TJ Denzer's Reviews
Rezrog is a give and take of fairly enjoyable character building and somewhat tedious and repetitive dungeon crawling.
In the end, Synthetic Dawn adds a good amount of content onto the core Stellaris game for a reasonably small investment. It doesn't do everything perfectly and could use some mid-campaign meat, but the machine races certainly set themselves apart from their organic counterparts in a grand slew of ways that are fun to interact with and play.
Total War: Warhammer 2 continues to hoist the bar even higher for both Total War and Warhammer.
From top to bottom, JYDGE is a heck of a run-and-gunner. It takes a minimalistic approach to story to give players the simple charm of the futuristic law enforcer that reminds of good '80s and '90s movies of the sort. Then it melds that environment with a slick combat system that keeps on giving and taking until your jydge is a cavalcade of murderous tools with which to deal out deadly justice, and for which every player will find their own preference.
If you bring some friends or find a few, Tree of Life is a lush environment that will give back in kind.
Field of Glory II is a testament to the sheer wealth of consideration and ingenuity that Slitherine and Byzantine games have put into hybridizing a tabletop and digital strategy experience.
Stars in Shadow: Legacy isn't a drastic shift in direction, but it is some pretty meaningful additional content at a small price tag.
Rogue Trooper Redux Polishes Its War, But Keeps Some Baggage
For the most part, The Inner World – The Last Wind Monk makes a strong case that point-and-click adventures still have a lot to offer in modern gaming.
Hand of Fate 2 improves upon nearly every aspect of the original, providing diverse new challenges that help build the world around the Game of Life and Death. The new scenarios, the success checks that come with them, the companions, and new encounters and gear cards all add hundreds of unique touches to the game that make every card flip an experience.
Call of Duty: WWII Is A Beautifully Dark, But Flawed Return To The Series' Roots
Spintires: MudRunner Is A Tough, But Rewarding Ride
Black Mirror Re-explores An Adventure Of Madness And Lineage
With so much to explore and unravel in this game, plus accessible daily puzzles, Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy feels like a game we could get lost in for a good, long time.
We’ll come out and say it: Darksiders Genesis feels a lot like some of our favorite parts of the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games mixed with Darksiders tone and puzzle-solving.
It’s a game that feels like it should have had a big manual when it first launched, but without that manual, you only have half the picture, and so you’re stumbling around in the dark trying to make sense of everything.
Ultimately, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics feels like two love letters in the same package. It clearly goes out of its way to deliver the narrative of the Netflix series in a reasonably solid fashion, and utilizes some of the best parts of tactical RPG games that came before to do it. That said, it misses the mark on certain elements.
Media Molecule made me feel like I opened Photoshop for the first time again, but this time I feel ready to learn all of its tricks and make something amazing, and I sincerely hope others will take the journey to do the same and make the Dreams network a vast universe of creativity.
Even with its issues, Granblue Fantasy Versus is still hands-down one of the most beautiful and accessible fighters I’ve played in years, and with its prominent place on the mainstage at EVO 2020 and other major fighting game tournaments, I can’t wait to see how Cygames and Arc System Works support it throughout the year.
As it is, I feel like I have to genuinely and methodically take notes of where each failure lies so as not to do it again, barring the fact that a mole and mastermind, or a grapple with a persnickety UI, won’t heck up my plans anyways. Save Koch is impressive in the weight of its narrative choices, but a little cushioning could have gone a long way in making unraveling its mystery more enticing.