The first mainline Mana in over a decade is a wholehearted vision for a different kind of modern RPG
It’s the cookie jar. I want to play and praise MultiVersus for everything it does right. But everything it does poorly, or even wrong in a sense, has me wanting to slap my own wrist. MultiVersus has even managed to bungle those aspects of the games-as-a-service model that players have largely come to accept. There has been some course-correcting since launch, but the fact that was even necessary only shows how some forces behind these kinds of games are always ready to push the boundaries on monetization. It feels wrong, ethically, to participate in, and especially to recommend this game to others. But at the same time, it’s so good! Not even in the skinner box kind of way; MultiVersus is a legitimately well-made and lovingly constructed platform fighter that celebrates cartoons and movies I enjoy in effective, gameplay-centric ways. Rick and Morty are there too, I guess.
Respawn’s Fallen Order sequel is a big, bombastic blockbuster but doesn’t forget what made the first one special
It isn’t the game it could be, or the game I see in my head when I think of its concept. But it’s an earnest, goofy, breezy, little multiplayer brawler I can enjoy with my wrestling fan friends without trying to make sure everyone understands the controls over on the simulation side.
I'm ragging on JackQuest a lot here, but to put it plainly, JackQuest doesn't make a great case for itself. It feels like an earnest project inspired by the titans before it, but it doesn't have nearly the same juice behind it.
I was really hopeful in the lead up to Jump Force, because I love most of these characters, and the set dressing for the concept is often very cool. The visual style was even something I thought I was getting used to as the character reveals rolled in. But once the game was in my hands, reality struck me like a Detroit Smash and what I had before me was a mess. Jump Force is ugly, janky, confusing, and far too simple. It does what other games have already done before, but with far less confidence or success. It tries to hide its misgivings behind cool special moves and motion blur, but fails at that too. It's a total swing and miss, but hopefully just a bump in the road for Shonen Jump games in the long run.
MindsEye isn’t a “so bad it’s good” situation. It’s just bad in a mundane, uninteresting way.
Puzzles are a divisive element in many Survival Horror games. When you need to justify and expand game time for an experience mostly driven by vibes and avoiding awkward combat, what else can you do? Clearly, one easy answer is to add backtracking in order to sniff out keys and doohickeys to fit into mysterious slots powering absurd door-locking mechanisms. It works for Resident Evil, at least. But there’s a balance in making this stuff actually work. A balance the subject of today’s review struggled with, to say the least.
YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is plenty ambitious, with designs to be both as quirky as the charm-filled RPGs of the 90s, and serious with substantive, heady sci-fi concepts. It calls itself “postmodern” after all, evoking the likes of Vonnegut, Pynchon, or Burroughs. While I was on board at the title screen, it didn't take long for the disappointment to set in. There's an unearned self-confidence in the writing that is hampered by stilted dialogue and shallow characters, and the exact opposite in the gameplay, where YIIK feels afraid to actually be a 90s-style RPG. It's obtuse and poorly balanced, making each encounter a frustrating exercise in attrition. YIIK has big ideas but they rest on top of a shoddy foundation, one that crumbles the more you try to stay on top of it. I'd rather just play EarthBound again.
To put it simply, if this was one of those retro re-releases that are basically fancy emulators with additional screen filters and save states, maybe online play as a treat, Star Wars: Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles (whew) probably would’ve been alright.
Ender Lilies was a home run with a compelling story, unique mechanics and a well-formed balance between challenge and progress. Redemption Reapers isn’t really more ambitious, but far more clumsy, managing to contradict itself so sharply it cleaves itself in half.
It’s too edgy and incomprehensible to be a good story, too blurry and noisy to look nice despite all the clear effort, and the combat system ultimately adds up to grinding and making your basic numbers go up. It’s a style over substance kind of situation, but without the style to actually pull that off.
Underwhelming content offerings and bizarrely imbalanced CPU players make single player a no-go. And without the variance or roster of its peers, multiplayer can’t carry all that weight.
There are bits and pieces that are cool or interesting, and others that are either duds or just too awkward to pass off as decent storytelling.
I don’t think it’s a total swing and a miss like Super Neptunia RPG was, but that may have made the experience more disappointing considering all the parts I liked.
Overall I’m coming away from Bleeding Edge pretty disappointed.
Despite its brazen disregard for social appearances, Our World is Ended lacks drive and confidence needed to help a weird story come together in the end.
If you're the kind of person who, in the current year of your video game lord 2018 still likes to chuckle at “Engrish” memes and has at least one Sharknado flick in your collection on purpose, boy do I have the game for you. Nippon Marathon is all about the bit, building the gameplay experience, seemingly, all around a tongue in cheek version of Japanese culture. There is a wacky, multiplayer racing game in there, but it feels more like a side effect of a notepad full of gags than a gaming experience that can entertain a group of friends long enough to make them briefly forget about Super Smash Bros., nor does the single-player experience do much after you understand what's happening in front of you. Perhaps the subjectivity of humor is the pass/fail condition for Nippon Marathon, but in a space full of wacky, physics-based multiplayer games, this one feels like it's too confused about what it is and who it's for to stand out.
With that, we're back where we started. VROOM KABOOM has big ideas, but I don't think it's a matter of execution. I think these ideas are just disparate enough that it makes putting them together naturally problematic. It's sort of like the opposite of peanut butter and chocolate. Putting a gun on a car is a pretty good idea, but trying to drive three cars while managing a card deck, paying attention to what the opponent is doing, and accomplishing objectives is just too much. I would happily play a Mad Max-inspired tower defense, or a competitive, on-rails car combat game, but both at the same time is not a great fit.
I know volleyball and dodgeball are totally different activities, but the inspiration is pretty obvious here. And if you want to play a sports game like this that’s wacky, over the top, and still has a competitive element, Mario Tennis or the Kunip-kun Dodgeball games are much more fulfilling in every way. And if you’re just a Fairy Tail fan looking for something fun to play with these characters, Fairy Tail: Dungeons or the GUST-developed RPG from a few years ago (with a sequel coming soon) are much more successful in nailing their own concepts. It’s a shame, but aside from some fun visuals and occasional on-screen wackiness, Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havoc doesn’t deliver in either the volleyball or the havoc.