The combat, once mastered, flows seamlessly and keeps you on your toes, especially in the harder difficulties where one mistake meets your end. My only complaint is that enemies got a little too predictable after learning their patterns – nothing more than a nitpick in the grand scheme.
Right off the bat, Shadow Warrior 3 wears its influences on its sleeves. Anyone familiar with the tightly-packed bang-bangs of recent years, whether it be the DOOM series or perhaps a Painkiller, when you come across a baddie, you’re bound to come across tons more – and you’re stuck fighting in that area until either your enemies die or you do. These battles are insanely intense – you’ll have to manage prioritizing tougher enemies, conserving your ammunition, finding opportunities to regain health, and much more.
A lot of doubt was cast over a single-player, narrative-driven, linear game still being worth the risk in a multiplayer, shared-world climate of gaming, but this game hearkens back to a time where you paid full price for a full experience. Nothing held back behind future DLC, no lack of polish due to a rushed schedule, no need for a persistent online connection. It’s a relief to have this much fun with no strings attached, and for that, the game gets my full endorsement.
Not only will you be hitting notes, you’ll have to swipe in designated directions and hold notes when their shapes appear. You’ll have an understanding of when to hit these notes based on the shapes closing in on the outline of the note. As such, it gets tricky when you have to move to different sides of the screen rapidly.
Anyone who’s cut their teeth on the combat of a roguelite will have a headstart in Dreamscaper. With the ever-present threat of losing your life in just a few hits, your moves are calculated and careful – you’re put to the test with scaling baddies between each level and you’re bound to die. This is where my favorite part of roguelite comes in – you can manage some upgrades to make subsequent runs a bit more do-able.
Life is Strange: True Colors gets everything right that the previous games got wrong. The voice acting is superior, the motion-capture is finally spot-on, the length of the title maintains a fast pace from start to finish, and the few bugs are getting squashed with post-launch support. This is indeed the best Life is Strange game to come, and an easy GOTY candidate.
Getting straight into the action after starting the game, it took no time at all to find my bearings and comprehend the power of each new weapon and when to utilize it. Even after all these years, the creative weaponry, including the Nailgun, the Rocket Launcher, and the Thunderbolt, make for some gory gibs and ample variation between fights. With secrets strewn about, replayability is also high for gamers looking to search every nook and cranny of each level.
World for Two is a killer visual experience. Always adorned with a picture-perfect reflection on the bottom of the screen and painstakingly-crafted environments, any moment of the gameplay could be screenshot and used as a wallpaper. Meshed with a silky-smooth 60fps and a day-night shift, this game gets high marks for mastering the hook of pixel-based shots.
The visuals of Samurai Warriors 5 are a mixed bag. While the gameplay/combat is as smooth as silk, the graphics were sacrificed to make that happen. Cel-shaded/muddy characters aren’t anything to write home about, but I did enjoy seeing a wealth of expression and emotion in their faces during cutscenes. All things considered, I’d prefer the game not experiencing any slowdowns or stutters like it does now than it being too graphically-intensive to run well.
Opting for a cross between pixel and realistic aesthetic, Orbital Bullet boasts pretty colors and makes great use of them with compelling terrains. There’s a vast difference between biomes as you progress through levels, not just being the same thing nonstop. Bright colors accompany your shots and enemy clears, all moving along quickly with the refresh rate of your monitor (in my case, with 0 slowdowns at 144fps.)
We got what we wanted, and what we deserved, with Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. It’s a familiar experience, but fixes the few things that needed attention. The only reason this review didn’t come out sooner was because I picked up Mass Effect 2 after the rush of this game and haven’t been able to put it down. This serves as a great entry point as much as it is a stroll down my youthful nostalgia of exploring this game back in the day.
Nevertheless, there’s potential to be had with TASOMACHI: Behind the Twilight. It’s undoubtedly gorgeous, an aural pleasure, and a strong first solo effort for nocras. Perhaps the $20 price tag is a bit steep for the state the game’s in, as it currently sits with a “mixed” rating on Steam, but with updates, this could become something great.