Jake Arias's Reviews
It feels like Ayo was so concerned with establishing itself as a game and gradually ramping up the difficulty that it forgot to ensure that all of the things it does to those ends are fun and fair.
Hey, speaking of legs, this is a game where enemies can remove yours, leaving you to flail around helplessly as a torso in a desperate bid to fend off enemies with whatever crazy weaponry you have. Of course, that’s assuming that your arms haven’t been removed by a dinosaur, because that’s also a possibility, and you’re not going to be shooting anyone without arms. The fact that such sentences can be written in complete seriousness speaks to the utter absurdity of Tower 57, but it should also be mentioned that the game isn’t so wrapped up in craziness that it doesn’t do anything else.
Safe Mode changes the game in subtle ways, causing many of the game’s monsters to ignore your presence until you go out of your way to antagonize them, though a few enemies toward the middle of the game are strangely aggressive regardless. Of course, SOMA is still a thoroughly creepy experience that retains its general atmosphere of there being something horrible just around the next corner, so it’s worth mentioning that this isn’t a “make the game accessible for those who detest scary games” mode. Instead, it’s more akin to a “speed up gameplay by eliminating the need to slowly creep around monsters” mode. Even for gamers like me who avoid most horror-type games, though, SOMA delves into various consciousness and identity issues that you’re not likely to experience in any other game out there, and is well worth fighting through for that reason.
A Walk in the Park is a slightly hesitant but undeniably enjoyable step in a direction the burgeoning genre has yet to explore, and one that hopefully sends a message that games like this don’t need to be crushingly dark (tonally and visually) to be enjoyable.
The story and characters are on the thin side, but nevertheless a step up from Pirate Queen’s Quest. The mechanics, meanwhile, are interesting, but the usual Shantae endgame difficulty spike (this has become a pun over time as each endgame incorporates more and more literal instant-death spikes) pushes them further than they can comfortably go.
There are enough positives here that it feels like a few fresh eyes could come in and polish this into an amazing 2D fighting game for beginners, but it’s not there yet.
By the time you reach the final 150th stage, you’ll have died thousands of times, and not all of those deaths will be your fault. Again, this is typical of a Game Boy game, but misleading hit boxes and miscellaneous eccentricities that cause you to instantly die minutes into a tedious level are the type of cheap difficulty best left in the past, and this cheapness has a way of overshadowing all of the good things Madcap Castle does.
All I knew going into the Xbox One version of Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China was that it was an arcade-style flying game originally released for the PC, and one that Steam’s user reviews were decidedly split on for whatever reason. A significant number of the complaints seemed to be focused on various errors impeding the ability to play, however, or invoked other arcade-style flying games (which is generally code for “I went in expecting something different and this thumbs down doesn’t actually reflect anything but those original expectations”). I always relish the opportunity to drill deep into unfamiliar territory and figure out which criticisms are valid and which aren’t, and right off the bat, the fact that I finished the campaign in something like 3 hours suggests that those centered around Shadows Over China’s length have merit.
I went around looking for reviews to see if it was worth my time, only to discover a vast canyon separating those who enjoy the game and those who hate it. Some people were sanctimoniously finger-wagging, of course, while others more familiar with the niche spoke favorably of it because of course they did. Lost in all of that noise was the answer to the single nagging question I had: is Omega Quintet actually a good game or not? Having now played through it for myself, I can confidently answer that question with a “sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
When Candleman first released as an Xbox One exclusive in January of 2017, it ended suddenly and without warning on a seriously depressing note entirely at odds with the whimsical tone it had maintained up to that point. You can still find comments about this in reviews of the time. Flash forward ten months and it received a free expansion called "Lost Light" that not only added several more levels, but also continued the story so that it ended on a much more uplifting note. Having now played through the "Complete Journey" version for PC that includes both the base game and Lost Light's content, I can't help but suspect that the original ending was the result of the developer or publisher rushing the game out to meet a deadline. It's incredibly difficult to imagine the Lost Light expansion not being an originally planned part of the game given how much more naturally it ends the story, but if it truly was something tacked on to address concerns about the bleakness of the original ending, then its quality is laudable in its own right.
A book could be written about the numerous meandering, intermittently functional conversations that at first seem to exist solely to create needless drama, but quickly pivot to take on a confessional tone. It’s ironic for a game that pushes oppressive-religion themes so vigorously to eventually devolve into what appears to be a self-pitying writer vicariously self-flagellating using their stand-ins, denying anyone real closure or redemption because everyone is written to be deserving of punishment. At the end of the day, though, it just makes me tired. This game is draining in all the wrong ways.
[W]hile the controls and general mechanics take a little getting used to at first and lend themselves to moments so frustrating that the thought of throwing a controller through a window suddenly doesn’t seem so crazy anymore, it doesn’t take long before your muscle memory adapts. Wulverblade is a gem, then, though one occasionally marred by some questionable design decisions that seem to prioritize style at the expense of the gameplay.
It starts to feel similarly passive-aggressive in the way it does things, too, including a fake ending that plays out countless hours of busywork prior to the real ending. That means we’re dealing with pacing issues in a game that, like its predecessor, still agonizes fruitlessly over how it can best pay homage to Chrono Trigger’s legacy while blatantly ignoring the things that were actually good about that game.
Much of this game is simply bad—the platforming is bad, the puzzles are bad, the combat is passable at best, and even the graphics manage to create real problems. That’s to say nothing of the minigames and boss fights, either, which range from trivial to outright infuriating. Sometimes you’ll play a game and notice it fraying at the edges, but Crossing Souls is in a more advanced state of disrepair.
To put it bluntly, this is a game that completely loses its pull once you figure it out because there’s only one efficient way of succeeding, and while you can technically engage in some of the game’s superfluous, almost decorative mechanics, there’s no real reason to do so.
There are numerous rough edges that can make learning how to play truly infuriating, and having to take certain things into consideration to avoid being killed by something stupid that shouldn’t be possible really isn’t fair to the player. That having been said, this is one of those “short burst” games designed in a way that’s ideal for speedrunning, and while I’ve never delved very far into that world outside of one or two exceptions, there’s a certain je ne sais quoi to Hellmut that pushed me to do a little better each time.
Sadly, One Eyed Kutkh isn’t very good.
If you go by looks, it’d be easy to say that this is a game where the primary goal is survival, and that’s not wholly inaccurate early on. Once you’ve built up your defenses enough that the nightly monster attacks no longer pose a serious threat, however, what’s left is instead gameplay reminiscent of those browser clicker games that are so easy to get sucked into. You start by clicking to slowly obtain wood, but then you build a bonfire to draw workers to your little village. It’s not long before someone gives you a cart ensuring that workers can bring back more resources than they would otherwise, with this being just one of several job-specific equippables you’ll be crafting to increase worker productivity. This is less a game about survival than one of constant escalation, then, with the challenge coming more from pairing workers to tasks they’re suited to while balancing resource production than one where you’re constantly at risk.
This is game that makes random battles palatable (at least for the vast majority of the game) while simultaneously streamlining traditional jRPG mechanics and allowing new complexity to arise from those simplified parts of the game. It’s also incredibly player-friendly, with all party members gaining experience regardless of whether they participated in combat or not, but those who enjoy a challenge will be able to find it despite the early content being on the easy side. Really, this is a special game.
Suffice it to say that Omen Exitio is a surprisingly engrossing adventure that hits several different story beats without ever losing steam or outlasting its welcome, and it’s the kind of game that sees both you and main character Jake Huntington go from wide-eyed military camaraderie to constant paranoia at every single (in-game) knock on the door.