Jed Whitaker's Reviews
Amplitude could have been something special again; instead, it ended up falling flat.
If you're looking for something laid back, beautifully drawn, and well orchestrated with some intense, but not overly difficult, boss battles, then Jotun is easy to recommend. It's a magical ride that I'm sure I'll revisit from time to time in the future. Even though the whole experience only lasts just over five hours, it is five solid hours.
Resident Evil 0 HD Remaster proves that no matter how much you dress up an over decade-old corpse, it doesn't keep it from stinking.
Oxenfree takes the best parts of supernatural 1980's teenage horror films and combines it with believable characters, beautiful set pieces, and a haunting VHS synth-pop soundtrack to create a masterpiece.
Gemini had so much potential that is squandered by poor execution.
Bombshell is an overpriced buggy mess of a game, don't shell out money for this bomb.
Playing Invasion mode with a high-level character felt far too easy, as I was able to build enough defenses to sit back and let them do all the work for me. That said, it is a nice addition, but only has three different maps to play on, so unless you plan on using it to grind XP I don't think it adds much longevity the game.
If you're a fan of gory, pixelated, 2D shooters with a whole heaping of voice acting laced with swearing, then Not a Hero is easily recommendable.
Firewatch is narrative-driven adventure game dealing with adult issues in ways unlike any other game out there, and is one of the best looking games so far this year.
Unravel puts all its cards on being cute and charming while having repetitive, lackluster gameplay. If you're looking for a very casual cute game, you might forgive its shortcomings
You'll either love or hate The Witness as it will either make you feel smart or stupid. If you don't love puzzles and deep philosophical thoughts, perhaps avoid this one.
Devil Daggers knows exactly what it is and owns it.
Currently, Bloody Alloy: Reborn feels more like an Early Access title or proof-of-concept than a finalized product, so it is hard to recommend unless you love beating your own high scores and are starving for a fast Strider-like experience.
A pixelated Diablo-like with a beautiful presentation and an unfortunate lack of content, Moon Hunters is hard to recommend to anyone other than people with three friends locally.
A colourful vertical bullet hell that coasts along until finale where the difficulty spikes abruptly. Some decent ideas can be found here, but overall an average experience.
As far as endless runners go, the only thing Shred It! has going for it is the art style, and even that is feeling old hat these days. The gameplay follows the same formula as all the other runners you've played. The controls aren't great, poor optimization causes frame rate drops, and grinding to unlock content just isn't fun. Endless runners are popular on mobile devices because it is easy to do a quick run when you've got a few minutes to kill, an experience that doesn't translate well to Xbox One. With so many better runners available for free on devices most of us already own, there is no reason to make a purchase here.
Mega Man and tower-defence fans that don't mind a more casual experience will more than likely be happy with Spacejacked, other players may be turned off by length.
The whole package feels extremely light on content, and even a bit rushed. With reused assets, features missing that were in previous titles, added microtransactions, a lack of characters, and lots of grinding, it is hard to recommend this to even the most titty-starved gamer. You'd be better served watching videos of the spicier scenes online or just going to any number of free porn sites, thus saving yourself the time, money, and brain cells that would otherwise be spent on this.
Microtransactions and the brutal learning curve make UFC 2 hard to play and even harder to recommend.
With tons to find, unlock and kill, Enter the Gungeon is easily recommendable to those that don't mind a bit of repetition and difficulty, and especially to fans of Nuclear Throne and Binding of Isaac. While it doesn't totally reinvent the twin-stick shooter, it has all but perfected it and is worth every penny.