Gray Matter

Sadly I had never heard about this game until very recently. If you enjoyed the Gabriel Knight games chances are you will want to check this out.

Gray Matter is a pretty solid adventure game, and in general looks quite good. Sadly the cut scenes are not up to the same level. The comic book style which is a matter for personal taste, but the graphics themselves are just not that good during these sequences.

Voice work is pretty solid, and the same goes for the music. I know that's short, but what can you say when things are just good? Not to mention I've always enjoyed soundtracks by Robert Holmes.

Now the story is a bit... strange. There are some things that do not quite add up, or make sense in my head. The ending also feels somewhat off, and you're left with a few questions.
Characters are at the same time fleshed out, but also strangely shallow, and perhaps a tad one dimensional.

the puzzles tend to make some kind of sense. So do not worry about combining underwear with a clock, and using that on a flowerpot. Sadly it is quite linear. So you can often not find/use things before the game decides it's the right time.

Gray Matter does suffer from a few bugs: Once or twice the game froze while interacting with something.

All in all, a decent game, but perhaps one that should be picked up during a sale.

Bastion

Now here is a nice game that does a few things very right. For one the story is told to you trough narration. Now I enjoy reading a good book, but not large blocks of text in games so a win right there.

The used font is also pretty big, and scales well with higher resolutions. I could play this at 1920x1200 without having to ask for help with the text. This is a big plus.

Some minor gripes are the fixed camera, and zoom level. More than once I've fallen trough a hole in the floor, or rolled over the edge. Had this been an instant death mechanic i would have hated Bastion quite quickly. As it is I consider it part of the game, and at worst a minor annoyance.

It's probably me, but have huge trouble manually aiming long range attacks on the game pad. The system requires keeping the attack button and direction pressed. I would have preferred to a system where I could line up, and then let go of the second stick. It works fine with the mouse, but on the keyboard character movement controls are less smooth. (Sadly as usual there is no quick way to swap between input devices in game.)
It works okay when the auto lock on feature kicks in, although I would have liked using the shoulder/trigger buttons to cycle targets.

The music really makes it shine. If you don't get this with the soundtrack you are doing yourself a disservice. Go grab it, now! :-P

Costume Quest PC

Tried playing this yesterday, but got as far as the first *boss*.
I like the humour, also like the general look+feel. I'm less happy with the text bubbles, or rather the font used in them. What makes it worse is that some text will only pop up on screen for a short time.

The part I started hating was the whole combat system. This is one big quick time event, and the badly done kind at that:
On PC the keyboard prompts all look more or less the same. There are 3 indicators: A small one that Can be "Q"/"E", a bigger one for "Shift"/"Space", and the last I encountered was a "w,s,a,d" one that means move to fill up bar. (Not that this is explained very well first time.)

If you want to use the x360 controller that has to be the first input device you use to start a game. In that case you get more classic button indicators. The impressive thing is that they even manage to use pretty small hard to tell apart prompts for those.

I'll never be a quick time event fan, but here is a hint you can take from the Witcher 2: If you are going to have a fixed indicator set, please make each button show up in its own place. The brawling sections in that game are doable because I do not have to stare at what is flashing on screen, but just seeing where it pops up is enough to know what button to press.

All in all, this is a rather amusing little game that I wanted to play. Sadly as it is now it's designed not to be playable by me. If you have no trouble with, and LIKE quick time events you might have better luck. Nah, actually you will more than likely enjoy this little bugger. It's a cute little game, just not for me.