Thanks!

Nice blog, loved your reviews for some rather obscure games (such as Vivisector and Coded Arms, i thought i was the only one who had played Coded Arms, lol, it was one of the first games i played on my PSP back in the day).

Yeah. Coded Arms came with the PSP that I got from a friend. Turned out to be a good way to spend the hours and hours I had to be in the car on the family vacation (we all took turns driving). And as I talked about in my reviews, I'm a little bit of an Action forms fan (for nostalgia reasons more than critical reasons).

http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/09/review-of-zar.html

Probably the most obscure game I've ever reviewed. Z.A.R

http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/09/review-of-darkwoods-1-and-2.html

Another obscure game. This one's an adventure/puzzler. And text-based, too!

http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/10/review-of-amnesia-dark-descent.html

Review of Amnesia: The Dark Descent

http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/10/random-thoughts-doom-3-serious-sam-and.html

Everyone will probably disagree with me here, but I decided to post it anyway...

http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/10/pair-of-dice-lost.html

Is your day too normal? Here's the cure.

http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/10/review-of-dishonored.html

Dishonored review!

http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/10/review-of-scratches.html

Scratches review

I'm curious if I should pick this up for Halloween.

It's either that or see if I can finish the Amnesia run I started last Halloween.

Scratches can kinda be divided into two things: the gameplay, and the rest of it. The way it builds suspense and horror and the way it gradually reveals little bits of the mystery are both top-notch. And it does have a killer payoff at the end. However, there are the puzzle issues I mentioned. If those don't make you run away screaming, then yeah... I'd pick it up for Halloween. I'm hoping my review didn't come across as overly negative, because I really did like the game's ambiance and approach to horror.

Or you could finish Amnesia. It's certainly a top-notch horror game. But I personally doubt I'll be touching that game ever again. I like creepy... and Amnesia was more like terror. It lasts about 10 hours, and every minute of that time is stressful.

http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/11/review-of-barrow-hill.html

Barrow Hill, another first person horror adventure.

Shame Barrow Hill seems a bit underwhelming, it looked a bit more appealing to me than Dark Fall or Scratches. And some of those prerendered shots look really nice. I'd probably still pick it up for $3, but doesn't seem like it's worth much more when there're better alternatives around.

It certainly blows Scratches and Darkfall away in the visual department, and possibly in the sound department as well. And its puzzles aren't too challenging, so you end up moving through the game at a nice pace. So it's not too hard to play and enjoy if you're an adventure fan. But the story and horror REALLY fall flat. Or at least they did for me. There was actually one part that made me laugh out loud, and it was supposed to be frightening.

The biggest complaint I had was their inclusion of that one character, though. That's something that needs to be handled with extreme care in these sort of "photorealistic" adventure games... your encounters with other humans. And I don't think Barrow Hill could have screwed it up worse.