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Chandler Wood


321 games reviewed
76.0 average score
80 median score
56.6% of games recommended

Chandler Wood's Reviews

A dedicated PlayStation gamer from the very beginning, Chandler has been enthralled with console gaming for the last 20+ years of his life. When he's not gaming-- wait, who are we kidding? Chandler is always gaming.
Aug 2, 2019

In theory, Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot sounds like the ultimate culmination of ideas and technology.

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4 / 10.0 - Track Lab
Sep 3, 2018

If you want a game, there are better music puzzlers out there with heaps more content, and if you're looking for someplace to fire up your musical chops, there are actual music production tools that will serve you in better ways than Track Lab's isolated creation mode. At the end of a long hard day, Track Lab isn't the game that's going to get you to pull out your VR headset for even a brief gameplay session. If you desperately want to use a PS4 controller to produce music, wait for Dreams, which will have a far superior audio production toolset and the ability to take your music outside of "the lab." While a neat concept, Track Lab never polishes any of its strengths enough to shine.

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Nov 20, 2017

VR experiences don't need to be complex or lengthy, but the depth of League of War: VR Arena is virtually non-existent. It tries to espouse a sense of strategy, but the execution is so simplistic that it becomes all too easy to win (or sometimes lose) completely by accident by spamming the field with units. League of War is literally just a game of spawning units onto a bland tabletop battlefield. It's designed well and the VR works, but more than a year on from the PSVR launch, a game needs to do something more than simply work to impress as a virtual reality experience.

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Mar 2, 2017

With a lot more polish and focus on making VR a primary component of the game, DYING: Reborn VR could have been a great room escape experience for the platform. Instead it feels like its a hasty cash grab intended to capitalize on VR hype by being sold as a separate, pared down experience and not adapting the full extent of DYING: Reborn. This is the epitome of cut content being (poorly) repackaged and sold as a separate product, a truly bad move that disrespects the very audience it is trying to impress.

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Oct 16, 2016

Harmonix Music VR feels like it should have been a part of the PlayStation VR demo disc, or at least part of a compilation of VR experiences. By itself it lacks any real compelling reason to buy it. When I listen to music, it’s usually while doing something else. The idea of listening to Finch’s Say Hello to Sunshine through Harmonix Music VR doesn’t strike me as the best way to experience my favorite album. Getting past the reloads after each song, the lack of streaming support, and relatively limited overall scope, Harmonix Music VR is a mildly interesting virtual reality music player, but it’s not going to become a staple in either my gaming or music listening life.

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NERO is not fun. NERO might have a powerful story. NERO might look pretty. But NERO is not fun. Nor enjoyable. Or engaging. Or really anything that may have driven me to want to keep playing. The only thing that kept me playing was the review, because dammit I'm a games writer and that's what I do. For its few successes in deep storytelling and pretty visuals, it fails to come together in any meaningful way. Less interactive than a game. Slower to consume than a book. Not as visual as a movie. NERO takes storytelling's greatest mediums and takes away the reasons you would use each particular canvas to tell a story. The result is a slow technical mess that has something deep to say but doesn't know how to say it.

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Mar 30, 2018

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.

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4.5 / 10.0 - Basement Crawl
Feb 26, 2014

If it were a more robust experience, Basement Crawl could be a little gem. It's a simplistic sort of time-killing fun that I would expect out of a cheap mobile game, but as a full featured PS4 title, it feels like there is content missing and a lack of polish. Add to that the confusing nature of what Basement Crawl is really trying to be, the lack of anything to capture interest past playing a few matches, and the multiplayer-only focus which will create limitations when few people are online playing, and you have a game that probably isn't worth the space on your hard drive. You could wait for a sale, but even then, you'll probably have something better to play.

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5 / 10.0 - Cyberpunk 2077
Dec 18, 2020

Cyberpunk 2077, when it works, is a shallow popcorn flick of a video game, not a industry shaping experience that redefines the open-world RPG genre. Perhaps the bigger problem, particularly for console owners, is that Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't work. It's a mess of half-baked ideas and rough gameplay that should have never been released in the first place. While the PC version faces criticism for various issues and praise for others, the PS4 version of Cyberpunk 2077 feels and looks like a whole different game that simply needed a lot more time.

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5 / 10.0 - Skelattack
Jun 23, 2020

Skelattack is a game of exceptional mediocrity, a frustrating adventure with an identity crisis and a balance problem. It screams potential that it never even comes close to reaching as it draws obvious inspiration from numerous places, but fails to capture the charm and intention behind those progenitors. Its story and art is its strongest aspects, but the stagnant gameplay drags down what could have otherwise been a pretty good concept. There's a core of a good idea here, but like it's lead character, there's simply no meat on these bones.

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5 / 10.0 - Conan Exiles
Jun 6, 2018

With Conan Exiles, you're either in or you're out. There's a hardcore fanbase out there that loves this game, but there's an exceptionally high learning and enjoyment curve that will keep more casual players from getting invested enough to explore its deepest content or even wade around much in the shallow end. On a quality level, the game simply doesn't feel like it made it out of early access even though this is the full release. Add that the game is hardly optimized for controller and living room TV play, and this is a title that is hard to recommend outright. That said, for fans of survival games, there's a very intriguing game layered underneath walls, road bumps, and cliffs that need to be scaled to get there. And it's easy to lose hours of time simply figuring out how to build a house, or, you know, put on pants, but a lot of that can be chalked up to poor and barbaric design.

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5 / 10.0 - Theseus
Jul 25, 2017

There's a lot of potential to really have Theseus be a great adventure, but it ends before you can get invested at all, a slow burn with an all too rapid conclusion. It feels like the whole middle part of the game is missing, with a long intro leading right into the climax. If it hadn't played like a bad PS2 game. If it had been longer. If I had been less railroaded. If there had been a more meaningful buildup of the intriguing narrative. So many elements came together — or rather failed to coalesce — that make Theseus a less than memorable virtual reality experience, which is disappointing as I would love to have an engaging reason to play a unique virtual reality take on Greek mythology. Theseus just isn't it.

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5 / 10.0 - Gang Beasts
Dec 20, 2017

I like the idea of Gang Beasts on paper. Hell, I even like Gang Beasts when I see other players play. The jelly physics of up to eight players smashing into one another and trying to toss each other over the edge is great fun in theory, but becomes more of a frustrating chore and test of patience in practice. If there was a better training ground to at least get a handle on the bizarre physics and controls, that would go a long way to making the game more accessible to newcomers. Even if they had that, Boneloaf needs to get a handle on their connection issues before Gang Beasts can really start to step into its stride and potential as a hilarious  party game.

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May 4, 2014

My biggest disappointment in Spider-Man 2 is not inherently within its flaws or even that it is a licensed game. The problem is that a great game can be seen swimming just beneath the surface of the game that we ultimately got, but a severe lack of polish with the need to rush this out to match the film's release left what could have been a good game buried under mounds of flaws,  issues, and sheer drudgery. While there were aspects of this game that really could have been something special or even passable, I would have to say that the overall package of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 isn't really all that amazing.

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5.5 / 10.0 - Skate City
May 10, 2021

Skate City is buoyed up by its excellent and mellow lo-fi soundtrack, a veritable repository of chill beats to skate to. This defining aspect helps elevate a simple concept to put you in the right mood to engage with it. While the visuals are nothing to write home about and the finnicky controls can sometimes cause frustration, there's still something special about chilling out with a 20 minute skate session after a hard day's work, and discovering yet another great lo-fi tune. However it should have launched for consoles with at least all of the content and modes from the mobile version, if not more for its bigger platform debut. While Skate City is a relatively engaging and mellow experience overall, it's one I have a hard time recommending on console at its new premium asking price.

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5.5 / 10.0 - Ray's the Dead
Oct 21, 2020

More than seven years after its initial announcement, Ray's the Dead just doesn't feel like a finished game. Clunky gameplay and numerous bugs don't do the imbalanced and overly difficult encounters any favors, while certain other concepts in the game feel underexplored and go unutilized. It's potential to delve into unique puzzle mechanics is overshadowed by obnoxious and frustrating combat segments and bugs impacting critical elements of the gameplay. Ray's the Dead might have a lot of heart, but that heart is contained within a cumbersome rotting corpse crawling with bugs that make coming back from the dead more chore than triumph.

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Oct 1, 2020

The Walking Dead Onslaught is a serviceable enough Walking Dead VR game if it piques your interest, but its hard for me to recommend. While the ties to the AMC series are fun and interesting, Saints & Sinners is simply a better game. I traditionally don't like comparisons in reviews, but the release dates, themes, and mechanics of these two are just too close to ignore. Fans of AMC's The Walking Dead will probably enjoy Onslaught as a bit of supplementary material featuring characters and locations from the show, but Survios' take on the world is just an okay VR game that doesn't strike any notable chords for either The Walking Dead or VR in general.

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SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated is a fun enough game in its own right, but it's encumbered with the weight of near-ancient game design practices. It's new bright visuals bring Bikini Bottom to life in a whole new way, with character animations now better portraying the classic cartoon than ever before, but its gameplay is still firmly anchored to 2003, some of which has been negatively impacted by its updated visuals. At its core, Rehydrated is a repetitive and cumbersome 2003 platformer. A bit of water in 2020 isn't enough to soak new life into this old dried up sponge.

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May 1, 2020

Predator: Hunting Ground is a haphazard collection of intriguing yet incomplete concepts slapped together into a mediocre experience.

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5.5 / 10.0 - The King’s Bird
Feb 26, 2019

The King's Bird has a lot of potential in both the challenging and the serene, but its tolerances for mistakes get just a little bit too tight. It wants to be two games. On the one side, there's an almost Journey-like indie with beautiful gameplay, audio, and visuals that calm the mind and soothe the soul. On the other, Serenity Forge wanted to create tough challenges that would feel like a triumph to overcome. While I was completely on board with the marriage of ideas at first, the two began to clash somewhere along the way as the trials no longer supported the gameplay. What Serenity Forge managed to do with the visuals and sound is on another level, but the loose gameplay mechanics never quite fit into how precise the challenges are designed to be. I wanted more of what The King's Bird was, and less of what it became.

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