Justin McElroy


44 games reviewed
67.8 average score
70 median score
32.5% of games recommended
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5.5 / 10.0 - Agents of Mayhem
Aug 15, 2017

You can swap between the three agents you bring into the field instantly, letting you chain their different special attacks together for maximum impact. There are some clever choices here too. Derby star Daisy, for example, has to cool off her minigun by dashing through enemies, which turns a typically boring weapon cooldown mechanic into a renewable power resource.Remember those great characters? Well, practically all their dialogue is bland beyond belief. Much of the writing in Agents of Mayhem is “joke adjacent,” meaning it's delivered with the tone, pacing and structure of a joke, but is not, in actuality, funny in any way.This has likely started to feel like a litany of sins rather than cogent critique, but it's the best way I have of illustrating Agent of Mayhem's failings. It is not felled by any one thing, but is rather undone by a thousand little cuts. Agents of Mayhem heaps theoretical fun on you. Characters, powers, upgrades, tons of missions — it's desperate to for the player to just have fun. It's a noble impulse, but one that it's depressingly incapable of consistently delivering on.

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Feb 10, 2022

There's a sweet spot in the middle of each run where you're powerful, but only just powerful enough to barely survive each new wave. In the final third of each run, though, things start to feel perplexingly staid.

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Unscored - Ghostwire: Tokyo
Mar 21, 2022

Ghostwire: Tokyo’s charm can’t make up for its frustrations

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Sep 19, 2022

Return to Monkey Island is yet another game in the Monkey Island franchise that makes only a slight effort to reflect the ever-shifting gaming landscape, while confidently clinging to the DNA that made it so beloved in the first place. And if you’re looking for the secret to creating an enduring franchise, you could do a lot worse than that.

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