I caved and bought this because I saw positive reviews and was hoping it was going to be better than the absolute mess that was Double Exposure. I wish I could share the same positive sentiment as others, but unfortunately I do not.

LIGHT SPOILERS BELOW

I love Max and Chloe with all my heart, they are not the problem here - the continuation of their stories is. These sequels are a mess.

I'm sorry but I just don't understand what the point of this game is. I don't care about Safi, I don't care about this campus full of characters I barely have a connection to - why are we back here? The reason why the first Life is Strange game works so well, is because everybody is so deeply intertwined and everything feels extremely intentional, including the main plot and the antagonist. It makes the twist and character interactions/growth in LiS all the more hard hitting. In this game, at least in my ending, I found out the motivations of the antagonist through a freaking optional-to-read NEWSPAPER article?? And the antagonist was someone who barely showed up and had essentially zero personal connection to the protagonists. I don't get why Chloe is there other than to just sell a game to people who want to see Max and Chloe together again, I mean unless I'm missing something - I barely got any closure as to what was actually going on with her? It felt extremely brushed over.

I seriously feel like they shoehorned Max and Chloe into 2 games that really should've just been brand new LiS games with Safi as the protagonist instead.

The moments with Max and Chloe were touching and I enjoyed them a lot, but that was it. I feel like this game was just a waste of my time. It didn't speak to me or say anything of value in my opinion. Trying to make sequels for an open-ended game like Life is Strange just does not work. I want to see more of Max & Chloe as much as the next person, but the way that game ended was perfect. These sequels with Max are just a soulless mess.

Saddened to have had such a negative experience with characters that mean a lot to me. I was in high school when the first game came out, and the experience of playing LiS for the first time is something I hold very dear to me. It's a weird feeling basically growing up alongside the characters you love; I get emotional seeing Max and Chloe in a similar stage of life to me, just like it was 11 years ago. So if I can appreciate one aspect of these sequels, I guess it could be that.

Since I was hooked from Shelldiver I played Scratchy Scratchy, another Idle/Incremental game. To be honest I am not sure how I feel about this one. It's fun and very addicting but feels too close to real life lottery or scratching cards, which gives me a strange feeling.
I am not a fan of gambling and where Balatro for example looks like poker but is more a roguelight deck building game, Scritchy Scratchy never changes its idea of scratching cards. You just level up your luck and manipulate your chances of winning.
Later in the game you automate the scratching and just wait. That's it.

While titles like Stardew Valley or The Sims are typically championed as the quintessential comfy games, Project Zomboid is the one I point to first. This bizarre, sprawling forever-project tends to ebb and flow from my life in waves. Yet, every few months, a specific neuron fires, demanding I return to 1993 Kentucky to scavenge for sledgehammers and pillage police stations, and I immediately succumb to the warm and fuzzies.

Despite its grim facade, I spend the majority of my time in PZ roleplaying as an amateur environmental storyteller. There is a profound satisfaction in constructing a base and furnishing it with details that suggest a much richer life than the mechanics actually require. In my multiplayer group, I am usually the unofficial boywife who spends his days trad-maxxing back at the homestead. I mop the blood-stained linoleum, arrange firearms on tables to ensure they look both accessible and aesthetic, and succumb to tin-pilling by meticulously placing can openers beside an organized pantry. I find myself base-mogging the local ruins by erecting sandbag walls and wooden barricades, even when my companions have already decimated every necrotic threat within a two-mile radius. All the world's a stage, etc, etc.

PZ works especially well for co-op sessions as there's so much to do. One person can spend their time building defenses, another can hoard and repair vehicles, there's now also a true farming system with animals that can be domesticated, or you can serve as a doctor for your squad. The intricate web of systems also leads to emergent situations that are genuinely unpredictable and induce a true sense of fight or flight as you assess one of the dozens of possible solutions to the problem. If you are the kind of person who rolls your eyes at movies and thinks "wow, why would they not simply just do X", then strap in because PZ is the game that let's you put it all to the test. Intuition carries much of the experience here; you're not screwed simply because you don't have the 'correct' item for the situation. For instance, a Jerry can is probably ideal for siphoning gas for a car, but in a pinch you can use an empty water bottle or a plastic bag to transport it. Starving in a room full of rats and cockroaches? Not anymore, you absolutely can stuff them in your gob and induce a chitin-crunching state of depression. If you're three floors up, outnumbered and only in possession of a hammer and the clothes on your back you can big-brain your way out of the situation by disassembling a table for some nails, tearing the shirt off your back and tying it into a makeshift rope for the ol' Alacatraz special where you scale down the side of the building to freedom.

This consistent level of depth and interaction between items and systems is overwhelming to new players however, that's the biggest drawback. Over 100 hours in and I'm very accustomed to the menus, hotkeys and logic of PZ but for new players this has to be a nightmare. If you want to use a Molotov you must source the parts, construct the parts, find a lighter/matches, equip the Molotov as a primary item and the lighter/matches as a second item, then manually choose to light it and then finally toss it, triggering the end times as fire spreads from whatever patch of Earth you have forsaken to every nearby tree and building. Logically it makes sense, but with 200 corpses shambling after you while your character complains of being too damp from sweat, it's easy to fumble all of these steps and end up as dinner before you get the lighter out.

Overwhelming freedom and choice extends to the foundations of a playthrough, as you'll need to decide on how difficult you want the experience to be. The problem lies in making the game either too easy, or too hard. Too easy and you end up playing The Sims but with the occasional bit of blunt force trauma. Too hard and you'll never even get off the ground, your character likely dying due to muscle strain in both arms and a cut from climbing over broken glass. Even after all this time I haven't truly found a sweet-spot, with most playthroughs ending to a stocked armoury, years of food supplies and zombies that serve only as target practice. Even the world events don't really help in this regard. The ideal playthrough would be one that starts easy but steadily ramps up; you're given the controls to enable this but I've not yet mastered the art of fine-tuning PZ to be just perfect.

All that being said, this game is simply a joy to exist in. The setting of 1993 lends such a nostalgic tinge to everything, where quick communication was limited to bulky TVs and static-y radios, cars actually looked fun/varied and the world building elements such as notes, magazines and books remind you there was a time when the only people to endure your endless rambling were those forced to be in your proximity. The malls and office buildings have that distinctive "something-or-other"-core look to them that now only exists for album art and Pinterest mood boards. It effectively captures the advertising-laced optimism of the time period really well. Even quieter moments, like tending to a fire while you read a book and it's storming outside has me entranced in a way that some big-budget, FPS games could only dream of.

All of this without even mentioning the insane number of mods available via the Workshop that mostly integrate nicely with multiplayer. The mod scene has been thriving for years; even before MP was officially added you could enjoy putting down your infected friends using mods. Many core features originated with player created mods that were swallowed up. Updates are slow but in my opinion the devs could call it job done and I'd be happy with the state it's in. Zomboid is a brutal struggle to survive that may have you dying because you got lost in a forest while outrunning zombies, alerted to you by a house alarm but in those moments you'll find hints of comfort and coziness in an old-school innawoods kind of way.

A (Meaty) Solid Jump into the Third Dimension

Back in 2024, I decided to dive into the Super Meat Boy (SMB) series, and by that, I mean suffering through the top 5 worst games that I played that year, which were SMB Forever and Dr. Fetus' Mean Meat Machine. They weren’t just a far departure from what made the original SMB cathartically challenging and fun; they were both badly designed auto-runner and puzzle games. So, I naturally didn’t have any hope for the future of SMB without Edmund McMillen. And when this 3D iteration was announced last year, I was ready to dismiss it until I noticed it wasn’t being developed by Team Meat but rather by Sluggerfly, which genuinely got me reacting with, “Wait. The Hell Pie devs are behind this?! Sure, their games don’t reach the same heights as Edmund’s creations, but I enjoyed Hell Pie!” My skepticism for SMB 3D grew into excitement. However, translating a high precision 2D platformer like SMB into 3D is no easy feat for any studio, and while Sluggerfly’s first attempt is far from spotless, I’m genuinely impressed with how well they carried most of the core elements of SMB into 3D so seamlessly.

The controls and expanded moves definitely give SMB 3D a different game feel compared to the 2D game, but they are still super responsive and snappy (once you turn off that awful 8 directional movement—why is this on by default?!) to get into the rhythm that complements the consistently well-constructed level design. These levels make good use of the 3D space despite having a fixed camera. It’s not 20% of the game being 3D while the remaining 80% is solely 2D glances at Sonic Colors. Most of the gimmicks flow well together, providing players with an immediate understanding of what to do in a split second. I can only recall 5 or 6 out of 150 levels that I didn’t enjoy, and a similar number of moments where depth perception or camera angles were problematic. Even so, these blows are softened by these levels being bite-sized and the quick respawn after death that is the core part of SMB, which keeps frustrations to a minimum. Although SMB 3D is nowhere near as punishing as its 2D counterpart, the fact that I could even get A+ ranks on every level proves that I couldn’t do half of it in the 2D game. That said, it is still very hard in general, especially by 3D platformer standards, which I find refreshing, as challenging linear 3D platformers are such a wasteland right now. Unfortunately, Crash 4 was bloated for my liking, so I did not want to sink my teeth deep into that game.

As you can tell by now, I’m pretty satisfied with the gameplay front of SMB 3D despite its imperfections. I can’t say the same for the presentation, sadly. This is where Edmund McMillen’s absence hurts the most for me and many others because the game visually looks so bland. I don’t think it’s as ugly as some people make it out to be, but it certainly doesn’t wow me either in the slightest. What’s sad about it is that it will turn off some people from giving the game a shot (another game that further proves my point that graphics do a lot more than most people would like to admit), which is a shame because if you can stomach the visuals, you have a very well-made high precision 3D platformer that is a rarity and, more importantly, carries the spirit of SMB very well. I know that not everyone will agree on that, as the reception from diehard fans is very mixed, with some feeling that Sluggerfly translated the SMB formula into 3D as literally as possible without it being thought out, which I wouldn’t agree with that at all, at least in terms of the gameplay. However, I can admit that I can tolerate jankiness way more than your average Joe, but if the jank was really as frequent as people make it out to be, I wouldn’t love the game nearly as much. It’s nowhere near 3D Sonic levels of jank, and I’m saying this as one who loves 3D Sonic despite it all. So put down your pitchforks, Sonic fans.

In conclusion, if Sluggerfly continues to be the one making more SMB games in the future, I’m glad to say that it’s in good hands, especially after how godawful SMB Forever and Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine were as games in general. It doesn’t reach the same heights as Edmund’s creations, but that’s not my only criterion for a SMB game to be good, and I didn’t expect it to happen anyway. I definitely give this a strong recommendation if you are craving a well-made high precision 3D platformer and can stomach the visuals….