Chandler Wood's Reviews
There's a lot to love in Agents of Mayhem, which makes the pitfalls harder to swallow. An imaginative story and cast of characters is burdened by an uninspired and soulless open-world. Exciting character combat gets pushed out of the limelight by notable slowdown and other bugs that inhibit gameplay. In a day where open-world games are evolving and giving players a lot more depth, meaning, and life, Agents of Mayhem feels like a step backwards. Volition ought to consider either abandoning or stepping up the open-world if they decide to continue the franchise.
In terms of exciting moments and fun, varied competitive combat, LawBreakers has a great lock on what makes players want to play, both from the fast-paced competitive side and the specialized character side. While it could do with more in the way of tutorials to teach players how to play, it does an excellent job of balancing each match to feel immediate and competitive, while also keeping the cadence that makes some of the slower multiplayer games more fun to play. It's inexpensive launch price and promise never to tread the waters of microtransactions help to sell a game that is easy to pick up and fun to play, but has enough nuance to keep players coming back for a long time.
Orcs Must Die! Unchained is a shining example of how to balance a free-to-play game to be engaging without paying, yet rewarding if you do decide to drop some money into it. The wave-based gameplay is a lot of fun, particularly when playing with other people, and the unique versus mode creates a whirlwind of cooperation and competition. Robot Entertainment could have done a little more to tailor the PS4 release specifically to the console, as well as better functions for quick communication during online matches, but these are small gripes on an otherwise great experience.
Dino Frontier is an impeccably charming adventure, one that feels like physically playing with a bunch of cowboy figures and plastic dinosaurs. There's the foundation for a really solid and unique simulation builder game, not to mention another great application of virtual reality, but Dino Frontier never plays to its strengths as a game. Building the town and training the dinosaurs ends up being a linear experience without the kind of freedom you would expect from a builder, though still has the charm of opening up a toy box and imagining a world where dinosaurs and cowboys roam the Wild West together.
CastleStorm VR is not a necessary VR release, but it is a fun one, showing the possibilities for traditionally non-VR titles on the platform. Head tracking works well, and playing the game feels like you are playing with a physical medieval play set. If you've played CastleStorm before, it may not be worth picking up again. At the end of the day, this is the same game that's been coming out in various forms for the last four years, but I've had the most fun playing it in virtual reality. With CastleStorm constantly updating and making better versions of itself, I'm just waiting for Zen Studios to announce a sentient CastleStorm's campaign run in 2020.
Smashbox Arena is not the type of game you expect to like. I thought it would be a quick and easy game to write off and call yet another mediocre attempt at utilizing the virtual reality platform. At a glance, it looks like some college programmer's senior project that they hammered out over a couple of semesters. In practice, Smashbox Arena ends up being a lot of fun, with precise tracking and fast paced competitive gameplay that hides a lot of depth and strategy, but it's ultimately held back my a number of technical issues and the lack of a strong online community.
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.
It feels disingenuous to even try and write words about Pyre, another Supergiant masterpiece. I don't feel that my prose can even begin to match the resplendent beauty that permeates this journey through the Downside. If only that I could stand there in front of the Scribesgate once more listening to the Lone Minstrel and the Gate Guardian sing the hymn as the Rites commence once more. For as amazing Pyre was, I'll just have to find myself exiled once more to find freedom in the flame.
Another visually noteworthy PSVR game, Archangel blends immersive storytelling with a complex rail shooter to let players live out their mech fantasies. Very little replay value and a high launch price tag of $40 for a three to five hour game may drive away some, but Skydance Interactive has managed to capture the enveloping magic of virtual reality to tell a personal narrative while at the same time creating a strong VR rail shooter as the vehicle to tell it.
Much like the fauna that inhabits its world, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a beautifully odd creature. The things it does well it does extremely well, which leaves me baffled at some of the obvious drawbacks that limit its scope and longevity. With that said, I am massively impressed by what such a small team was able to accomplish, and the attractive launch price certainly makes it all the more appealing. I hope Prideful Sloth can take their experience creating a varied and fascinating world and expand the purview of the crafting and farming to have more meaning in the future, but until that release I've thoroughly enjoyed seeing all that Gemea has to offer, even if my feet feel a little blistered from the journey.
The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was clearly developed with a love and passion for those original games. The updated graphics are a beautiful sight to behold, even if you aren't using a PS4 Pro, and yet these are the same quirky platformers that we came to love and be frustrated with in the '90s. Some of the original design idiosyncrasies are still in place, but the majority of memories made with Crash are good ones, and I never want them to change. Significant replayability and an excellent entry price point make the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy a benchmark for how future classic game remakes should be handled, the originals left intact, imperfections and all.
Arizona Sunshine is a good game, but doesn't hit the great status it could have had by being an earlier PSVR release. I have to commend the developers for putting a lot of hard work into making every control scheme feel good. It's nice to not feel like you have to own an extra peripheral to play, but to be rewarded if you do. I was surprised that many of the complaints players had with the original PC versions weren't addressed in this release, but I still had a lot of fun shooting zombies in virtual reality while listening to a nuanced narrative of a survivor fighting to maintain his sanity as the Arizona sun sets on the horizon.
There are a lot of good pieces in place here, with the gameplay mechanics and the co-op, but they've been packaged in a very scant box that doesn't do them justice. Ancient Amuletor needs to be more than a short PSVR experience that is barely longer than the demo that's already available for free. Perhaps all of the elusive "Coming Soon" content will fix that, but at launch Ancient Amuletor finds its quiver running out of arrows too soon.
Rime is a game about loss. Rime is a game about grief. Rime is a game that I'm not ashamed to say made me cry. It's a beautiful journey and doesn't seek to simply entertain, but rather to touch the player's soul on a deeply emotional level through engagement and interaction. On the surface Rime is a great looking adventure full of puzzles set in a mysterious and living environment. At its core, Rime is something so much more. By weaving stunning art and engaging gameplay with a brutally emotional narrative, Rime blurs the line between touching the heart and entertaining the player in a way that few games have truly achieved.
Farpoint is a long awaited title for PSVR, and one that does as many things right as it does wrong. It's as revolutionary as it is dated, being a necessary forward step in the evolution of virtual reality, but ultimately a game that will be as forgotten as any console's launch titles. The gunplay and story are both good experiences, but decidedly separate from one another. Farpoint is best experienced with the Aim controller, ending up as a game that highlights the amazingly immersive capabilities of this new peripheral while never really making a strong mark for itself.
A game doesn't always need to be flashy in order to be great. It doesn't need the backing of a major license. Sometimes it just needs to do what it sets out to do very well to stand out above the rest. VR Invaders is a superbly crafted bullet hell VR game that is highlighted not by an ostentatious setting, but rather excellent game design. It's just a shame that excellent game design in VR more often than not means the experience ends far too early, lacking a good balance between mechanics and content.
GNOG is a curious beast; an odd monster, or series of monsters rather. It's a visual and auditory treat, with bright colors and rich soundscapes highlighting a bizarre game that doesn't seem to really have much direction or purpose. The puzzles are fun to poke, prod, and figure out, particularly in VR where each puzzle diorama head really has a chance to come to life in front of you, but the sense of wonder GNOG tries to invoke fades too quickly, leaving me with the feeling that this is more a sensory artifice than it is a digital Rubik's Cube.
What Remains of Edith Finch is one of the most engaging pieces of interactive storytelling I've had the pleasure of experiencing. I walked away at the end of the credits strangely satisfied by being unsatisfied. These brief but intimate windows into the most tragic of the Finch family's moments leave so many questions unanswered, but give just enough to let your imagination fill in the holes. I felt that I had really explored the sad and storied history of this house and family, discovering only what the walls wanted to show me. The rest was left wrapped in mystery as I stood the final living member of the Finch bloodline. Through uniquely visceral methods, Giant Sparrow made sure that my familiarity with the Finches at their most tragic moments made me feel like a part of the family.
Late Shift is an excellent FMV game and a unique point in interactive cinema. It's a vastly interesting new way to allow the viewer to change the outcome of the movie they are watching, but has the very odd position of trying to sell itself as neither a movie or a game, but at the same time, both. What I am most interested to see is how Late Shift impacts the future of media. It might just be a flash in the pan, but if we end up one day having an Oscar nominated film that is also a Game of the Year contender, I can safely say that Late Shift will be seen as the original piece of interactive cinema that provided the catalyst for that potential combined media future.
As a remake of 1989's game of the year, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is a brilliant and beautiful recreation. The SEGA classic has been honored by developers who were clearly a fan of the original game and there's a lot of heart that shows through the hand-drawn visuals and classical instrument soundtrack. There are some inherent flaws that have been present for 28 years which don't explain some of the more vague complexities, and without the nostalgia factor to highlight the classic, it could seem like just another indie metroidvania — albeit an exceptionally exquisite one — but Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is a great example of a game made with the kind of passion that sometimes gets lost in the massive productions of modern gaming.