Alex Santa Maria's Reviews
Metal: Hellsinger masters its genre mashup and provides metalheads and shooter fans alike with an innovative campaign they won't soon forget.
Preserving licensed games is a noble endeavor, and Digital Eclipse are the best in the business, but many of The Cowabunga Collection's inclusions are best left in the '90s.
Yars: Recharged will please fans of the 1981 original, but that isn't enough to excite in this day and age. Poorly implemented upgrades to aged mechanics and a flat presentation make this recharge run out of juice right out of the gate.
I’m glad I spent a few weeks with Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The experience didn’t make me a JRPG diehard, but expanding your horizons is always good. For anyone in a similar boat, this probably isn’t the game to start with, thanks to its overlong length and a combat system that can come off as tedious to the uninitiated.
Cult of the Lamb is devoted to a mix of gameplay styles that just doesn't gel. It's an addictive way to spend a dozen hours, but it's nothing worth your worship.
Redout 2 provides futuristic racing in the same manner that a school cafeteria provides meatloaf. This is a bland vision of the future that fails to capture the attention even despite a solid mechanical footing.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes has a lot going on both in combat and camp, and the result is a game that sometimes feels overstuffed but never fails to satisfy.
Shredder's Revenge brings the turtles out of their shells with great combat, a huge rogues' gallery, and a delightfully bright '80s environment.
WWE 2K22 is a solid effort that overcomes the problems of past years with ease, even if it will only appeal to a certain breed of wrestling fan.
Time Loader is a brief, puzzling journey that never even gets close to 88 miles per hour.
Shadow Warrior 3 is fun but forgettable, a whirlwind tour of demon slaying that latches onto FPS trends and provides little spice of its own.
CrossfireX is hard to recommend to just about anyone thanks to a painfully generic single player component and a baffling multiplayer offering.
Powerslave Exhumed's gameplay is a prime example of 90s shooter excellence, but the lack of modern convivence takes away from the fun.
OlliOlli World plays just as great as its extreme sports predecessors, but its pandering presentation makes the whole package feel like a letdown.
Siberian Mayhem recalls Sam's glory days in the best way, providing a bombastic adventure that doesn't overstay its welcome.
Windjammers 2 captures the excitement of the arcade original and caters heavily to existing fans, but fails to translate that fun to players stepping onto the court for the first time.
It's impossible to experience the greatest moments of GTFO without a group of friends, but the launch version of the game makes it worth the effort. 10 Chambers has developed a content-packed co-op shooter where it's exhilarating to succeed - and, crucially, it can even be fun to fail. There's just enough horror and action to satisfy a wide variety of players, but finding those players and gathering them on a regular basis can be a hassle. Still, anyone willing to do so will see that GTFO has a huge chance for success in the long term, especially if the developers continue to crank out more highly refined nightmares.
It's not often that a falling block puzzler can capture the imagination, but Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon finds a buried nugget of novelty in this well-worn ground. Even though it's possible to blast through the adventure, most players will find that savoring the gameplay and enjoying their time with the noble knights is the right call. Pocket Dungeon feels of a kind with Nintendo's various Mario spinoffs and should be an essential purchase for not just fans of the series but puzzle gaming aficionados everywhere.
While Hextech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story provides a great experience in short bursts, none of its levels feel as replayable as the best of the developer's past work or the best of the rhythm genre. This is a fatal flaw in a game with gated progression, and there are no supplementary modes or other features to distract from it. As it stands, the game's mix of mobile mechanics makes its release on traditional platforms baffling, and only those who are immediately intrigued by Ziggs in a game outside of League of Legends will get something substantial out of the final product in its current available forms.
At the very least, Vaas: Insanity succeeds more than Far Cry 6 proper at moving the franchise forward. By the same token, sanding off the hard edges of a character conceived in a much different world could sever the last few connections to Far Cry's glorious past. The DLC's roguelike structure feels novel but incomplete, another ultimately unsuccessful attempt at mixing things up after Far Cry: New Dawn's RPG elements and Far Cry 5's DLC adventures into new genres. If Ubisoft can do a better job of recapturing the spirit of its other two antagonists in the rest of Far Cry 6's season pass (or in the recently rumored Vaas film project) franchise fans may finally have something to celebrate in 2021.