With some incredible visuals, and a dope physics engine that adds to the charm of the game, UFC 6 managed to land more punches than it missed with me.
Warhammer 40K Speed Freeks should be commended for trying to fill the enormous Twisted Metal-sized hole that the gaming industry has had for so many years.
Thick as Thieves is armed with a lot of tools for success, but somehow doesn’t seem to capitalize on them.
Monster Hunter Stories 3 is an amazing upgrade for the series. Between improvements to the narrative and all the new mechanics this finally feels like a series that has come into its own.
Developer Cococucumber continues their studio love of using voxel tech to deliver a richly, detailed world in Echo Generation 2. Everything has a crisp and colorful look to it, the monsters, with all their mouths and moving parts were genuinely unsettling to look upon but at the same time I thought it had a strange beauty to it.
Invincible VS is a great addition to the growing media empire for its source material. The arcade type endings for each character are hit-and-miss, but the story mode ends up being solid; if a tad short.
Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is a phenomenal experience for newcomers as well as long time fans of the show.
Crimson Desert is an odd game for me to place, I enjoyed it for the freedom I had to make my own story and for all the combat and systems but I wasn’t a huge fan of the narrative; even though it did get better.
Call of the Elder Gods is a worthy successor to Call of the Sea in almost every way. Combining exploration with some stellar puzzles and gameplay the game manages to tell a wonderful story with a Lovecraftian twist.
Despite some hiccups here and there, People of Note deliver’s a rockin’ performance. There is a fun and engaging combat system here and a story that has no shortage of musical style puns. But I feel like the game is held back by the performance and rhythm aspects of its gameplay. I would have loved to see the attacks and abilities be more on beat with the background music. But despite those flaws People of Note delivers a solid game that has a lot of heart and soul.
It wasn’t all a flowery trip to Pottery Barn though; at launch there was some issues with matchmaking, but it was corrected pretty quick. Kiln actually performs quite well, aside from some longer loading times; I had really no issues with the gameplay or anything. In fact, my only real gripe is the lone game mode that is currently available. Not that there is anything wrong with quench because it is a lot of fun, but there is no variety outside of it and we all know that gamers get bored of things quicker than a babysitter’s boyfriend when a car pulls up. And even though the Kiln is on Game Pass I worry about the longevity of the game, especially since it’s multiplayer only. But I guess that’s tomorrow’s problem, for today we smash pots.
Monster Crown: Sin Eater nails the feeling of a more mature and darker, Pokémon game. With its story of revenge for a brother slain it comes out you hard and fast with an evil faction that feels genuinely terrifying instead of just a cartoon threat. The overall story is hit or miss and the overall freeform nature of the game wasn’t really for me, but if you are someone who loves less handholding in your games, well come get revenge with Asur.
Samson is built with some excellent bones; its gameplay loop is fun and engaging and its gritty story is good and can be knocked out in 10-12 hours.
Mouse P.I. For Hire is one enjoyable and visually stunning video game. While it stumbles like a drunk on Tuesday night when it comes to enemy variety; it more than makes up for it with a stellar voice cast, some fun combat and genuinely laugh-out-loud side quest missions. The game may be on the easy side but don’t let that dissuade you, this is one case worth taking on gumshoe.
Terrence spends his time going where no one has gone before mostly. But when not planning to take over the galaxy, he spends his time raising Chocobo and trying to figure out just how the sarlaac could pull Boba Fett’s ship with its engines firing FULL BLAST into it’s maw with relative ease; yet it struggled with Han Solo who was gripping *checks notes* SAND!
We do not need to retread those games but instead forge new paths from the undead roots that they laid before. I think John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando does just that through its absurdly 80’s story to its explosive gunplay and addition of vehicles. It takes the zombie/horde baton and treads its own path, one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I should not have to spend 10 minutes of trial and error to figure out a mechanic that the game should display in the tutorial. For a game that has been delayed so many times it’s these kinds of bugs that are just simply a bad look for the developer. There is some fun to be had with Replaced on Series X but I would wait for a patch or two before I began to go looking for it.
As a relative noob to Cthulhu’s lore, I really loved Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss because of its more psychological horror nature. It would be easy to make this into a monster blasting, shooter type but the choice to slow things down, and tell a more methodical story was a great thing. As a fan of the investigative type games this was a joy to play despite the issues with performance I had on Series X.
As someone who missed the original release of Tales of Berseria, I really enjoyed this remastered version. They story is about revenge, and is much darker than the typical JRPG but to me it also felt more earnest in its approach. While the developers made things prettier with the remaster, I do wish this was a full-fledged remake; but what’s here is a lot of fun.
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