Cara Lynn Blog

The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes I’m reviewing The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes today. House of Ashes begins in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Akkad in 2231 BC, with a compelling prologue that takes inspiration from the “The Curse of Akkad. then jumping to taking place during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, its setting is a far cry from the ghost ships and witch trials. Fortunately, House of Ashes uses the Iraq War as more than a simple backdrop for jump scares, focusing on both sides of the war as allegiances fall by the wayside in the face of a more terrifying threat. A meaningful choice-and-consequence system…

Enshrouded Review These notes and journal entries are interesting enough, but aside from a short opening cutscene and a few quest-related dialogues, they provide pretty much the extent of any explicit storytelling Enshrouded does after you – the Flameborn – spawn in the Cinder Vault at the southernmost tip of its expansive world and then blaze off on your own path. once you build a Flame Altar out of a few common resources and place it down, you can begin plopping down your own structures, furnishings, crops, crafting stations, NPCs, and so forth. This is necessary in order to make progress while exploring the map, since – aside from a…

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope Review I’m reviewing The Dark Pictures: Little Hope today. I like my decisions to come with consequences. Little Hope begins with a flashback to the 1970s and a brief introduction to a troubled family of six. Dad is a heavy drinker. The older sister feels isolated and depressed. And, in a hint at the spiritual warfare that will dominate much of Little Hope’s second half, the younger sister has been held back repeatedly after church to speak with the reverend. These glowing embers of drama soon blaze up into a literal raging fire when the younger sister leaves her doll on the stovetop. In…

This is a Ghost Review This is a Ghost is a supernatural investigation game. You are a member of a secret society that hunts scary entities from our world. Start your investigation with a full set of tools to find clues to a haunting. Gather evidence, identify the entity and send it back to the afterlife. Playable in Solo and co-op with up to 4 players. It can be spooky when you first start playing it, but that wore off quickly for me. The progression system makes it really rewarding to get everything done, and I love they don’t require you to pay a butt load of money for the…

Aloft Early access review If you’ve played pretty much any survival game before, then Aloft will immediately feel familiar. It has swinging pickaxes and axes of the non-pick variety to gather stone, wood, and other materials in order to craft your way to greater power. That familiarity quickly fades away as you discover the main thing that sets Aloft apart: the skyborne islands that serve as both places to explore and magically mobile homes to navigate this floating landscape. You’ll use a glider to fly around to visit other islands. Slapping a couple of sails, a rudder, and a steering wheel onto any island allows you to move it freely.…

Raft Review Our oceans are clogged with plastic trash, but here’s a small silver lining: All that garbage is keeping me alive. In open world survival game Raft.  I turned a collection of floating trash into a floating base—a big, semi-cluttered floating base, but it’s packed with life-saving amenities. The first few hours were so rough I probably would have just quit if I weren’t playing with a group of friends. But after a few hours of surviving, I was beginning to realize how to play it and without having to worry about death quite so constantly I eventually discovered an engrossing survival experience. I went from wanting to quit…

Murky Divers Review   Murky Divers is an underwater survival horror co-op reminiscent of Lethal Company but instead of being in space it sends players into the ocean’s depths to collect dismembered body parts and destroy evidence for money. The game has already had quite an experience to offer its steadily growing community. Players find themselves in weird, alien, spaghetti bodies, dropped in a submarine, and just about zero direction. There’s the submarine piloting controls, the sonar, a vending machine.  Murky Divers does offer a solo mode, but the process of figuring out what exactly players are supposed to do when dropped into this sub is a lot less fun when there’s no one…

Bureau of Contacts Review   Bureau of Contacts is in a very early stage. There’s not a ton of maps which is kind of a bummer. The game runs really smoothly and without frame dips, and it looks pretty good. All of the equipment you’ll be using to help with exorcisms or finding the evidence types has 3 kinds of evidence they can provide, so familiarize yourself with the details of what can happen in your journal. You’re set to explore and uncover your ghost in a big manor, covering multiple floors and rooms. You will have to learn the maps to better investigate and complete your quests before being…

The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan Review I’m reviewing The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan today. I like my decisions to come with consequences. The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan presents some strong ones, including one that determines whether or not I get to see Shawn Ashmore speared through the chest with a rusty spike. Man of Medan is a serious and brooding horror game that starts off slow but maintains a welcome sense of dread. A meaningful choice-and-consequence system makes a second or even third playthrough alluring. Particularly when playing online co-op, where you each control one character and independently make decisions with the potential to fuck everything up. When…

Lethal Company Review running through an abandoned planets in the dark with nothing but a hazmat suit on your back and three of your closest buds at your side.  Welcome to Lethal Company, a co-op survival horror game that’s all about digging deep into the (procedurally generated) crevasses for loot, which your party of up to four companions (Unless it’s modded of course) will need to figure out how to safely transport back to your ship and eventually sell to your tentacle overlord at the end of each round. This is a simple but highly enjoyable premise. there’s enough chaos to sink an entire weekend into its depths without realizing…