Alex Santa Maria's Reviews
In Dicey Dungeons, everything is already on the table. It’s a highly replayable game that you can pick up for short sessions whenever the moment strikes.
Taken as a whole, Rad does more right than it does wrong.
If you're a fan of any breed of first-person shooters, Ion Fury should be on your playlist. Even among its retro FPS peers, 3D Realms has put out a best-in-class experience that rivals anything released this year.
Metal Wolf Chaos has more than earned its place in video game history, but playing this XD rerelease in 2019 is a blast from the past that's pretty hard to swallow.
Despite its flaws, Lightbearer is praiseworthy for what it brings to the table. It’s a wonderful halfway point between full-on walking sims like Gone Home and murderous first-person shooters.
If you've been scared off of Cage's work before and you don't mind a tale that takes itself much too seriously, you might just be hooked by Jodie's journey.
Nothing from the weird upgrade change to the technical glitches stops Redeemer from being enjoyable. It’s a solid brawler that hits hard and delivers a fun action movie good time for a few hours.
Blazing Chrome is an amazing package that does exactly what it sets out to do and is for people who know what they want from it. By the same (arcade) token, it is difficult to recommend to anyone who even begins to question whether it’s a game for them.
Nothing here will blow you away, and there are better digital implementations out there. It does just enough to get the job done. As we’ve seen with many releases on Switch, that’s usually enough for most people.
Even if you’ve already tired yourself out on retro shooters, Amid Evil deserves your attention as a well-crafted and unique entry in the genre. Whatever New Blood Interactive ends up doing next for FPS, it’s going to be hard to top this opening one-two punch.
This game will certainly find a well-deserved place of love among the hardest of the hardcore. In fact, it’ll be great to witness a speedrun or two after the final release. However, for the general player, My Friend Pedro finds solidarity with a forgettable summer blockbuster.
In my time with Three Kingdoms, I gained a healthy respect for what Total War is.
With just a bit more visual flair, Splitgate: Arena Warfare could jump out and make a name for itself in a crowded market with its solid fundamentals and inventive blend of portals and gunplay.
Ultimately, its minuscule shortcomings don’t drag down Void Bastards from its lofty place among the greats of first-person roguelikes.
The developers really capture the ’90s Genesis aesthetic without the system’s technical limitations as this is a gorgeous pixel game that features huge detailed sprites and colorful backgrounds.
Rage 2 has incredible gunplay and brilliant graphics, but that spit and polish can't hide its lame open world and generic characters. It all adds up to a paint by numbers open-world shooter that players will forget about as soon as the credits roll.
Sniper Elite V2 Remastered brings a classic into the modern age. There are plenty of new bells and whistles, but the core gameplay and design remain the same. For better and worse.
The masterful character work and slowly building absurdity prove that this game isn’t just a joke, even if it does have a giant purple dildo bat in it.
With a scattershot selection of games and a slapdash presentation, Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection misses the mark. The games are playable, but this doesn't feel like the definitive way to preserve these classics. It instead feels like a school project thrown together during an all-nighter.
All of this leads to Katana Zero being a tough game to enthusiastically recommend. If you can ignore gameplay flaws and focus on style, you might fall in love with its VHS trappings. However, if you want something beyond style, if you want an interesting interactive tale or a precise action game, you should look elsewhere.