TJ Denzer's Reviews
The only thing Umbrella Corps succeeds in is convincing us Umbrella is the worst and most incompetent company anyone could ever have the misfortune of working for.
Hellbound & Undressed has elements fans will enjoy, and if you dig, you can find quirky and interesting things here, but if it catches you having too much fun, be prepared to have that stripped from you like a finely quaffed set of Shadow Soul clothes. This game is a constant chore to enjoy and should be reserved for the folks that really want to see where the series began.
genuinely enjoy when a game can innovate meaningfully in this evermore cramped space. Hyper Scape brings a lot of concepts to the table that, in theory, I thought were interesting, but the execution… this ain’t it.
There’s an action game underneath all of Wanted: Dead’s problems that is not half bad, especially if you liked games like No More Heroes, Devil’s Third, and Wet. It’s ridiculous in its context and action. Unfortunately, for everything good I could say about this game, there was at least one or two things keeping me from enjoying it. Between cringe-worthy dialogue, game crashes, clashing moods, random and ridiculously difficult moments, and broken mechanics, Wanted: Dead takes a lot of effort just to play, let alone enjoy. Here’s hoping they can smooth out some of the technical issues after launch, but even then, this might be a title only the truly dedicated will tolerate for long.
There a lot of elements of SkateBIRD that are great. The birds are fun, as is customizing them and finding more things with which to dress them up. Their little adventure is also fun, the soundtrack is excellent, and the levels are fun miniaturized takes on the normal skatepark fare. It’s just that there is so much dragging these charming elements down, the most noticeable of which is the actual skating and the physics involved with it. SkateBIRD might be fun to experience for its premise and cuteness, but those looking for a good technical skate game experience will likely find their expectations crashing and burning frequently, much like most of my sessions with it.
I also wish some narrative sections played out to their end and the choices mattered a bit more, but Foreclosed tells its story and gets out. I can’t fault it for not overstaying. If you want a snappy cyberpunk adventure it might be worth seeing how the story of Evan Kapnos and his fight for his own identity play out. Just be prepared to deal with some average and occasionally frustrating gameplay all along the way.
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.
There are bugs in the game that make it feel frustrating and unfinished. At many points I felt like I was fighting the game simply to play it, and while there's tons of promise, the current product just doesn't feel worth the effort it takes to play.
Majestic foundation quickly devolves into a human meat grinder, and not in a good way
In many ways everything that led up to No Man’s Sky felt like some sort of conscription ad campaign. “See the universe! Explore the unknown!” It’s all very enticing and delivers on a lot of amazing feelings, but like most things of this nature, it’s not always all it’s cracked up to be.
Into the Stars is the type of game that will push you on those very grounds and once you’re in it, the journey is great the first few times.
The world of Sym is very cool, but the flaws that don't belong really hurt the overall beauty of the game.
I’m not really upset that I went back to Gargoyles to re-explore some fun childhood memories. This game was special to me as a huge fan of the cartoon series, and I really liked how they adapted the old graphics into a new art style that was so much closer to the animation. I also like that the old graphics and sounds are still here and you can switch back and forth between them as much as you wish. I find it hard to credit Gargoyles Remastered for having a rewind button, because I think it’s simply a necessity to alleviate the frustration of a ridiculously difficult game. It also doesn’t fully alleviate that frustration because of its limitations. Gargoyles Remastered is an interesting and pretty walk down memory lane, but you’d better be ready to have any rose-colored glasses shattered by its unforgiving gameplay if you take that walk.
I’ll give AEW Fight Forever this: When I was playing actual matches, many of my problems faded into the background. The actual wrestling is a good time and up to four players can throw down in a massive variety of ways with a huge roster or their own created characters. It’s when I came away from the squared circle and had to look at other parts of the game that its flaws were hard to ignore. Even so, I think THQ Nordic, Yuke’s, and AEW have a good start here. They’ve made a game that is at least fun to play and feels good in the ring, which is arguably the most important part. If there’s another AEW game, I’d like to see Create-a-Wrestler, crossplay, and the overall presentation of the game rise to meet the gameplay. For now, I’ll just try not to spend too much time outside the squared circle in Fight Forever.
Despite the stark lack of context, Hello Neighbor VR: Search & Rescue has an interesting house to explore with fun environmental puzzles, an unnerving persistent threat, and an interesting dynamic between the kids all working to help each other move forward in the house by degrees. It’s just all gummed up in unreasonably janky interactions and contrivances. I’m also not thrilled that it does nothing to ease you into the game, making it an utterly confusing experience for anyone who hasn’t been on board with Hello Neighbor already. I would like to think this can be a starting point of what to do and what not to do for tinyBuild and Steel Wool Studios if they go for a VR Hello Neighbor again. The puzzle and environment design is good, but they need to put a lot more time into what makes both a comfortable and responsive VR experience.
It’s a decent enough arcade shooter, and if you look at it that way, the length and mood of the game make sense. However, it doesn’t make as much sense as a game with the Dark Pictures moniker. As widely varied as the quality of those games have been, they take the time to tell a story. Switchback doesn’t. It focuses on the gunplay, action, and thrills. While it does a decent enough job of that, the performance issues bring even that end down a bit. If you’re a fan of Supermassive’s brand of horror, it would be hard for me to recommend this over their other games. If you want to play something more like a modern light gun horror that makes decent use of the PS VR2’s technology, then you could do worse than Switchback, but you could also do better.
SD Gundam Battle Alliance has me at odds because there’s a lot of things I like about it and a lot of things I don’t, both as a Gundam fan and just a general player. The mobile suits and pilots are fun to collect and explore. The story and missions are also fairly well-done and I like the look of the super deformed versions of a lot of my favorite mobile suits from across the series. My big miff is that the difficulty spike between series of missions makes repeatedly playing the same scenarios to level up your pilots and mobile suits a near-mandatory chore. I also just don’t think it makes good use of the SD spinoff formula. Mix in some annoying inconveniences in camera and other gameplay design and while SD Gundam Battle Alliance may be fun at first, the luster will likely fade for many after a few hours.
The finished state of Balan Wonderworld is disappointing to say the least. For all of its style, I was really interested to see how they would expand upon the preview. The aesthetic and characters are there, the music is captivating, the level design made me want to explore and experiment where I could, and the abilities mostly gave me options to do so. However, these things are held down by a lot of contrivances and outright holes in either functionality or context. The final release of Balan Wonderworld felt like a rush job where good ideas, visuals, and sounds were forced to dance among either unfinished or unfun nonsense.
Resident Evil Resistance could be so much more with what it has on the surface, but what’s under the hood needs some thoughtful tweaking if Resistance is indeed a cause worth fighting for.
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.