Hatsune Miku: VR Future Live is an impressive albeit pricey VR experience. It is not a terribly exciting rhythm game at all, since it is just relying on such a basic shaking gesture. Only those who are interested in a VR experience or are Hatsune Miku fans should apply here, since that is what its strengths are: a passive musical spectacle.
Final Fantasy XV is the result of the designers being out of touch and being unable to make any sort of connection with the players. It has a really rough start and is a game with high highs and extremely low lows. It is both a technical achievement and a game design disaster. It is capable of really clever storytelling and character development, while also failing at the basics of telling a simple story. Final Fantasy XV offers a huge amount of land to explore that feels ultimately small due to how few points of interest it actually has. More often than not, this hardly feels like an RPG at times, and yet because of how strange this game is, it might be worth a look. In the end, maybe Final Fantasy XV needed another 10 years of development considering how unfinished it feels.
Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality is improved over its vanilla version. Clearly, playing with the DualShock 4 controller is just not the best way to play this game, and the PSVR and PS Move controllers were a step in the right direction. Sadly, the lack of polish keeps it from being a worthwhile purchase yet again. It is slightly more playable than it was before, but the new problems of faux feedback and bugginess stop this "sim" from being more than just an ironic joke on the customer.
The cuteness and novelties of Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity wear off quickly after about 30 minutes, and the shallow, mind-numbing gameplay takes hold. The playability and controls just were not well thought out for a game like this, but anyone who is willing to slog through may still manage to experience an interesting, yet ultimately failed experiment. As far as Touhou games go, Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity is a fair looker, but limited animation accentuates the low budget. Hopefully Touhou projects will continue to get westward localization, and just maybe someone will attempt another project like Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity but will learn from its mistakes.
Amnesia Collection is $30 and comes with two great survival horror games and one mediocre, short walking simulator. This is a pretty great compilation if only because The Dark Descent is one of the scariest games around these days, and is probably worth it alone for the asking price. A Machine for Pigs may be pretty horrible and disappointing, but come for The Dark Descent and bring a change of clean trousers.
Bears Can't Drift!? is not a bad game. It is actually quite interesting, mostly due to how bizarre the design choices are, which give it a weird mystery box quality to it. It engages curiosity and invites to keep on playing and see how deep the bear hole goes. While the hole is shallow, it is a compelling hole that looks cute and has up to four-player split-screen. Bears Can't Drift!?'s core game is just really boring at the end of the day, and as it turns out, nobody cares if bears can drift.
Here They Lie is likely doomed to obscurity and it probably is for the best. This is a weird and cult type game that may one day find its fans, but limiting it to VR may not have been the best choice, since there really is nothing here that demanded it. If Here They Lie is ever on sale and you need to get use out of the PlayStation VR headset, it will make for an interesting experience, just not a deep game.
Sports Bar VR is probably going to be remembered as VR shovelware in the future, but despite that, it seems like there was some effort to make it fun by allowing emergent mischief. When alcoholics die, Sports Bar VR is their purgatory: a bar with empty bottles and cans that can't ever be opened, a bunch of games that nobody will play seriously, and creepy stock automatons that never leave. The mini-games just needed to be more fleshed out and polished, and the core package needs a much lower price.
Gurumin 3D comes at a low price at $14.99, which is very fair for this title. Fans will get their money's worth for sure, and while it may not be Falcom's best, it is still more interesting than other eShop titles available. This is a silly story with goofy characters that had some effort to flesh out their lives to make people care about them and the world. While it may not take much to hit bedrock with this shallow game, it does have heart, which is more than what most games have.
Jackal Assault is a free standalone dogfight level that uses VR, and it is pretty fun while it lasts, which, sadly, is not very long. It may leave some feeling unsatisfied, but that might be because action games with fast paced space combat are not strongly represented on consoles. Jackal Assault gets the absolute core basics down and it is sad to see it end.
BioShock: The Collection is a pretty good compilation of some of the best first-person action—and sometimes horror—gaming around. It is unfortunate that it is not the greatest it could be, and that only the first game was given the best treatment, but these games have never looked or ran better on consoles before. Anyone who never played these titles should definitely give this a shot.
Weeping Doll is poorly acted, which clashes with the atmosphere, has 'baby's first puzzles' and is "completed" in less than 30 minutes. A working control scheme that won't cause motion sickness and below average visuals are the only saving graces. The story is told clumsily, mostly through narration, and there is no lose state, so there never is any real tension. No tears will be shed for Weeping Doll.
Anyone who is a fan of fumblecore style games will possibly get a kick out of Starwhal, but for those who care about tight controls or a single-player mode with some substance may want to steer clear from this stinky fish.
Game of Thrones' plot would have been interesting to play in an RPG, but the way Telltale Games handled it led to something that is mostly dialogue trees and quick-time events. There are a couple of moments where the game lets people hold the control stick up to move forward, but this is not a game with substantial gameplay at all.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited tries to do many things, yet it is good at none of them.
Poncho needs work before anybody should consider purchasing it. There is a strong attempt with this title, since the designers do not arbitrarily drag the user by the nose and let them freely explore the world. The whole game is just completely undermined by the bugs, which can be fixed. Gamers who are curious about Poncho should approach with caution and be ready to restart their sessions frequently. When it works, it's a solid game; it is just a question of if it will work or not.
Jackbox Party Pack 2 is decent value for five party games, even if a few of them are pretty much duds. The inclusion of Fibbage 2 is well worth it, since it is one of the most exciting and mentally straining multiplayer games on the Xbox One. It is unfortunate that there is absolutely no option to use the standard controller at all and everyone must have a mobile device with specific parameters. However, if all these conditions are met, there is a decent amount of enjoyment to get out of Jackbox Party Pack 2 that Granny or even little Timmy and Tammy can enjoy, thanks to a family filter, which limits some of the game's questions from getting too adult. Jackbox Party Pack 2 is a solid party game that pretty much has whatever the party will call for - whether it's the childish noise games of Earwax, or the mind games of Fibbage 2, there is pretty much something here for anyone to enjoy.
There is a good reason why the Fatal Frame franchise is frequently placed in top-ten lists for scariest games of all time. This is a series founded on emotional dread and torment, with themes of sacrifice and spiritualism. Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water proves to be a worthy entry in one of the more classy and dignified examples of survival-horror. The sad fact is that they just don't make games like this too often. The censorship that the localization team and publisher implemented is deplorable and disrespectful to Mokoto Shibata's work, and making this title mostly available via eShop only is not doing it any favours either. Perhaps one day Fatal Frame will be in better hands, but for now Maiden of Black Water ranks as one of the better horror games to come out in a long time.
The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes is a disappointing entry in the long-running series. It looks great, and sounds great, and it is even incredibly fluid (so long as the online mode isn't played), plus has some well designed puzzles and boss fights. The wide variety of costumes that have their perks is a very Zelda-like idea and works out fine, but having some permanently stuck behind the friend token barrier will put many off. The best way to play this is with others locally, since online compromises the smoothness and solo just is not the way the game was designed to be played. When it works, The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes can be fun. They say clothes make the man - in Tri Force Heroes's case, it is only dressed for gatherings and not for adventuring alone.
Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition is a very lacking port of an otherwise milquetoast game. It has a bunch of graphical glitches, runs at an erratic frame rate, and has a lot of missing sound effects or sound that is out of sync. Sometimes it looks impressive and other times it looks laughable.