Ryan Esler's Reviews
It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that this game is utter garbage of the hottest variety.
Never has a game retroactively ruined so many fond childhood memories. If it weren't for the absolutely out of this world soundtrack, THPS 5 would have literally no redeeming features.
Need for Speed Payback is a travesty of a game. Between 9 minute cycles of waiting at a vendor refreshing so I could buy better parts for my car, flying about a map populated with enough meaningless activities acting as filler, and the atrocious ending, it’s hard to pick out a point where I could say genuinely say the experience was fun.
I was so desperate for Hello Neighbor to end that I regularly sought out ways to try and bypass the intended game. There could be something buried deep down, but the general execution of this steal-horror blend holds it back drastically. Even the quaint colourful world is hampered by the general sluggish feel and poor controls.
It's not that Carmageddon is a bad game, in fact I am fairly sure that there was a brief moment that I actually enjoyed it(possible onset Stockholm syndrome), but there isn't a single point I could pick out as being good either. The fact that the biggest accomplishment of Carmageddon: Max Damage is that the developers have managed to make seeking out revenge on pedestrians and smashing other characters up in a fit of road rage incredibly dull.
As much as I wanted to love Warriors All-Stars, I couldn’t. There was something missing, even though the graphics were marvellously polished. With a massive lack of variety and a rather taxing effort required to fully appreciate the story in its entirety, I ultimately felt that it wasn’t worth the effort, which is a horrible thing to say about a once beloved franchise. Deep down I wanted Warriors All-Stars to be a game-changer, but it wound up as a game changer.
Alekhine's Gun feels like returning to a game that your friends thought was great on the PS2, but it was released in 2016 and on modern consoles.
Homefront: The Revolution started with troubled development and has obviously suffered greatly with changing teams, developers, and ultimately publishers throughout it's lifetime, an issue encountered by a great many games over the past few years. In amongst a largely broken and unoptimised game I was still able to find some fun, albeit it shortlived.
It was clear that Star Wars Battlefront II had some issues prior to release, but I’d never have guessed that they were this big. It’s a bitter disappointment to see a game with such promise turn to the dark side.
At this point, all that remains of Dead Rising is the name. A once interesting and promising franchise has been neutered, changed for a more palatable creation. Dead Rising 4 could have been something, anything, but instead chooses to be a “cash in” on holiday season and a further diluted formula.
When I first picked up Rogue Stormers I felt a sense of longing for games passed, just like Contra and Metal Slug, but the reality of Rogue Stormers brought those daydreams to a halt. It’s poor execution and rather clunky controls stopped me from truly investing myself and instead started to question should this type of game really make a return.
A very buggy attempt at recreating Dead Island with a very overwrought approach in distancing itself from the obvious inspiration. Without a massive patch, Dying Light can't really explain why it should stand out from the crowd.
It seems to be a common theme in Echo that the truly interesting parts fade, slowly losing their selves to the repeated barrage of ideas at the forefront.
In the end, Hellblade is a game that wants to have its cake and eat but forgets that it’s a game first and foremost. At times I found myself extremely bored with the repetitive nature of the game’s design. Open or vaguely circular arenas always painfully signposted another combat section and the visual puzzles, no matter how interesting at first, felt overplayed.
It’s a shame really, because under a whole load of mess, there’s a game just waiting to be refined and perfected. Shadow of War did in fact right some wrongs, but it lumped them in with some odd choices that really prevent you from investing in a system that they have peacocked left and right.
Ultimately, Mirror's Edge Catalyst falls short of all our hopes and dashes what little faith I had in the series, pun intended. There are some truly brilliant moments and Mirror's Edge Catalyst looks gorgeous and feels brilliant to navigate once you finally get all the gadgets and extended slides etc. but forcing you through the campaign to get any real modicum of enjoyment hurts the experience drastically.
Destiny struggles to justify the promised 10 years of gameplay and fails to deliver a story worthy of losing yourself in. While guns feel and look great, the experience feels hollow. It won't be enough to appease the players looking for the heyday of Bungie's Halo 3 online experience and it offers nowhere near enough content to persuade MMO fans to abandon their current heavy hitters.
Toukiden 2 could have been a gateway drug. It could have stolen away countless hours from my other vices. Yet the fact that my progress online with friends had no impact on the offline components and their general structure meant that I was often lonely in running around the massive sprawling map of Toukiden 2. There are some really interesting elements buried deep between the long walks and repetitive monsters, but I feel that I was never invested enough to stay a little longer and find out just what they were.
Ultimately Rise & Shine just didn’t hit the spot for me. Failing to reach the end I often found myself frustrated with no real satisfaction. There was never a grand pay off for my achievements and several bugs relating to dying would often result in completely killing the game and starting several checkpoints back.
Berserk and the Band of the Hawk is a game made for fans; Musuo and Berserk. Berserk fans will pick at the intricacies, or lack thereof, in the story mode and Musuo fans will lament it for the lack of innovation and shallow offerings. It’s a hard sell for either market, but for what it is worth; I did enjoy seeing the characters come to life on screen and flying through levels in the berserker armour.