Recent reviews by Bucktown

Doors is a delightful puzzlebox game.

Mechanically similar to games in "The Room" series, this has a much more bite sized approach to puzzles. Most puzzles will take 3-10 minutes. This is very good for allowing you to play in increments that suit your needs. You don't have to worry about remembering what you did last time, because generally you are starting a new puzzle box each time.

The game has some excellent accessibility options. You can get a hint for the next thing you need to interact with if you feel stuck. This is super helpful for those times you just completely miss that a specific area is interactable. You can also skip a puzzle section if you need to. There was one puzzle that I could not solve, so I used that feature and it prevented me from getting really frustrated. It was effectively a 2x2 rubix cube, something I can't solve in real life either, so the bypass was greatly appreciated.

Overall, I find this game to be delightful, and recommend it for anyone who has a moderate or stronger interest in puzzlebox games.

Myst 5 is Obsolete.

I played this game around release, almost 20 years ago now. I didn't remember much about it, so I went back for a replay. As the completion of the Myst series, I enjoyed the emotional beats, and how the story can wrap up. The sound was great as usual with this series. While the graphics and animation were dated, they are serviceable for 2005.

The real problem is the puzzles. Myst 5 has a problem of making solving its puzzles tedious. Frequently, you need to activate a timed effect, before you can use a machine's interface. That gives you only a short time to experiment, before you have to do something else to re activate the machine. This makes puzzles take too long to solve, just because you can't actually work with the systems long enough to do what you need.

The other recurring problem is a distance between the control of a puzzle, and the feedback on it. There are many puzzles where you have to use controls in place A to manipulate something in Place B, which can be a decent run apart. This create a problem where you can quickly figure out what you need to do to solve the puzzle, but it takes a long time to execute that. This distance between the Eureka moment, and the payoff of solving the puzzle significantly lowers the joy of the solution.

The two effects above combine to create a game where there feels like very few puzzles to do, and not much joy from solving those you do have.

There are much better puzzle-narrative games out there, even within this same series.

This is a really good game!

I was a big fan of Talos 1, so I was really excited to dive into the second game. Boy did Croteam deliver.

Talos Principle 2 is an excellent Narrative Puzzle adventure. There is a central narrative that you progress by completing puzzles and exploring the world. Each new area has both new mechanics to master, and more lore to discover. It is also chock full of extra stuff to find if you want to. On the other hand, the path forward is signposted well enough that you can choose to skip any extra stuff.

The puzzles were all quite good. Each new mechanic is introduced in a simple puzzle, so you can discover how it works. Each puzzle after that builds in complexity, so by the end of an area you feel like a genius. This game was the perfect balance for me, where occasionally I would be stuck, but could always figure it out after coming back to that puzzle. There was nothing that felt like it came out of thin air, or felt like B.S. There are also alternate puzzles in most locations, so you can skip one if you are really stuck.

The Narrative kept me hungry for more the whole way through. After the first game's focus on consciousness, this game focuses on other philosophical quandaries. But in addition to the discussion you can have with other characters and entities, your decisions will affect how the ending plays out. It was fairly good at presenting the different options as intriguing, and I didn't feel like there was a "right" answer. I liked where my choices ended, but I am so curious what else could have happened.

The game is also gorgeous! I can't overstate how beautiful Croteam's environments are. Also, the music was perfect for the setting.

While you can play the second game without playing the first, I think playing the first will enhance the experience of playing the second. It's a continuation of the story, and you would miss a lot of allusions, references, and explanations.

I recommend this to anyone who likes puzzle-narrative games with no reservations!

Firmament is a good game in the Myst lineage, though not in the same universe.

Firmament is a narrative puzzle game, where the puzzles are integrated into the environment, so you feel you are manipulating the world itself, not just doing a Sudoku with pretty graphics. It does have nice graphics though, and really pleasing sound design. Cyan makes machines that have a really satisfying "ca-chunk" noise, and this game continues the trend.

To its credit, there were no irrational puzzles. Every thing seem pretty straightforward, and I only got stuck when I didn't see that I could interact with something. The game does not outstay its welcome, and at the end I wanted more puzzles. I would not have minded if some of the puzzles were more complex, or more interconnected.

I recommend this for anyone who wants a zero stress but gorgeous puzzle-story game.

Odyssey is a short but sweet puzzle adventure, where you learn the history of astronomy and physics to get the combination for a series of locks to move forward. The music and scenery are nice. The Graphics are serviceable, but clearly on a budget. The Narrative follows the history of astronomy in the western world, which is a nice primer for anyone interested. The game appears to be an open island, but is structurally linear.

The downside is it's a fair amount of reading. You can skim to just the highlighted bits for the answers, but that takes out the point of the game.

A very nice relaxing, and educational 3 hours.

I played most of this game when it came out, and I wanted to revisit it now to finally finish it.

Syberia 2 is a beautiful point and click adventure, which ages fairly well, all things considered. The Graphics are dated, especially in terms of animations, but they are still serviceable. The Score is still quite good, and I listen to the first game's soundtrack routinely.

The Puzzles are pretty solid. There are very few points where I had to resort to brute forcing all the random objects I found. My only gripe is that sometimes you have to run back and forth a lot.

If you like Point and Click adventures, this is an excellent example, leaving you satisfied, and very little exasperation.

The Temporal invasion is an extremely extensive ARG, in the form of an internet scavenger hunt.

When new, I would have recommended this game. However, after almost 8 years, it's becoming very difficult. Many custom webpages that were set up for it are no longer easy to find, and some news stories have been forced far enough down it's gotten much tougher. Also, I had a huge problem with the video sections being too grainy for me to be able to properly interpret them.

Supraland is a great game, but it's not really for me.

It's got platforming, puzzles, light duty combat, upgrades and exploration.

I found the platforming to be much harder than the puzzles. I definitely spent far more time truing to execute a maneuver than I did figuring out what needed to be done. The movement is very fast and floaty, so while you don't waste time, it's challenging for those with poor reflexes. The exploration is alright, though I found the environments got very same-y after a while, which let to me being somewhat lost.

The combat was nothing special, but was there to give you something to sink all your coins and exploration rewards into. I eventually stooped after the first boss, because I wasn't interested in more of that.

Overall I recommend this for anyone who wants a lot of action with a few puzzles

The Eyes of Ara was a solid puzzle/narrative game, which I especially recommend for people who like hidden object features.

The game features a hunt for a mystery in an old castle full of secrets. Lots of the puzzles are themes around astronomy and planetary symbology. The puzzles are bite sized and connected, but not to the point of confusion. There is a ton of collectibles hidden all over for those who want to go the extra step.

My biggest challenge was finding things. Even with the assist feature on, I felt like most of my time was spent searching for things to click on. There were also places where it was not clear how something could be interacted, so I would try clicking everywhere, and find out later I was supposed to click and drag.

I ended up needing a guide to progress, getting stuck towards the end of Chapter 1. Some of this was me taking a break and forgetting what I had done, but there were a lot of places where I was not finding critical components. This didn't stop me from enjoying my time overall, but isn't one of the things I really like in my puzzle games.

Overall though, a good puzzler.

I found the 3rd person controls to be clunky and frustrating. Not for me.