Chandler Wood's Reviews
At the end of the day, Sega Genesis Classics is simply a collection of 50 games from 25 years ago that will inspire brief moments of nostalgia. It's not the first collection of Sega games to release, and I'd be hard pressed to say it will be the last.
Some games allow us to escape reality, and some force us to take a long hard look at it. Detroit: Become Human is one of those games that straddles the border between entertainment and reality.
Laser League is an exciting competitive title that is–cliche incoming–easy to pick up and play, yet full of enough nuance that it's tough to master.
Taken as a complete content drop, Destiny 2: Warmind, Season 3 content, and update 1.2.0 have been enough to get me playing Destiny 2 actively again and loving every moment. The new Mars patrol space is bigger and more varied than I anticipated, with plenty of secrets to keep me busy. While the brief campaign didn't do much to impress, Bungie managed to give plenty of reasons for players to log back in and continue playing. Warmind is the next step in the right direction on an ever-evolving journey.With the flight path corrected, I'm confident in Bungie's ability to really shake things up with the September expansion/update, in order to make Destiny 2 a game that players can really love again.
Killing Floor: Incursion is perhaps everything you might expect from a first-person zombie shooter in VR. It checks all of the boxes, sometimes to its own detriment. While billed as a shooter, the guns are unwieldy in the most frantic of situations, which will see players bringing a knife to a Zed fight. Incursion isn't the kind of VR experience that's a must-play showcase of the best of virtual reality. It sits firmly in the realm of expected fare, armed with a few gimmicks that keep it entertaining. Longevity is maintained through cooperative play with friends and the ability to slap mutant zombies in the face with their friend's dismembered arm. Despite its problems, that's not really the type of experience I can say no to.
All that said, there's a fun and entertaining game here. Despite its problems, I walked the scorching sands again and again until I reached the center of the city and completed the game (yes, I did end up using some blessings and portals to do it). City of Brass is a really fun first-person roguelike, but the die-rinse-repeat formula wears thin far more quickly than it should. There's simply not much more to do or see once you've played for a few hours or reached the end. Combat remains largely the same simple fare throughout, apart from intense boss encounters that account for a comparatively small portion of the game. Upgrades earned over time and different ability setups through the genies offer the promise of varied gameplay, but City of Brass does little to entice the repetitive play that the genie's curse asks of you.
Dead Secret works as a mobile VR game, but its simplistic roots are painfully obvious on the PlayStation. The ability to play the game on a TV without a headset feels like a tacked on addition that wasn't optimized. Using PSVR, Dead Secret certainly has its frightful moments, and the story is intriguing enough to drive a player through to the end, but with all the great PSVR games out now, Dead Secret feels like a dud on the platform. It takes more than an intriguing story to make a great VR experience. While I had a fun rifling through Dead Secret's mysteries and more than once found myself spooked, it's not an experience I have a desire to play again or showcase on my headset.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is another hilarious creation by Justin Roiland and Owlchemy Labs. It brings the world, characters, and humor of Rick and Morty to life in a way that you simply can't experience outside of VR. It's relatively short length is easy enough to complete in a single VR sitting, but aside from Easter eggs for hardcore fans and difficult challenges for completionists (good luck with the battery), there aren't a lot of reasons to jump back in to play it again once Rick and Morty vanish through that portal for the last time. Virtual Rick-ality is for those who love Justin Roiland's style of humor. Others might find some moderately intriguing puzzles and fun object interactions, but the humor and licensed content are the central constructs that really justify the purchase.
Crisis on the Planet of the Apes shows VR players what it means to be an ape, not only putting them in the role of the fur covered creatures, but also requiring that they move and act like one too. By the end, I felt sufficiently ape-like. Crisis accomplished its goal of immersing me in the role, even if some of the more brilliant ape interactions were one-off moments rather than regularly used mechanics. Sadly, this brilliant immersion is hampered by dull environments, enemy encounters that become boring, and a fairly weak story that requires the films in order to mean much. Even then, the duration of the hour-long experience can be summed up simply by saying “ape escape.” Crisis on the Planet of the Apes creates some interesting new ideas for virtual reality, but it ends up tripping over its own big monkey feet along the way.
Island Time VR is a delightful escape to a remote tropical island, but this isn't LOST. The secrets of this tiny plot of land can be figured out all too quickly, and there's not enough of an element of random chance to retain interest in repeated playthroughs.
Bridge Constructor Stunts is a mobile game that's been ported to just about every platform under the sun. Its 2018 PS4 release is little more than a big screen version of the freemium game that came out on iOS back in 2015. There's an element of fun here, but it's hardly the type of game people bought their PS4s to play. If you've got an inkling of interest in the Bridge Constructor series, might I recommend trying the series for free on mobile, or even the far superior Bridge Constructor Portal? Bridge Constructor Stunts for PS4 just ends up landing on its head.
For both better and worse, Far Cry 5 is a far cry from those that came before, though it's still a lot of fun to play.
Ni no Kuni II is pure magic. It consistently surpassed my expectations, being bigger than I could have imagined. New pieces were constantly fitting themselves into place, and just when I thought the puzzle was complete, the border would expand. More than 40 hours later, the edges were still unfolding, both in narrative revelations and expanding gameplay capabilities. It's easy to get lost in every face of this perfectly-paced multifaceted gem. I felt welcomed into Evan's kingdom of Evermore, and I made it my new home as took part in the unfolding adventure. Ni no Kuni II is a near-perfect RPG and deserves every bit of the attention that it demands.
Everything considered, Attack on Titan 2 is an improvement on the first game in every way, but retreading old ground makes it hard to justify the “2” tacked on to the end. It's a great opportunity for anyone who missed the first game to get a far more comprehensive Attack on Titan experience, and there's definitely more content and improvements for those who did play it. I worry that its billing as a sequel may put off potential players, but you don't need to have any knowledge of the first game to get into Attack on Titan 2. It thoroughly covers the narrative line from the beginning from a slightly different perspective, and it's clear the development team took feedback from the first game very seriously. Whether you loved the first game and wanted more out of it, or are just getting curious about the series, Attack on Titan 2 is worthy of your attention. I just hope we don't have to play through the entire story again in number three.
Bravo Team's third-person camera movement system snatches control away from the player far too much, creating a jarring and unfriendly experience. I'm still baffled at why this was thought to be a good idea after numerous play tests. Movement is just the peak of myriad problems in Bravo Team, including tracking issues, AI goofs, and just plain bad and boring game design. Endless waves of bullet-sponge enemies in one boring location become more endless waves of enemies in another boring location, and dealing with Bravo Team's other issues means it's not even a boring waste-of-time type of shooter. It's altogether a bad game with few redeemable aspects that doesn't represent the best of VR or Supermassive and should be avoided at all costs.
Bridge Constructor Portal leans heavily on its Portal collaboration, in some cases forgetting its Bridge Constructor roots. It's a brilliant spin-off for anyone missing GLaDOS's tests, even if the game's unlimited building philosophy feels lumbering and brutish at times. I'm always happy to get a new perspective on a popular game world from a different developer. Bridge Constructor Portal is a great look at what Aperture might get up to outside of first-person physics puzzle-solving, showing that GLaDOS is definitely still alive.
Moss bridges the gap between observation and participation. It creates a bond between the player and Quill, making you a part of her story. There's a sense of pride and accomplishment for everything Quill does, not because you are her, but because you are her friend. Polyarc has built an amazing adventure with a grand sense of scale, bonding players with the smallest hero as they send her out beyond the safe walls of her tiny mouse village. Even if it ends too soon, Moss is one of the most memorable and immersive VR adventures I've ever been on, but more importantly, it's the best friendship I've ever had with a VR mouse.
Past Cure is an odd mash of Max Payne, The Evil Within, Heavy Rain, and a bit of Inception, without ever fully realizing any of those influences—compartmentalizing each section instead of creating a unique blend. Ideas teased early on never come into play, with nightmares and the real world staying largely separate from one another until the script calls on them not to be. An intriguing narrative is interrupted by long bouts of boring wave-based shooting against generic enemies in dull locations. I can't help but think of the early moments in Ian's house, seeing ceramic horrors in reflections and being excited for a cinematic psychological-horror action game that would never come to be.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an incredibly deep and intricate game that looks beautiful, but it has a fair amount of stumbling points in its quest for realism. The sheer scope and ambition comes with a number of silly bugs that are far from realistic, and some quests can be impacted. It's a hard game where taking risks (and stupid mistakes) can mean a lot of wasted time. The slow burn can be agonizing when you are 15 hours in and barely feel like you've made progress, but suddenly simple and intimate victories are made rewarding. Succeeding in sweet-talking one person, intimidating another, or finding a clever and tricky way to complete an objective often feels more rewarding than becoming a powerhouse and solving every problem with a sword. As much as the game frustrates, it frustrates by design and intention. For every situation where I felt that Kingdom Come was wasting my time, I always wanted to come back to see how I could subvert and overcome the systems for just another small victory.
When I was finished with it all and the Platinum trophy popped up, I had no desire to play the game again, but neither did I regret the experience. Pop-Up Pilgrims is an interesting virtual reality diorama that is just a bit longer than it should be. The best thing that Pop-Up Pilgrims does is present a fascinating papercraft pop-up world that more VR developers should explore. Had it offered a more consistent growth on mechanics and rapid change between the variety, it would have stuck with me more than it did. Instead it was a monotonous and repetitive 60 levels that didn't offer anything memorable during the five or so hours that it took to complete. Pop-Up Pilgrims isn't a bad game by any stretch, but it's not all that interesting or engaging either.