Ashen

Annapurna Interactive has published quite a few games that have this certain style of simplistic 3D visuals with low polygon count/sparse details. Such looks communicate low stress gameplay -- at least to me -- but that can be deceiving. Ashen, a 2018 soulslike action roleplaying game by A44, for one, can be a truly frustrating experience.

Amnesia: Rebirth

It's a rare occasion for me to play an Epic freebie but free is about the most I would pay for Amnesia: Rebirth. I knew beforehand I wouldn't like the game; I played it mostly because it was free and because I had then added it onto my backlog before The Bunker came out. It was only with the latter game's release I learned that the lead writer Mikael Hedberg had left Frictional Games after Soma. Rebirth's story was thus unlikely to be any good and the Amnesia series' gameplay is yet to impress me.

Assassin's Creed Unity

I remember Assassin's Creed Unity being mired in technical issues at release. One vivid memory is of character face textures not loading but eyes and mouth still being there -- the stuff of nightmares. I think in general people didn't like the game back then but the perception of Unity seems to have curiously turned around: you see a lot of positive comments these days. Playing it now for the first time, I personally found the game to be one of the worst in the series.

A Fire Upon the Deep

Apparently the name of 1992 science fiction novel A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (Oct 2, 1944 – Mar 20, 2024 -- died just three days ago; a somber coincidence) was built by the author's editors in a brainstorming session: they wanted to utilize Robert A. Heinlein's technique of using either Shakespeare or the Old Testament. I have to say that what they came up with is a lot better than what Vinge had wanted to call the novel. A while back there was a Youtube video about Fire in my recommendations (again by Media Death Cult) and the novel's name is what immediately piqued my interest.

Assassin's Creed Rogue

Assassin's Creed Rogue and Unity were released on the same day back in 2014. That seems quite unusual but the reasoning was to have a release on the older gen consoles too (Xbox 360 and PS3) that never got Unity. Rogue was released few months later on PC too and years later as a remastered version for Xbox One and PS4. Rogue was pretty much like a consolidation price for the older gen: its development even helmed by kind of a secondary studio, Ubisoft Sofia, whose previous work for the series had been mainly AC Liberation.

The Grace of Kings

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu is another literary awards winner that to me doesn't seem worthy of such recognition. A quick google search for reviews gave me a Reddit post that described the novel as cliff notes of itself, which I found a humorous yet accurate depiction.

Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag (& Freedom Cry)

My playthrough of Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag coincided with the release of Skull and Bones. The latter's development was troubled and costly -- and the end result was not something people thought worth the time it took for the game to come out. A common sentiment I saw: Ubisoft had already made one good pirate game; all they had to do was to build upon it. However, I'm not certain if Black Flag's single player campaign would have lent itself into a multiplayer live service format that easily. There's a multiplayer mode too in Black Flag but it doesn't involve naval combat, which is what Skull and Bones is about.