Dealing with backlog: Three short games

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge. I've really enjoyed the Monkey Island games that I've tried and so I decided to play this one as well. While not as hilarious as the original (when is it ever?) I did really enjoy this one too. The characters weren't as memorable, although Stan made a small comeback, along with the main duo. The most annoying part and interestingly my favourite part of the game was in the end when Guybrush is in LeChuck's fortress and getting through that labyrinth and later being chased by LeChuck while trying to defeat him. This game probably has the most wtf ending I've ever seen.

The Raven Remastered. I played the original years ago and really enjoyed it. It's one of those games that I never imagined would get a remaster, so imagine my surprise when I casually open up Steam one day and I have the remaster in my library. Totally free and completely out of nowhere. This game was just as good as the last time I played it. It's kind of like three Agatha Christie novels turned into one with the end presenting a twist you don't see coming. There is the end and then there's the ending that comes after the end. I remember the ending cutscene being a big surprise the first time I played it, but this time I remembered it and so I just enjoyed seeing the pieces come together towards that very ending. I'm a little disappointed that several of the bugs from the original game were still there in the remaster, but those bugs were never game-breaking, they just made achievements a little harder.

Root Letter. This is a visual novel kind of game. All the voices are in Japanese but with English subtitles which I really enjoy. Japanese games should be in Japanese. Trying to catch the same feeling with English voice actors as they had with Japanese almost always fails and sounds cringy. Anyway. this is a story about a man who had a penpal in high school by the name of Aya Fumino. When he's packing up his things to move he finds a letter without a stamp from this girl that he hasn't seen before. The letter has seemingly arrived 15 years too late and the contents is a confession of murder. The man decides to go and find his penpal and find out what happened. He arrives in her hometown, only to find out that the girl named Aya Fumino died 25 years ago. This obviously doesn't make sense and so he sets out on a quest to find the classmates mentioned in the letters and to find out the true story. The game has five endings. The first ending "The Cursed Letter" is pretty much a horror story. The second ending "The Princess of Himegamori Forest" is creepy but definitely my favourite because it makes sense while still being unusual. The third ending "Crossing Paths" didn't feel like an ending as it just created more questions and hardly answered any. The fourth ending "A Government Plot" seemed pretty much like an X Files episode. The fifth ending "The Bond of Marriage" is supposedly the true ending, but it's the most boring one. The whole game is a murder-mystery with a lot of unexpected humour. The most obvious one to me being the characters Morita and Sugari who were 100% based on Mulder and Scully. And they work at the UFO Research Lab! This game was so much more than I expected and I thoroughly enjoyed it!