You may well have missed Fairy Fencer F on its first round, but it is nonetheless a worthy JRPG, and it’s great having it on the current generation PlayStation.
So, again, there’s nothing overtly wrong with Anima. It works, and it is, mechanically, a competent action RPG. What lets it down is that it is so painfully artificial. I tend to think it’s a consequence of relatively inexperienced developers having major ambition, and I don’t begrudge them for that, but at every turn Anima really does try to force itself into an experience well beyond what the team was capable of pulling off.
While Shadow Blade: Reload may not re-invent the platformer genre, it is both pretty to look at and fun to play. With multiple stages, collectables, difficulties, and challenges there’s more than enough ninja action to keep Kuro busy for a while.
Sophie herself is beautiful and adorable, and I hope she gets to come back in the other two games in this series come (we assume), because with her, Gust has a new heroine that deserves real attention.
For the simplicity of the options it allows through play, the depth of strategy within the game, coupled with the accurate, believable modelling of plague movements, and human behaviour within them, makes for one startlingly effective game.
Realistically all I was going into Dungeons 2 with was the hope that I would get something vaguely reminiscent of Dungeon Keeper on my PlayStation 4, and I wasn't disappointed there by any means. I can't see myself pulling this one up quite as often as I do the other two Kalypso games I have on my PS4 – Tropico 5 and Grand Ages: Medieval, but by the same token I don't regret my time spent with this in the slightest.
Total War: Warhammer is, simply, the best Warhammer game ever developed.
The game looks poor, even by Wii U’s budget end standards, and the game was only remotely playable if I was the host of a party
The game’s a bit of a mess, with baffling AI at times (especially from your partner, who loves getting herself in trouble), and the freeze time mechanic having the habit of failing in the heat of something significant going on.
Overwatch is not typically my kind of game. Not by any measure. But the fact that I've been having so much fun with it that I've been playing it over some other games that I worship (but can't quite mention yet) is testament to just how well Blizzard has done with this one. Bravo guys – someone has finally created a shooter I care about enough to actually want to play after finishing the review.
The nature of the game's narrative development means it has a healthy respect for the surreal, and while it's a downbeat narrative, it's a rewarding and valuable one.
The game is made with competence and is certainly challenging where it needs to be, but is badly let down by its presentation, with one of the most painful soundtracks I've heard in years having me reach for the mute button.
Unfortunately, while the standard platforming action (and associated minigames) are accessible enough for multiplayer fun, the mechanics of the alien-based minigames, and the physics that drive the spaceship, make the other two thirds of the game frustrating beyond measure for anyone who hasn't put a lot of time into learning how to play them.
The level design tends to be quite bland, too – unique mechanic aside you’re played what this kind of game is offering in some way before. But still, it’s good, clean, light-hearted fun.
This is a strong debut by developer Bacon Bandits, and while it looks quite simple, the balancing of a game that relies so heavily on the randomness of letter tiles to form its core mechanics can't have been easy. And yet, with very few exceptions, I never felt hard done by the luck of the draw.
As a missed opportunity, Shadow of the Beast is a sublime one. The powerful juxtaposition between the Beast, his enemies, and the natural world, is a worthy theme to explore, and the bloodletting that the Beast gets up to is both visceral and entirely appropriate to that theme. That the developers really struggled to explore the concept in any meaningful depth is disappointing, but nonetheless, Shadow of the Beast is ultimately worthwhile.
It still lacks atmosphere. It's still remarkably competent without actually pushing the genre forwards. It's still a multiplayer experience that I'm betting will shrink to a tiny community in months.
I enjoyed Star Fox Zero a great deal. I found it challenging, but rewarding, vibrant and dynamic without being beyond my skillset. I don't necessarily understand – nor agree – with people criticising the game for trying to be a streamlined dogfight simulation, but at the same time I don't think this game has nearly done enough to push it forward.
Valkyria Chronicles is, simply, one of the best tactical games you’ll ever play. It’s serious, but doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s emotionally compelling while never losing sight of the fact it’s also a game. It’s a popular and well-regarded game that, for whatever reason, people simply don’t talk about it enough.
It’s heavily exploitative with those school uniforms, and that might put you off it, but for existing fans of the girls and their antics, this is another very worthy and thematically spot-on feather in the cap. It also represents one of the stronger efforts at storytelling in the series, aside from Idea Factory’s own work, and that's a good sign for the future development of the series.