DeMandre Pressley's Reviews
Minor complaints aside, I did go in expecting Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to be a good game, as Machine games has always been a solid developer but the game ended up exceeding my expectations. It blends its various gameplay styles together quite well, has an enjoyable story with a great cast of characters that finally gives Indiana Jones his definitive game without ironically being a carbon copy of the two gaming franchises he inspired heavily.
Although graphically impressive and it does manage to tell a decent story, Neon Blood’s gameplay may prove to be too lacking for any RPG fan. The game has the makings for a great adventure game if it were a couple hours longer perhaps but, it’s bare bones and unchallenging gameplay left quite a lot to be desired.
The decision to bring Max back was always going to create a tall order for Deck Nine. Despite some familiarity and a few choices not feeling impactful enough, they overall did a good job and have shown they can do the character justice. While their ending payoffs aren’t quite as good as Don’t Nod I’ve still enjoyed how they’ve handled the franchise overall and hopefully they do reign it in a bit in relying on the supernatural aspects in the future.
Small complaints aside, Sega did an excellent Job with Sonic X Shadow Generations overall. Although it would’ve been nice to see a bit more for Sonic Generations to help it stand out more next to Shadow, it’s still an excellent game overall and this is an excellent package with excellent replay value and a sign that the future of Sonic will continue to be great as it has been the past few years. And hey, it’s nice to see another platformer be so well made.
While Undisputed falls short in it’s presentation department and I know how much that means for some, I’m personally always a gameplay over graphics guy and once I started to understand how Undisputed plays, I didn’t want to stop playing it. I don’t want to knock it too hard for the presentation points since it’s easy to forget that this is a new studio trying their hand without a massive budget. It’s not trying to be better than Fight Night, rather it took the blueprint those games built and tries to do it’s own thing.
Shattered Space was a fun experience for me. I enjoyed exploring Va’ruun’kai as well as seeing how the reclusive House of Va’ruun operates. I had fun going through the different quests as well and it was refreshing to not have to jump from planet to planet all the time. Unfortunately however, there’s still a lot of the more annoying aspects of Starfield present and it feels like they missed a few opportunities. While not too short, the overall content just doesn’t feel as beefy as Bethesda’s excellent expansions from other games in terms of payoffs.
The Plucky Squire may not be very hard but that’s a small drawback due to how charming and fun the game is overall.
If you own a PS5, then I do think Astro Bot is a must have for the system. Not only is it a fantastic platformer from start to finish with plenty of content for the 14 hours or so it takes to do everything, it’s also a love letter to PlayStation’s history and honestly even gaming as a whole. I honestly haven’t seen this many franchises represented in one game since Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and it was great that Sony even included series they don’t own, although some have a strong history on PlayStation as well.
Despite its flaws, Black Myth Wukong’s positives do far outweigh them and I never felt like they made me want to stop playing the game. Overall it’s a strong action RPG experience for those looking for something a little less souls like and something closer to a character action game. It’s a great first outing from game science and given it’s wild success so far a sequel of some kind seems like a no brainer. With some refinement, follow ups could prove to be something really special.