Jed Whitaker's Reviews
Maybe I was expecting too much from Perception, but it doesn't deliver on any of its promises.
In a world where $25 gets you five diverse party games in each of the Jackbox Party Pack collections, asking $15 for one flimsy game is just offensive.
Pirate Pop Plus feels more like something you'd have found near the release of the Game Boy than something that should be asking for money in 2016 considering there are full-length Game Boy games with a plethora of content available on the eShop for less money, and tons of even cheaper mobile games that put this to shame. If you don't care about unlocking all the customizations, achievements, high scores, or the few characters that hardly change the gameplay, then you'll probably get bored of this within 20 minutes. Even at a lower price, I wouldn't recommend it. Pop your money elsewhere.
If it weren't for the inclusion of zombies, Umbrella Corps would be indistinguishable from almost every generic first-person shooter that gets released on Steam or for free. While zombies make it stand out just a smidgen from the competition, the gameplay is as brain-dead as they are. If you're looking for a solid, cheap shooter on PS4 or PC, there are better options, like Blacklight: Retribution. Even diehard Resident Evil fans should save their money, as I can't think of a single reason anyone should buy this.
Aside from the graphics, everything here stinks, which makes sense because a lot of the game takes place in the sewers, and also because this game is crap.
Shadow of the Beast is as dull as it is brown, which is to say extremely. The platforming is clunky, the AI is bad, the story requires multiple playthroughs, the game defies its own logic, and it reeks of other laughably awful design decisions. Don't bother with this beast.
With hitbox resizing, the ability to move in one direction while shooting in another, and some difficulty adjustments, Gryphon Knight Epic could be an okay game. As it stands, it's a messy medieval hodgepodge that you'd be better off avoiding at all costs. Save yourself some money by instead buying some feathers and a fake beak and putting them on your dog.
You're better off saving your money instead of sinking it on the titanic failure that is Submerged.
If you're looking for a tech demo posing as a dull shooting gallery with brain-dead enemies and repetitive music, then Pixel Gear is the shovelware game for you.
The Tomorrow Children is one of the most boring, pointless games I've ever played, and even the thirstiest mining and crafting fans will surely be bored to tears.
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.
If you loved the original State of Decay thankfully you can still play it, because currently, this sequel is too rough around the edges to recommend.
To summarize in a similar vein to Rise & Shine's humor: This game could have been a triumph, but then it took an arrow to the knee. The graphics make you think the gameplay cake is real, but the cake is a lie. All you'll find are Flappy Birds, a dead Princess Peach, and Marcus Fenix. But hey, at least you can kill the Duck Hunt dog, so that has to count for something. Oh, and this is the Dark Souls of video game humor. Take that for what you will.
The developers of OmniBus decided to put humor over fun and created a game that might do well for a couple of Twitch streamers or YouTubers, as I can imagine it might be fun to watch. But it sure isn't fun to play.
Unless you're an aquatic dinosaur fanatic who has a thing for submarines and listening to facts about dinosaurs, you're probably not going to enjoy this. Your time would be better spent at a local museum; at least they have the cool dinosaurs there and not just the underwater ones.
At around three hours, it's hard to recommend Corpse of Discovery to starved sci-fi fans, let alone the general public, and especially at full price. With some optimization patches it would be at least worth a play through for sci-fi fans, but as it stands I'd let this one get lost in space.
You'd be better off visiting your local art gallery than spending full price on this, so give it a pass until it eventually drops in price.
If you were hoping for the new Star Fox or Eve Valkyrie, this isn't it. Instead, its the only game I've ever played that managed to make shooting lasers in space boring.
STRAFE wants to be a shooter from the 1990s, but has worse mechanics than any of the games it hoped to imitate.
If you liked the original Crackdown and want basically more of that, then you've found your game. If you want a modern first party AAA game, look elsewhere