Samuel Guglielmo's Reviews
Indivisible has some fantastic art and one of the most fun combat systems I've gotten to play with in an RPG. It's a shame it's brought down by a boring story, terrible writing, confusing moments, and some absolutely atrocious platforming
While I understand it's trying to emulate the movie, this ultimately makes Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son not any fun to play. Having to repeat the same tedious, overly lengthy, and often difficult, minigames over and over is just not fun. While I can say I was impressed with the storytelling and voice acting, and it really did feel a lot of effort went into making the game feel just like the movie. I just wish it was actually fun to play.
Perhaps most important, for the first time, I actually felt like I understood the Souls genre with The Surge 2. It's the first one that made me actually feel anything other than annoyed and confused and that I wanted to actually stick around to see the end of. It still has issues, and I'd love to see more enemy variety, but I can safely say that I'll be back for whatever Deck 13 has planned next.
Devil's Hunt is absolutely awful. A barely functional, extremely boring, completely nonsensical character action game.
Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to) has the one major goal of making the world less lonely, and it manages that exceedingly well.
Gears 5's campaign is the best the series has seen, and Escape mode is a brilliant new addition. It's fun to play, beautiful to look at, and full of some of the best characters the series has ever seen.
Look, I honestly expected The Angry Birds Movie 2 VR: Under Pressure to have been an obvious stinker with no redeeming qualities. Instead, it's a perfectly solid local co-op game that can be worth a few runs with some friends. Is it great? Nah. Does it have issues? Certainly. But don't be like me and just turn it away because of its dubious origins. More VR games should look at catering to the local co-op crowd anyway.
While it has a fantastic high level concept, Creature in the Well quickly realizes it has no idea what to actually do with it and becomes a repetitive slog before long.
Knights and Bikes is a fun, frantic, top-down adventure game with some light puzzle and combat elements that I imagine would be more appreciated by either a younger crowd or a parent playing with their kid. If you're looking for a solid co-op adventure, this can easily fill the void. Even solo it's still fun enough to be worth a look. Just be ready for a few awkward moments, and a seriously terrible UI.
Control combines a fantastically weird setting with fast paced combat, awesome exploration, and impressively destructible environments. It's an absolute gem of a game. Just make sure you get it on PC or an upgraded console.
Gravity Ghost: Deluxe Edition is a bittersweet game about acceptance, and a relaxing platformer to boot. Also, it has a real good fox.
Lightstep Chronicles features some great characters and world building, but some lame puzzles and weird design choices drag it down.
Wolfenstein Cyberpilot is a video game where you decapitate a statue of Hitler and somehow feel absolutely no thrill, interest, or anything vaguely resembling fun.
Etherborn has all the good ideas for a clever puzzle game. Then it ends after only four levels, never exploring its mechanics in a way that makes them stand out.
Dollhouse has some honestly good mechanics and ideas, and can be fun to play in short bursts. It's just repetitive, and it's unique multiplayer modes have likely never been played.
The Sinking City has a fantastic story, atmosphere, and investigations, leading to something that feels genuinely unique. It's just a shame that it's brought down by an overabundance of crummy combat and glitches.
At its peak, Bubsy: Paws on Fire! is a generic runner that brings nothing new to the genre other than messed up hitboxes, poor controls, and awful padding. It also tries to be a boring SHMUP for some reason.
Observation combines weird sci-fi and cosmic horror with clever adventure gameplay and amazing atmosphere.
While it tries a few unique things, Days Gone's awful writing, abundance of glitches, and boring cookie cutter gameplay doesn't really make it worth spending time on.
Jupiter & Mars is lovely to look at and listen too. I just wish it was actually fun to play.