Katana Zero

Mostly unrelated, but I had a small breakdown trying to figure out how to classify games, particularly action games, after I finished playing this game. Katana Zero is no doubt an action game, but that's so broad... It's a platformer, because you jump from platform to platform, but that's by no means what the game is about... I guess it's a hack and slash, since that is mainly what the game is about, but then I looked at all the other hack and slash games, and how different they, too, are, and I just don't know anymore. To go into more detail, Katana Zero is a level-based side-scrolling hack and slash, with the catch being a bullet time / time rewind mechanic.
It's a fun game by the gameplay alone, as restarting the level is quite rapid, so it can give you very difficult scenarios to overcome. It starts off easy enough, but the difficulty ramps up alongside your skill, giving a very nice feeling of progression as you look back at levels that used to give you trouble, and notice how easy they are compared to what you can handle towards the end. And yet, were it just the gameplay, I wouldn't mark this game as anything too special...

What really lifts Katana Zero above the rest is the story it tells. It could have just been a nice arcade game, where you have the ability to restart the level because it's a video game, but Katana Zero went further, and wrote a whole story, history, psychological aspects - everything around it. I think the story is very memorable indeed, and it's well-integrated with the gameplay where it's actually interfering with how you play the game, not just something you experience between levels. There are also a lot of choices, which appear to have an impact on the rest of the story, but, minor spoiler, mostly do not. Still, I think it's applaudable that it made me care about the decisions I made, and fooled me to believe that the game may have gone significantly differently based on those choices. (There is actually one important choice as well as a hidden boss fight.)
But that's about all I want to say about the story, lest I spoil something larger. Do experience it for yourself.

Overall, between an amazing story, well-executed, although not incredibly unique, gameplay, and an all around solid experience in every other aspect, Katana Zero is one of best games I've played in a while, as well as a contender for the best arcade game I've ever played. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Gloomhaven

I've always been at least moderately suspicious of video games that have been made from board games. Not that I have anything against board games, far from it, but a board game has a set of limitations on it (simple enough rules to be memorized and applied by humans, limited board sizes, no information hidden from all players, etc.) that a video game does not. So I usually leave board games to be played in person, and stick to video games while online. I was, however, willing to make an exception for Gloomhaven, not just because it's the highest rated board game, but because I was asked to. So, having played it, I might as well review it, but keep my overall stance on board games in mind, if you wish.

Gloomhaven is a tactical, deck-based RPG. You choose a class, assemble a party of up to 4 characeters / players, and set off to a scenario, possibly as part of a longer campaign during which you can upgrade your character with new cards, new equipment, and even a slightly more beneficial RNG. Each scenario has you accomplishing some goal, usually killing all enemies. Unlike most RPGs, Gloomhaven places much greater stakes on each action. You are limited by your deck size, and will lose if you run out of cards, placing you on a turn limit. Additionally, you may choose to burn some cards instead of recycling them in order to get a more powerful effect - bringing forward the time of your inevitable demise, but potentially making up for it by clearing enemies or preventing them doing a lot of damage to you.
Enemies usually hit for a lot, and you're expected to know how the AI works and abuse that knowledge to the fullest by manipulating your turn order, unit placement, and whatever else you can to exploit the specifically-dumb AI. This works well in a board game, but I find it makes the game unnecessarily slow online. This is an addition to the already commonly slow pace of board games that stems from generally being played one turn at a time, one player at a time. Further, there is a widespread problem with turn-based PvE games in general, where it's usually more efficient for one person to call the shots and coordinate everything, than everyone making their own decisions. This of course means that unless everyone is on an equal skill level, either the better players have to bottle up their knowledge and stay silent, watching less experienced players make mistakes and bring the party down. Or the less experienced players don't get much autonomy, and thus not much fun out of the game. This is not something inherent to Gloomhaven, but Gloomhaven also isn't exempt from this.

I think that's most of it. Not much specific about Gloomhaven. In fact, I quite like the idea that you're more solving open-ended puzzles than playing an RPG, and I bet Gloomhaven would be quite nice to play in person. But mainly due to the high amount of time spent waiting, I just can't give the game a recommendation over something designed for a computer first and foremost.

Noita

It's rare to see a game with a truly unique concept. I suppose it's usually that innovation is difficult - it's much easier to make something you've already seen. But also that there is risk in innovation - if no one's done it before, there's no telling how fun it might be. I can't say Noita is completely unique, because it heavily reminds me of the various powder toys I liked to play around with a decade or so ago, except Noita has many more elements, many more interactions, an immensely larger world, and the whole thing is gamified into an action roguelike.

I find it an absoute technical feat, creating such a large world where every little block, basically every pixel, is simulated in realtime. I think Noita deserves recognition for this alone. They've further managed to add an exploration element into the game, tasking you with learning how things react, what are the effects of various substances on you and your enemies, and figuring out good combinations of spells and tactics.
I was very excited for the first few hours, being a small floaty wizard in a large cave filled with unknown things. Sure, I died often, but each new run I started off with slightly different spells, found new wands, new things, and the game was constantly fresh. I set fire to things, zapped water and metal with electricity, and a particular highlight was conjuring up enough water to create a shield that slowed incoming projectiles to a standstill before they could hit me. There was a lot to see and a lot to do, but my experiences were somewhat disjointed...

On one hand there was this amazing physics simulator that was asking to be explored. On the other, there were these shooty bad guys trying to get you to die and not explore the former. A particular place of conflict was the permadeath nature of the game combined with it taking a while before you could get to the really fun stuff. I felt my exploration stifled by the nagging "don't do anything too crazy, lest we take these fun tools away from you" feeling. Indeed, after the starting options became familiar, most of my game time was spent just shooting at enemies and flying, maybe sometimes digging, through the levels. I found an interesting interaction every now and then, but they rarely performed better than just "shoot more inert bullets at them".

So, yeah, a shame. I don't even know what they could do to improve these problems. Just removing the physics part would leave us a not-too-unique shooter, which I find to be the main gameplay of this game already. Removing the shooting bits would leave us with not a game, but just a larger version of the powder toys of old. While Noita is a technical feat, the two main components that make it up fail to be used harmoniously together. Apart, they just fail to keep my attention for too long.
But hey, even if I can't personally recommend it, the 95% positive reviews on Steam are not to be laughed at. If what I described feels a bit like what you'd want to experience, you don't have to take my word for the game not being so fun.

GTFO

GTFO had a free weekend recently, so I got together with a few friends, and we gave it a shot. They had just released a new "Rundown" alongside the free weekend, which is a series of missions that is... the whole game, I guess. Seems to happen twice a year to try to keep the game fresh, which is nice. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What's the game like?

Rundown is described as a horror shooter, but there isn't much horror aside from the grotesque enemies, and there's not that much shooting unless you want to run out of ammo and lose the game. Instead, the levels rely on exploring the area, making optimal decisions on where to go, and a little bit of teamwork that includes sneaking past enemies or sneaking up to them and clubbing them in the head while they're taking a nap. A lot of the latter really, and it plays like a game of Red Light, Green Light (AKA Statues), which really makes it quite slow, especially if other players are just on standby in case things go south.
The gunplay isn't bad, but there's nothing noteworthy about it either. Equipment you can find is quite boring (another set of glowsticks no one wants, anyone?), and there isn't a lot of variety in the gameplay, at least as far as the missions I got to. Top that off with having to re-do large parts of the game if you lose and no adjustable difficulty, and you don't really have much of a case to make in favor of this game. For what it's worth, I found the atmosphere quite immersive and well-executed, but that is by no means enough to keep me interested in the game.

So, after the initial feeling of discovery wore off and the gameplay started to fall into more of a rut of just waiting for periods of time (having to repeat a part of the game 5 times didn't help either), I wasn't having any more of it. I can't even imagine what it must be like playing with randoms, where someone running off, getting frustrated, or just being incompetent will simply ruin everything. Overall, play with a group of people you know, for sure, but even then I find the whole thing difficult to recommend.