that it doesn't actually have bird legs but rather it has like.  Flooring and scaffolding and stuff twisted into the image of bird legs.  It's been a fun little side story so far, even if all it has turned out to be is just "a woman using Scarecrow fear toxin" basically.

The Voice of God tomb is a standout moment in the game, just an absolute peak part, I'm surprised this location is optional.  I really like how the temple surrounding it is full of documents being like "we were lost in the mountains until we found this place, then we knew this is where we belong."  Like they give you a lot of context on what the Voice of God means for the people who now call these mountains home, that it's a place they make pilgrimages too, but they never tell you what it is.  They very much want you to see it for yourself.  And after you solve the simple but fun timing puzzle, you enter out into this breathtaking view of this massive canyon with natural formations caused by erosion that makes the entire thing a giant woodwind instrument.  Absolute highlight of the playthrough so far, I was speechless when I saw it.

7/1/25

It was really neat seeing how "Baba Yaga" kept the myth alive.  Yeah, that's right, I made like no progress this part because I wanted to finish that Baba Yaga storyline.  I don't feel good about it either.  It was really cool though, seeing the illusions that the Baba Yaga made, simply to suggest that the Baba Yaga is real, allowing the hallucinogen to take over and fill in the blanks.  Placing scarecrows all around to have the mind fill in that they're monsters created by her, building her base deep within a winding path in the woods so people get lost, repurposing a lift to look like the Baba Yaga's famous house?  It was great, good stuff here.  I almost want to go back through the Wicked Vale, see if there are any other neat little details about her trickery that I missed.

The boss fight was also just super cool.  It can be difficult to design a really cool boss for this kind of game because, while the combat is super fun and super good, it's all very samey.  Like, this is the type of combat that is built for either stealthy take downs of groups of enemies or all out gunfights, so it's hard to make a boss in this context that really pops.  But the Baba Yaga fight is very cool and very unique, resembling something of a Zelda puzzle fight.  You enter into a big room where the Baba Yaga is hanging over the center and you have to rope her to various gears and time it so that the fire of her own machines damage her.  All the while under the effects of the hallucinogenic flower she is refining, creating a visually intense boss fight.  It's not like one of the greatest boss fights of all time or anything but it's nice to have a really cool, unique boss in this kind of game.

I genuinely forget how many optional tombs there were in the first game, it didn't feel like a lot.  Like maybe I was just not looking that well or maybe the game did a worse job of communicating there was one nearby, this game actively notifies you when you're near one, but it feels like they're everywhere in this game.  It's really nice being able to find an ancient ruin a few times an area with a fun little puzzle to complete.  This might be a controversial take, but I enjoy the shrine structure of BotW/TotK WAY MORE than traditional dungeons, because it feels like I'm getting more fun puzzles to solve more frequently over getting a couple big puzzles to solve every 2-4 hours.  Tombs in Rise of the Tomb Raider feel like that, there are a couple scattered around the area, you delve deep into them, solve a little puzzle, get a treasure, and you're out.  It's a good vibe.

7/4/25

There are so many chase sequences in this game, my lord.  I feel like this is my fourth one where I'm having to run away from an instant death barrier chasing me.  People talk about those little "going through tight hallways" moments in these games as hiding loading screens in these games, and first of all, hiding loading screens?  Not remotely a problem.  I don't get why people are so upset about having an organic loading screen in the gameplay.  That being said, I'm pretty sure these chase sequences are loading screens because they literally always happen to lead into a more intensive scene with a lot of enemies/gunfights or a significant change in a pre-existing area.  And again, like, organic ways of hiding loading without breaking up the gameplay are good, I enjoy them, I just keep getting chased and it's hard not to notice.

So like, Jacob is 100% the Prophet we've heard so much about, right?  Like, okay, the Prophet is allegedly a miracle working Greek who was forced to flee East to avoid persecution from the Byzantine Empire and is, allegedly, immortal.  Like finding the source of immortality is kind of the point of this game.  And like.  Dude's name is "Jacob".  His name means many things that are thematically appropriate.  "To follow", which the Prophet gained a cult of followers who would then follow him into the East.  "Supplanter", given how the Prophet supplanted the common understanding of Christianity.  "May God protect", indicating how he believed he was doing God's true will despite the common understanding of the faith at the time calling him a heretic.  On top of that he's a distinctly European face leading the native populous of this section of Sibera, who are otherwise very Mongolian looking and/or mixed to have Mongolian features.  His diary entries are also very interesting, how he talks about how he has dead wives and new flames and how he struggles to maintain these emotions, but these women he talks about all have names that are now the names of children and teens in the native village he runs.  Like he talks about his dead wife "Sofia", and also Sofia is the name of his young daughter, which I guess that's not unheard of, naming your child after your wife, but like.  Suspicious.  Very suspicious happenings here.

The Geothermal Valley is yet another fantastic location in this game.  Like I love how they did this "lost city hidden in the mountains", that it exists on a series of hot springs that naturally heat the area and because it exists in a very remote location deep inside the mountain range, it kind of maintains its own ecosystem.  It feels surprisingly plausible in the midst of all of this.  Like, I kind of made fun Lara for not believing in witches when we are hunting the source of immortality, but I do enjoy that this game gives a grounded explanation for the 99% of weird seemingly supernatural stuff happening in it.  It makes the 1% that is supernatural stand out way more and feel that much more special.  The Geothermal Valley is also just like.  Beautiful.  Such a pretty place, the locales in this game are amazing.  I really hope we get another proper Tomb Raider game like this in the future, man.

I once again need to highlight how much I love that this game cares about Lara Croft the archaeologist.  Like there was a point in this section where Lara uncovers ruins and immediately starts geeking out about the mosaics on the ground, trying to figure out what they mean.  It's so endearing to me.  I also love that they are putting forward an effort to make sure Lara practices ethical archaeology.  Aside from any damages that may happen from puzzle solving, Lara always leaves Tombs and Crypts basically how she finds them.  She leaves documents where they are, only noting their contents, artifacts she'll leave behind, she's careful not to overly touch anything, only moving some dust to read the contents.  She leaves everything to the people they belong to, even if said people may not exist anymore, and I appreciate it.  There's literally a sidequest you can do in the Geothermal Valley where a person asks for Lara to find lost artifacts and she goes "of course, they are yours to begin with".  Idk, it's so easy for this kind of game to get into the Indiana Jones treasure hunting 30s archaeology mindset where you're just taking stuff, it's nice to have Lara do an ethics.

I really like how this game continues to play around with resource management.  Like, at the point of the game I'm at, Lara should be fairly well equipped, having two guns to deal with enemies effectively.  And in this context it could be very easy for a player to lose the desire to want to use the bow.  But then the Geothermal Valley happens and being a valley of people who live a simplistic, agrarian lifestyle, it's like.  Yes, they do have ammo that they're raided from the Soviets and the villainous Trinity organization, but it's very scarce and very limited.  You, as the player, have to make the decision on when to use your now limited gun ammunition, meanwhile the bow once again becomes a more effective tool as the valley is full of resources to craft arrows.  They even introduce fire arrows for you to utilize, arrows that contain small flasks with oil that ignite on contact, once again bringing the bow into focus.  It's really good game balance, I like it a lot.

7/6/25

I got a grappling hook!  I don't care what game it is, I'm always excited about a grappling hook.  I once again am appreciative of how much this game doesn't restrict Lara's movement to just the ground and ledges.  Lara has already been able to do so much more than certain other action-adventure protagonists cut from the same cloth, and now not only is she not restricted by cliff faces but also not by large gaps.  It almost makes me wish this game was less of a linear cinematic action-adventure game because I'd really like to take Lara's kit out for a spin in a more open format.  But also like, we have enough open world games now, it's fine.  Anyways, grappling hook, on board, certified good game.

I have mentioned the archaeological aspect of this game a lot so far, but something I really adore about it is how you can track the development of this agrarian native civilization evolving from the Prophet's ornate, luxurious civilization.  Loads of documents detail the fall of the Prophet's city of Kitezh around a thousand years ago, and the subsequent adaptation to a "harder life".  You enter tombs and find abandoned places of luxury, in this section in particular I found what was once a luxurious bathhouse the ones who fled Kitezh used to bury their dead.  There are loads of artifacts scattered about the map and it's always so neat seeing Lara note that this is an expensive bowl or vase or basket or whatever, clearly made only to be decorative, that the people have had to make into a practical piece.  I distinctly remember one artifact was an expensive piece of pottery that the natives had to poke holes in to make room for plant roots to grow out.  It's great environmental storytelling, love it.

Bomb arrows were not something I expected to be in this game.  I just really like how this game continues to make the bow feel important even as we gain more and more guns and, moreover, more powerful guns by finding pieces of them around the map.  Like, obviously, the bow is always going to have SOME advantage, as it has infinitely renewable ammo without having to find it or loot it off enemies, but the trick arrows really add a lot to both combat and puzzle solving.  I mean in theory, I always forget to use them in combat as I try to get stealthy headshots with the bow, inevitably get caught, and then get in a gun fight I struggle to win because I'm bad in gun fights.  Like the main thing you get out of doing the Baba Yaga storyline is a bow that turns your poisons arrows into hallucinogenic arrows, so if the opponent survives the poison, they will turn against their fellow opponents for a little bit, I've used it like twice.  Love the trick arrows though.

This also makes me really appreciate the notes that the Tomb Raider games take from something like Metroid.  I'm not going to go on a whole "Rise of the Tomb Raider is secretly a Metroidvania" thing because it's not, not even a little, but I do like that you're encouraged to return to previous areas after you get pretty telegraphed things like the fire arrows, bomb arrows, the grappling hook, etc. to unlock new stuff in said areas.  I actually have to go back to the first major hub in the game, the Soviet Installation, to finally unlock the last cave come to think of it.  I just love incentivizing continued exploration of previous area, and I think the way Rise does it, having these larger hub areas stitched into the more linear ones is a very nice way to do it.

The story is ramping up majorly.  I did admittedly cover quite a lot of the game in the last section which is why, but like.  Lara is getting caught up in more moment to moment gun fights as Trinity is going on the offensive against the natives.  They've now infiltrated and assaulted so many of their sacred places and Lara has had to do a lot of work taking out the hostiles.  A point I actually like about this is that the natives are adapting quickly to this new style of warfare, picking up their guns an effectively arming themselves against the invaders.  This is something you also see in the native's documents, an anxiety that their lifestyle may be forced to come to an end as they are fighting a threat that, and I quote, "gets stronger each generation".  A lot of them talk about the children and how fewer and fewer survive each onslaught, them seeing their own extinction happening before their eyes.  And so, whether they like it or not, survival means adapting, adapting to this modern warfare.

I also like this darker side we're seeing from Lara.  That her being betrayed by the last person she considered family has kind of broken her to a point where she's letting her desires get in the way of her archaeology.  She holds the woman at gunpoint, something that she probably wouldn't normally do, making it clear she is honestly kind of okay with murdering her to a point where the woman, who had previously been like "we should recruit Lara to our side" is now like "kill her on sight".  And her being too close with this adventure, due to her father dying as a result of looking for the source of immortality and it causing him to be disgraced as an archaeologist, is really clouding her judgement.  I talked about Lara largely partaking in ethical archaeology but this is a line she is willing to cross, despite the protestations of the natives, Lara NEEDS to find the source of immortality, she needs to bring it back in the world, and while she claims this is for the good of mankind, she is obviously only doing it to avenge her father, posthumously prove him right in the eyes of the world.  The natives even take note of their ally's ambition, stating openly that while they are friends of Lara today, they WILL be enemies of her someday soon, knowing they will die to protect their most valuable treasure and Lara will die to obtain it.

Speaking of hostile natives, a third faction has entered the fray.  The natives tell stories of a group of theirs who, rather than flee the lost city of Kitezh, stay in the Catacombs protecting it.  They call them "the Deathless Ones".  They are ruthless soldiers, utilizing the power of Greek Fire to make sure there is nowhere their enemies can hide.  As an aside, Lara really should try and get a barrel of Greek Fire, we don't know what that was and it could solve a centuries old mystery.  Anyways, the Deathless Ones are REALLY effective threats.  We don't see them at all until literally the end of their "introductory dungeon", instead they introduce them as shadows on a wall and distant voices in the dungeon.  As well, we see them mowing down heavily armored Trinity members with nothing but arrows and greek fire.  They seem so otherworldly, like they aren't human, they even speak an Archaic Greek that, unlike the other languages of the game, Lara cannot seemingly translate.  Or at least hasn't been given the opportunity to.  I really like this introduction, even if it ends up at another chase sequence.

I am even more convinced that Jacob is the prophet.  Like, the game is doing a very clever job of making that point ambiguous, I think you as the player are supposed to clock this as a possibility and then have the game play with your expectations by making the timeline messy and then cleaning it up and then making it messy again.  So like, they'll introduce Jacob's former wife and lover and it's like "this feels like it happened long ago" but then later go "actually this happened within the last generation and this is the current' Sofia's mother that Jacob is writing about" but then also, also, Jacob's journal entries are scattered about in odd places that make you wonder how he could've gotten there and/or known to come there in a single lifetime.  There's also a very interesting journal entry where a citizen of the native camp talks about a mysterious stranger coming down from the mountains with no memory and while most people believe it was simply one of their brethren, they are convinced it is, in fact, the Prophet returned to them.  And the description given notes that the stranger has long, unkempt hair and a sort of shaggy beard, much like Jacob.  I'm not going to act like this is a huge call, in my opinion it's a very obvious twist, but you know.

Something I am starting to get annoyed about, though, is the Survival Caches.  Throughout various maps, there are survival caches, buried there by explorers and hikers and natives and what have you that went through the area that contain supplies.  These are nice little additions, you can find some needed and/or rare crafting materials on the fly with them, but the thing is that the game will not let you pick up a crafting resource unless you need said resource.  Which I guess is good, you aren't wasting material when your pack is full, but the problem is Survival Caches are a collectible.  And because of this, you can just have to go back for a collectible a dozen times not being able to obtain it because the material it contains is something you are already full on and like, how can you keep track of that, you know.  Just a very minor annoyance, nothing huge at all, it's not like I'm going to 100% this game anyways but like, it is a thing:tm:.

As I near the end, I don't think I have that much game left, it's making me really sad I can't jump into Shadow for the forseeable future.  I know Shadow of the Tomb Raider is not nearly as good as 2013 or Rise but like.  It just makes me sad, you know, knowing this story has a conclusion that it'll be a long time before I reach because either I need to build a PC that can run it (yay, more complaining about how hell PC gaming is) or swallow my pride and just buy it for console even though I technically already own it.  At least I have the entire classic Tomb Raider collection to move onto.  I'm really excited to try them out actually, I may be repeating myself here but I'm even looking forward to eventually playing the "bad ones".  I own basically the entire Tomb Raider series at this point besides like, the top down twin stick ones, so hopefully I'll be able to revisit Tomb Raider in the not-too-distant future and continue to be like "Lara Croft is just better than Nathan Drake and I don't know why Uncharted has the pedigree that it does, it's like if Joss Whedon wrote an Indiana Jones film."

7/8/25

To literally no one's surprise, Jacob is, in fact, the Prophet.  Again, it's such an obvious twist it's difficult to even call it a twist, his name is Jacob.  I do enjoy that he is like immediately going "yes, I am immortal, but no, it's not a God given ability".  And that despite that, his faith is still outwardly strong.  Jacob is a very interesting character, I like him a lot.  Like, as someone who isn't in the faith but grew up surrounded by Evangelical beliefs, I find it very interesting when nuanced depictions of belief are put forward.  That Jacob's belief in the Abrahamic God is strong despite his objective knowledge that some things aren't of God.  It reminds me of a bit from a video I saw, I forget if it was a Miniminuteman video or Dan Olson's excellent video on the Paluxy River Tracks, but it was a quote that was like "how upsetting it must be that your faith must be backed up by science in order to be valid, thus you must live in fear of any scientific discovery that it may undo your entire belief system".

The Orrery is yet another all timer location for this game.  I really wish I had a reliable way to get screenshots off my PS4, because man this game has so many beautiful, iconic locations in it.  This giant mechanical model of the solar system, seemingly far beyond the prowess of anything in historical record, is just mesmerizing, even Lara cites her appreciation of it.  It's also a really fun little puzzle, having to use your rope arrows to move the model around so that you can climb up further in the structure, only to then have to time your jumps and swings and stuff when you get up to the top to access the path forward.  It's not a groundbreaking puzzle by any means but it's a real good one and like.  I don't know if it's the final puzzle of the game, but it kind of feels like it?  It's a very "use everything you've been using for puzzles together" kind of puzzle, you know?

I think I kind of saw where the game had to cut corners to ship on time in this section.  Rise of the Tomb Raider is typically very good about all the areas feeling interconnected.  There are some points where you can't readily go back from an area, don't get me wrong.  Usually a tighter area with lots of cover for tight stealth/combat situations ends up having a point where you leave it and then can only go back via Fast Travel points to pick up collectibles.  But in this section there's literally just a point where Lara has a conversation with someone and then the camera cuts to an entirely different area of the map and we're just here now.  And then when the section is concluded they just cut back to the Geothermal Valley in the same way.  Either they couldn't think of a real way to get Lara from point a to point b with how the map is laid out or they had to cut some corners because modern game development always has to cut corners.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple areas meant to fill in these gaps that got cut for time, tbh.

It took me literally until this section to remember Jonah is a character we're meant to know already.  Now, granted, it has been many years since I've played Tomb Raider 2013, I beat it in 2018.  I only know that because it was a game I did for a different blog I was running at the time that was basically just this but worse.  And he looks radically different in that game anyways.  But like, the cast member I remember from that game besides Lara was Sam.  Lara's best friend and professional documentarian, which is also definitely something they took from Uncharted.  I don't really remember Jonah and I think it's really weird that he's like the guy now.  He's Lara's equivalent with Sully.  Like, the actor is great, he performs the character super well.  It's just the character is not that interesting and a lot of this game is built on Lara's friendship with him.  Like the moment that Jacob and his people decide to truly trust her is her "this has gone far enough" where she's willing to give up a chance to find the Divine Source of immortality to go rescue her friend.  And it's a nice moment, but I barely remember who Jonah is.

The next segment will be the last, I left off in the pathway to the Lost City of Kitezh.  I've really loved this game so far.  It's obviously not a perfect game, I've had more than my fair share of criticisms with it, but like.  Of this kind of action-adventure game, this one is easily my favorite.  Do not be surprised when this makes the best list this year, like, currently I'm placing it at the #6 spot on my spreadsheet.  See y'all on the other side!

7/9/25

Something I don't think I ever drew attention to during the diary was how much I love Lara's campfire inner monologues.  First of all, it's just good game design.  Lara will recap the recent events of the game when you sit down at a campsite so if it's been a minute since you've played you can get a nice refresher on what you were doing leading into this point.  But also I just like getting Lara's thoughts on things.  It's not that Lara isn't a proactive protagonist, she is making a lot of her own decisions in this story, but often times she is very guarded and is carrying less than half of a conversation as she gets exposited too by the other characters.  So it's very welcoming to get these looks into who Lara Croft is, her true thoughts and feelings of the people surrounding her.  This also being a journey about Lara's relationship with her father, she ends up remembering a lot of exchanges with him, and it's just really nice.  You're always reminded of how personal this quest is for her.

I really liked the final optional tomb you could do in the game.  Not because of the puzzle, which is in my opinion one of the worst, there's a lot that's kind of unclear about how it works.  But I, a, like that it's entirely set in a cavern underneath the Valley where the natives fled to after the fall of Kitezh, showing why it's so unnaturally warm up there, but also 2, how the Prophets followers believed that this was a portal to hell.  The final tomb, the Exorcism chamber, takes place inside a giant cavern of volcanic activity where people were imprisoned based on the belief that they were demonically possessed.  What is actually happening is that the gas that is emitted from the chamber is causing adverse neurological symptoms, causing them to act odd.  There's even a note from a prisoner in the exorcism chamber who has a rare moment of lucidity and writes about how she knows it's not demonic possession but she does not blame the priests for the abuse they're putting her through.  She is aware that there is a sickness within her that cannot be cured, and that the priests simply believe they are doing their best.

I was so excited to find out I get to use a trebuchet.  Like first of all, shoutout to the puzzle design again, there was a really fun little puzzle to operate one of the trebuchets I liked.  But just man, having this giant weapon to pilot in the end game, it so good.  It does the thing a lot of good video game end games do where it gives you a massive power trip moment right before the end.  You just have so much destructive power as you rein down Greek fire from the skies, it rules.  I also love that they make you take down a bunch of enemies with the trebuchet, so cool.  By the way, Lara did indeed learn the recipe for Greek Fire, this trip wasn't a total waste after all.

I kind of feel like the Deathless Ones lose a bit of their luster once we're actively fighting them.  Don't get me wrong, there are definitely some hard fights with them, some of the hardest mob fights in the game are in this section.  But like, okay.  So the Deathless Ones were introduced brilliantly, right?  Keeping them largely in the shadows, never showing too much, etc.  And then in this part of the game, Lara starts to see the full scale of their army as they march on Kitezh to once again defend the city from Trinity's invasion, and it really ups the intimidation factor.  You realize there is something truly inhuman about them, that these are not men, these are monsters.  The documents in this section reinforce this belief, painting the Deathless Ones as something truly terrifying, an undying force that will continue to chase you across your lifetime should they be allowed to.  

And then the game drops two tidbits that ruin the whole thing.  1: The Deathless Ones are weak to fire, like, to the point where if you hit an unarmored Deathless One with flames they immediately burn up into ash.  While this does bring up a lot of interesting questions about how the Divine Source actually works, it is kind of silly that this imposing final threat is basically just Paras.  2: the Deathless Ones are not actually conscious.  Something about how they obtained their immortality and/or how they keep returning from "being killed" has caused them to lose all sense of humanity.  Now this could be scary, except that they now just roam around, patrolling the areas they used to when they were alive, meaning they become incredibly predictable and easy to manipulate and take down.  Like they can still be a problem in more open combat but like, just traversing the world they're kind of nothing because they don't really have any awareness to speak of.

I completely understand why the Divine Source doesn't have that many or, really, any answers to the many questions raised about it.  Because like, that's not the point, right?  The point of the story is Lara letting go of having to find these answers, having to redeem her father posthumously.  The Divine Source is better off with nobody knowing what it was or how it worked, that it simply must be contained or destroyed.  But I do think that there's a really big question that the game should've answered on how it works, and that is why the Deathless Ones are how they are.  For context, the Divine Source is also obviously what has been keeping Jacob alive for these past centuries, and in his case, the Divine Source has very few adverse side effects.  Jacob is still Jacob and has been Jacob for centuries, and that's his penance.  He is unhappy with immortality, thinking it to be unnatural, and seeks his own death.  And then when Ana takes the Divine Source, she too remains who she is.  But the Deathless Ones didn't.  They turned into this unfeeling, inhuman army that so do not resemble the people they once were that they literally have become a faceless collective doing a perverse mockery of the lives they once lived.  And I would've liked maybe some speculation as to why that is, a document that puts forward a theory on why the Deathless Ones are the way they are, because I feel like understanding that aspect of this whole thing is really important to the motivation to destroy the Divine Source.

Remember what I said after the Baba Yaga fight about this kind of game being hard to design bosses for?  The final boss isn't good.  Like I think it's the best they could do with the gameplay style they have, you have effectively three phases, a wave based fight against a helicopter where you have to shoot it out of the sky using Greek Fire while it summons enemies and destroys more of the arena between each hit, a phase to refresh on your stealth takedowns where you engage with a couple waves of Deathless Ones and have to take them all out without being seen, and then the final battle against the game's main antagonist Konstantin where you have to perform two stealth takedowns on him as he strips you of all your weapons except for, you guessed it, your climbing axe.  Part of the problem is, admittedly, I'm bad at aiming!  The first phase requires you to be able to hit the Greek Fire barrels that the trebuchet is firing at the helicopter at just the right time so as to cause the explode on the helicopter, which means both timing your shots and often leading your shots.  I'm not good at that.  I have probably added like an hour to this playthrough just waiting for enemies to stop moving so I can headshot them because I'm bad at leading shots.  So that's on me but also just like.  The final boss fight is just kind of frustrating in general in a way that isn't particularly rewarding?  Like I said, it's not a problem that this game doesn't have great boss fights, its gameplay is not designed for boss fights.  It's just really noticeable when it does have a boss fight and it kind of sucks.

I did really like getting to be able to explore Kitezh though.  Even if it was just a small area, it was super nice to actually get to roam around the lost city and have things to see and do.  I was very worried Kitezh would just be another hallway area because this type of game tends to start having its hallways when you near the end.  But I feel like for the game Rise of the Tomb Raider was, having a more open area with its own secrets and even a final optional tomb makes it feel more right, you know.  There's also this sort of "lost world" quality to it, a sort of Journey to the Center of the Earth vibe, because the entire city is technically underground but it's still teaming with life.  The entire city has been buried under a giant glacier (Lara pronounces this "glass-e-er"), which makes it feel like Journey, but a lot of flora and fauna, presumably the descendants of animals originally brought into the city to use as livestock or entertainment.  I'd be very interested to see what the genetic makeup of the boars that roam this city is like, being likely not true boars but rather the descendants of feral pigs.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination.  As you could probably tell from my diary, I had a lot of criticisms with this game, a lot more than I feel like I usually do?  That being said, I still think Rise of the Tomb Raider is among the best, if not THE best of the cinematic action-adventure shooter genre.  It's certainly the best one I've played.  Like, despite all my grievances, I do love this game, I had a blast playing it.  I'd be surprised if this didn't make my best list for the year, at the time of writing this it's in a solid #6 position. 9/10