Alex Santa Maria's Reviews
The Apex of portability, but at what cost?
Deftly dodge space debris in Habroxia 2.
Authentically retro gaming, warts and all.
A campaign cannot survive on dialogue alone.
The Apple Arcade showpiece arrives on Nintendo's portable.
More Gears shooting is never a bad thing.
Rogue Company proves its worth on current-gen.
All food, sleep, and play make Red & Blue happy.
When cubes attack, diamonds shoot back.
More Tetris Effect is never a bad thing.
Ubisoft's hacker title shines on Xbox Series X.
Planet Coaster on consoles is a game defined by its PC counterpart. It's slightly reduced in content but almost equal in complexity, for better or worse. We live in an age beyond console-specific PC ports like Civilization Revolution and Battlefield: Bad Company, but it still would have been great to see some console optimization for those looking for a plug-and-play experience in the living room. However, if players really want to dig into a huge sandbox of theme park creation, Planet Coaster is a deep and joyous rabbit hole that's worth an Annual Pass.
Harmonix's latest sports impressive tech.
There is a great game buried somewhere in The Falconeer, but it's trapped behind an open-world structure that does it no favors. Every choice beyond the aerial combat seems to backfire in one way or another, and while there are numerous unique enemies with interesting details, they all zoom by the player character at 90 miles an hour, so they go unnoticed. Story beats that sometimes defy fantasy tropes would pop up and intrigue, but there's no connective tissue to string players along. Even the combat isn't fun for long when it's shoved into busywork side missions made for the sole purpose of accruing gold.
There's certainly room for improvement in Ring of Pain, but what is here is an intriguing step forward for the genre that's just in time to celebrate the Halloween season. With a few content updates and a rebalance that lets players experience more of the game's arsenal more consistently, this could be a real contender. As it stands, it's an engaging mystery waiting to be solved, a gameplay loop that's perfect for shorter play sessions interspersed with more in-depth dungeon dives done elsewhere.
Despite its difficulties, Croteam has created a worthy modern interpretation of its franchise in Serious Sam 4. The shooting borrows from modern classics like DOOM while retaining the unique battles that give the series its cult classic status, and the narrative mostly succeeds when it remains over-the-top and completely carefree. Serious Sam 4 learns from what didn't work in Serious Sam 3 and should be on the radar of not just series fans but anyone who enjoys a good, well-made FPS. Seriously.
The few times that the RNG in BPM: Bullets Per Minute actually managed to put together a set of weapons and abilities that allowed for significant progress, the game shined, but it's just not worth the hours of suffering failed runs and mistimed shots. To borrow the game's own 90s shooter comparisons, playing BPM is like diving into Doom on Ultra Nightmare before learning how to play an FPS. The fun is still there, but it's buried under so many roadblocks and complications. The frustrating end result is a game with a great idea that bungles just about every part of the execution.
If players are just interested in the story of Marvel's Avengers and like what they've seen in the commercials and prereleases streams, the game provides just that. There isn't much more than that, unfortunately, and the multiplayer side of things doesn't seem to offer that much more in terms of variety or novel experiences. As a standalone Marvel experience, this gets the job done, but it certainly wasn't worth the years of buildup or the epic placement it has as one of the top AAA games of 2020. It's less of an Avengers: Endgame and more of an Ant-Man and the Wasp, a perfectly serviceable comic adventure that will draw players in when there's a new story available, but probably not before.
Completing puzzles and unlocking the various ways the game plays with its central mechanic all provide the catharsis of truly understanding each new environment and admiring the clever ways the developer wrapped everything together. From a pure gameplay perspective, it's a bit clunky, but you could say that about the work of many of the great artists and composers. Manifold Garden may not be much of a game, but it's surely an adventure that's worthy of some attention.
Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time is a surprisingly fleshed-out action game that should please both the Toonami faithful and those who miss a simpler time in the action genre.