Dustin Bailey Avatar Image

Dustin Bailey


Favorite Games:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
  • Metal Gear Solid 3
  • Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

47 games reviewed
71.0 average score
75 median score
36.2% of games recommended

Dustin Bailey's Reviews

I'm a freelance critic and video producer. You can find my work at GameWatcher.

Bedlam is a neat concept that has managed to result in a game that's utterly bankrupt of creativity, polish, or fun. It's a game that went so wrong at every turn that it makes you just feel bad for its developers. There's nothing here but a bunch of half-hearted references and wistful nostalgia for old video games, both of which you can get plenty of for free on the internet.

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Oct 19, 2023

It's going to take a lot of improvement to get this sim into an acceptable form

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4.5 / 10.0 - Bombshell
Jan 29, 2016

Bombshell isn't the worst game I've ever played, but it's among the most dull and uninteresting. From its cheesy, late-90s alien blasting plot to its absolutely repetitive action, it's tough to pull out any redeeming qualities. Even assuming its bevy of technical issues get ironed out, this one still isn't worth your time.

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5 / 10.0 - Villagers
Apr 4, 2016

Villagers is a promising game that doesn’t deliver on any of its potential. Its mechanics don’t provide much strategic depth and its lack of content means that there’s no reason to come back. I can say, in some faint praise, that it’s not broken, but it’s so completely dull and unremarkable that I can’t think of any reason to recommend it.

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Jan 11, 2016

Blood and Gold is a mess of ideas that feels half-finished.

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5.5 / 10.0 - We Are the Dwarves
Feb 29, 2016

The core mechanics of We Are The Dwarves - the actions you can take and the strategies you can employ - are wonderful, well-considered, and fully featured. There's a depth to the lore and world-building that you rarely see at this scale. But the level design is so constrictive and the difficulty so fierce that it's a constant fight to have fun.

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5.5 / 10.0 - Ceres
Nov 11, 2015

But it's so difficult to access that depth behind the poor tutorials, terrible interface and lack of feedback. You've got to work for hours upon hours to reach anything approaching competence, and it's tough to recommend that investment to any but the most hardcore of space strategy tactical RPG simulation enthusiasts.

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Feb 18, 2016

Every addition that Snowfall makes is fun and adds a bit of variety to your city-building. But those additions are few, and even the more sweeping systems like road condition and heating don't add any long-term strategic considerations to the game. Even the new winter cities are a mostly visual change. It's tough to recommend dropping money on such an insubstantial expansion.

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6 / 10.0 - Valhalla Hills
Nov 19, 2015

It's a charming, lighthearted game of resource gathering and production. Unfortunately, it's only really fun when things work smoothly and easily. Figuring out mistakes and solving problems - which should be the core of a good strategy game - are built around solving pathfinding issues, and Valhalla Hills doesn't do much to make those problems more palatable.

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Dec 21, 2015

FIVE, at its core, is a competent action RPG with fun abilities and some original ideas. But with achingly slow opening hours, limited character progression, loads of meaningless loot, and an utter lack of difficulty, its appeal is limited.

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6 / 10.0 - The Park
Oct 27, 2015

The Park has solid atmosphere and pretty good scares, but it also has an unremarkable heroine and an inconsequential plot. It might be a decent curiosity if you're looking purely for the video game equivalent of a haunted house, but its high price and short length make it difficult to recommend.

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Feb 2, 2022

Bugs, repetitive side content, bad storytelling, and the unfulfilled promise of its choice and consequence system leave Dying Light 2 unable to capitalise on the strength of its excellent parkour and combat mechanics.

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6 / 10 - Crackdown 3
Feb 14, 2019

Competent, with enough fun weapons and silly spectacle to make it inoffensive entertainment. While a half-decade of development hell could've ended with worse results, it's tough to muster much excitement for what's here.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Project Highrise
Sep 6, 2016

Project Highrise takes obvious inspiration from a cult classic, but struggles to build compelling mechanics around a proven concept. Constructing a tower still offers its own simple pleasure, but there’s not enough depth here to keep you building a skyline’s worth of high-rises.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Fortified
Feb 10, 2016

Fortified is an okay action/tower defense hybrid with neato style but not much depth

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Oct 20, 2015

WRC 5 is a completely competent, inoffensive racing game, but it lacks the features that have become standard in the genre. Whether you're a fan of simulation or arcade-style racers, there are many better alternatives out there.

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Jan 18, 2016

A great way to play one of the weakest entries in the classic Resident Evil canon

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7 / 10.0 - Attack on Titan
Aug 26, 2016

Attack on Titan is a good game, but not a great one. It does a tremendous job of adapting the anime's excellent action scenes to an exciting set of game mechanics, but struggles to extend that fun core into full-length game. Any given fifteen seconds of Attack on Titan is excellent, but those fifteen seconds are repeated again and again until they're no longer compelling.

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Oct 28, 2020

Richly realised systems and empowering abilities create a tremendously fun sandbox to dig into, but another toothless story ensures these flashes of brilliance never cohere, leaving Legion feeling less than the sum of its parts.

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Sep 7, 2020

A range of technical issues are holding it back at launch, but a combination of satisfying combat and likable characters has delivered the foundation of an excellent superhero game.

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