The Eye in Citizen Sleeper (SD) has more or less become my second home. No really, at one point I got the opportunity to build a little place for myself in the game's space station situation and the sense of accomplishment and careful belonging washed over me. Only for the soundtrack to kick in with its gentle warm dark vibes.

Yup, still totally in love with this game. The characters and story arcs keep coming, and while you can potentially deflate one pressure point on your chances of survival, you're bound to see one or more pop up later down the line. Every exit has a new maze to run. Every positive emotion a potential negative consequence. It keeps the choices in the game meaningful without feeling too bait-and-switchy. Are you sticking to your guns, or do you go full opportunist? Great to see how the early choices to just survive slowly give way to more complicated ones, even though the game remains as easy to play regardless.

Yup, just get it.

Oh hi. Here's the third chapter of DOOM (PS4). And oops, how about chapter four as well?

Yup, after Saturday's trek, I basically unwounded on Sunday by blasting through the rest of this game. It's great to see the mazes become more and more complex. Going from mindless blasting to carefully sacrificing health and resources to finish up the exploration side of things, provides a nice sense of escalation.

That said, it does become a bit clear that while chapter three has some nice level designs and the occasional dud, chapter four becomes mostly filler. There's a general sense of trying to blow the player's mind with edge cases within the game's design and engine, often bordering on speedrunning tactics. It generates some smiles, but can feel a lot more unbalanced at times.

Oh well, on to part deux.

I really couldn't believe it when I saw this fly by: OMG! A new Starwing?! (Yes, you read Starwing. I kind of dislike the StarFox name.) And after downloading it I can confirm that, yes, Ex-Zodiac (SD) is pretty much a proper Starwing 2.

Despite still being in early access, this game is super slick. Controls are instantly familiar, complete with barrel roll deflections. A nice tweak is that the game has homing missiles akin to Panzer Dragoon's lock-on system. It took me a while to realize that picking up Extra Missile power-ups actually increases the amount of targets for this lock-on feature!

Which is sorely needed. Though you can feel the difficulty curve melting with each replay, it can be quite brutal if you don't use all the features at your disposal. It can also do a bit better with feedback on your hits, incoming damage, and deflections in my opinion.

Despite all that, it's marvellous this is in early access, it feels pretty much feature complete. It even has a Space Harrier bonus level for heck's sake! The one thing that truly annoys though, is that even though there's a lot Starwing style bweep-bwaap-buup banter, the game doesn't really provide any breathers in between action scenes, giving you very little time to even read the text boxes. Maybe that'll become better with training.

Highly recommended to SuperFX veterans!