Edmond Tran's Reviews
Fantastic new level designs, minor but meaningful additions, and a few excellent bonuses help strengthen the endurance of the Hitman series.
Old and new components of the Yakuza franchise combine to create one of the series' strongest entries.
Strong aerial combat, an earnest story, and a varied campaign herald a victorious return to form for Ace Combat.
The Full Body remaster of Catherine shows that its unique blend of action-puzzling and adult themes still holds up after almost a decade, even if its big new addition doesn't quite fit in.
Overland's cleverly concise spin on turn-based strategy, along with its great sense of style, make for a rewarding, high-stakes game that's easy to lose yourself in.
Exciting and stressful in the way all good twitch-action games are, Disc Room makes you cherish every second you manage to survive in its sawblade-filled stages.
SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters’ Clash is satisfying in its straightforwardness, and manages to really bring out the action in collectable card games. It’s a game that absolutely warrants being back in the conversation in 2022, and seeing a stack of familiar faces again is a lovely bonus.
Even after dozens of hours, the dance of movement and gunplay still feels wonderful to perform. It’s not a revolutionary redo of Halo’s principles, but rather, a refreshing revival that’s come at the perfect time.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart wields PlayStation 5 technology adeptly and push its genre mastery to the limits, but no further.
Chinatown Detective Agency does some interesting and noteworthy things with its take on the point-and-click adventure game, between its reliance on external tools and your own deductive research ability, some solid story and character work, and a strong commitment to encapsulating a country and culture that is unique to video games by default.
Where Wii Sports began to lose its grip on you the moment no-one was available to share the joy with, the online and enthusiast-focussed nature of Nintendo Switch Sports is a very good incentive to keep coming back. Even after earning all of the cosmetic offerings on offer for the week, Nintendo Switch Sports continues to be an enticing outlet any time I feel like experiencing the highs of close, edge-of-your-seat competition against another human being.
As Dusk Falls tackles intimate themes with intimate storytelling. It spends meaningful time with believable characters and complex personal issues. It attempts to explore answers to those relatable and sometimes unanswerable questions about ourselves. And most importantly, it doesn’t get distracted or lost along the way.
My time with Rollerdrome was likely filled with more failed runs than successful ones, with long periods of exasperation after failing increasingly difficult stages, multiple times. But when everything clicks, and you’re in the zone – pulling off those perfectly timed shots and dodges, racking up enormous combos, performing ridiculous tricks, narrowly avoiding rockets, and nailing enemies straight between the eyes from 50 yards away to find victory – it’s so incredibly invigorating. Rollerdrome deals in style and hard-fought satisfaction, and getting Kara to the top is well worth the effort.
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is a very strong and cohesive experience that deftly executes an absorbing folk horror atmosphere in virtually every moving part. No element of the traditional adventure game format is wasted, with every facet contributing to make it a focused and memorable journey, with a very strong identity. It’s the kind of game that immediately makes you want to play more adventure games.
I certainly don’t enjoy Scorn in the way that I do most video games. The thought of revisiting its monstrous world makes me feel ill. But I respect Scorn for its technical artistry, design and environmental world-building that successfully encourages player agency, and how strong and cohesive it feels in its overall creative vision, despite its mentally and physically taxing nature.
A Plague Tale: Requiem has a strong identity and a good degree of allowance for player creativity and expression. Moving through its stunning world and spending time with its characters is gratifying – even if many of its setpieces are terrifying or grim, even if its inhabitants are a bit too chatty, and even if there are far, far too many rats. The hope you find on the other side is usually worth the struggle.
A Little to the Left is just delightful. And that’s all that really needs to be said about it.
Fire Emblem Engage is focused on making the series’ enduring turn-based tactics more compelling, more exciting, more stunning – and the game does an excellent job at that. Smart new mechanics add much to the feel of battle, and once your army begins rolling through enemy forces across the continent, it’s hard to stop.
For all the game’s foibles, that largely stem from a slightly dated version of the series recipe, as well as some ideas that perhaps never really quite worked, Like A Dragon: Ishin! Is still an enjoyable Yakuza game brimming with stories and activities, and it still has a firm grip on the sense of drama and comedy that fuel its enduring soul. That soul is unique, charming, and special, and transcends setting, time, and rough edges alike.
Dead Island 2 is a satisfying, perpetual cycle of gory combat, and its sunny surroundings are just inviting enough to keep that momentum going.