'Thought provoking' may be the best way to describe my overall experience with SOMA. With the story being expertly delivered through eloquent voice acting and dialogue, environmental design, and questionable moral choices. SOMA stands out as a deft lesson in storytelling, which many developers should learn from. I'd highly recommend trying SOMA for anyone and everyone.
Let Them Come offered a surprising amount of variety for what essentially is a glorified shooting range. Weapons and upgrades feel unimpactful at first but quickly build momentum into some more fierce and powerful. Monsters are offered up on a platter for the player to blissfully murder then contorts the players elated murder spree into one of strategy and wit, continually mixing things up. But all this weighs heavy on how much players enjoy tower defence style games.
Outcast: Second Contact looks like a completely new game. And that’s its problem. Outcast: Second Contact only has re-texturing to its advantage, with mechanics and audio left untouched. Its glossy coat promising more than it had. A few tweaks to the audio presentation and how Slade handles could’ve gone a long way to bettering the experience. Those who have dabbled with Outcast in the past may find naught but nostalgic memories to power them through, other than that, there's nothing to be had here. This is re-texturing at its finest, but it’s not a remaster.
Wolfenstein: The New Colossus is a mixed bag of ideas that could work well but somehow don’t. I felt forced to sit behind cover for large sections of the game instead indulging in gun toting, dual-wielding promises. And even when I successfully managed to reach cover, the slightest movement would alert those around me and compromise any semblance of a stealthy approach. I was stuck in a parasitic loop that left me pining for the days of Wolfenstein 3D or even Wolfenstein: The New Order.
The Stick of Truth managed to salvage my love of the series. Now, 3 years later, I feel that South Park: The Fractured but Whole has sought to destroy the bridges its predecessor rebuilt. The funny moments are sporadic, lost amongst a series of tired gags and namechecks, but the gameplay goes someway to saving the overall experience.
The Evil Within 2 plays out more like an action game than a survival horror. All the elements that it has in place take away from the restrictive close confines of traditional horror games and broadens the spectrum but lessens the atmosphere and impact a survival horror game should have.
At the end of it all, Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a novel triumph within the RPG genre with a few glaring faults. Battles are exciting and easy to get a grasp of, I’d even say it's very welcoming of beginners to the genre due to the lack of need of party diversity and strategy.
All in all, its N++ it's not bad. I’d recommend it to anyone but had high hopes it would have developed a bit more over time.
DreamBreak had the potential to be a lot more than it currently is. However, Aist design choices for mixing in rather quirky mini games that feel oddly out of place with the main game and with DreamBreak’s main portion of gameplay feeling heavily underwhelming, puzzles too obvious and the story feeling kind of shoehorned, it's hard to give it a thumbs up.
Time Recoil is short and precise. It’s an action packed romp utilising a much loved bullet time mechanic that creates a stylish persona for a rather bland looking game. Although stages don’t differ much from one another you won’t be sticking around in them long enough to care all that much. In essence, Time Recoil is a “burner game” as I like to put it. You can pick it up easily and have fun, it does the job it says it does. But once you’ve finished it -- which won't take long-- you’ll be discarding it as fast you got it.
Volition has essentially created their own open world hero shooter in the universe of Saints Row. Taking staple elements that are becoming increasingly popular with each passing day; Hero Characters, Loot Boxes, and Open Worlds. Splicing popular elements from other games has previously worked Volition's favour, but the lack of mission diversity, other than bosses, holds AoM back more than I’d have liked it to. The small world to explore meant things got boring and repetitive. Although, AoM isn’t so long that it becomes a total burden. If you were a fan of Saints Row then Agents of Mayhem could go either way for you, but there are nice nods to the combined universe. But, it can also be lighthearted fun and the humour is on point, as expected from Volition.
And that is really Super Cloudbuilt in a nutshell. A fast paced rollercoaster ride that has its ups and downs. The main selling point is that of speed, precision, and style. If you're a fan of quick platformers that have more awe than punch then Super Cloudbuilt is right up your dream-laden alley.
Sundered, at its heart, is a Metroidvania game that I could only recommend to those who have the tenacity to steel themselves for hours upon hours of grinding. There is a lot of fun to be had with Sundered, but it is quelled by an overwhelming amount of forceful pushback by enemy numbers and its desire to extend its own lifespan.
Granted that you have a few spares hours in the day to get some dirty work in for the mob, Serial Cleaner is not a bad purchase. However, it is fairly simple as far as stealth games go, is hardly demanding and can be completed before it even begins. And maybe that’s a good thing, since Serial Cleaner’s gameplay staggers as you get deeper into The Cleaner’s story.
Prompto’s outing is underwhelming at best, with the gameplay being subpar to anything that has come before it, the open world being nothing more than a blank canvas that you can't really do much with, and sidequests being rather redundant in the scope. Its only saving grace is Prompto’s continued character development from a weeping man-child to someone more mature and collected, ready to face the world ahead of him.
Even though The Town of Light fails at any sense of creating a compelling gameplay experience, it does do a fantastic job of illustrating the difficulties individuals face with metal health problems, even if it does focus on the past and how such cases were handle.
All games have their negatives and positives but with In Between the two can conflict and impact the player.
It’s safe to say that there is a lot included in Victor Vran: Overkill Edition. Whether you’re playing through the story solo or with a friend, there is plenty to keep you occupied. Even if you don’t get around to doing very little thing, there’s well over 50 hours of gameplay here if you're determined to stick around.
Shadow Warrior 2 surpasses everything that was its predecessor's 2013 release. A larger roster of weaponry to choose from, a Diablo-esque loot system for equipment upgrades, greatly improved visuals and most importantly, a 4-player cooperative mode.
With fantastic level design, the fumbling humorous Human, and even the partially absent soundtrack, Human: Fall Flat is a blast to play. Although short-lived--your play time could vary as it is a puzzle game--Human: Fall Flat is a most welcomed momentary distraction to the more serious and heavy AAA games we have been recently getting flooded with.