Chris Compendio
- Wandersong
- Night in the Woods
- Sayonara Wild Hearts
Chris Compendio's Reviews
Windjammers 2 is a curious case — it’s inviting to all players with its easy concept, but becomes a steep rabbit hole of skill creep as you discover its ins and outs.
The Shrouded Isle did not feel like a game for beginners to the genre. The premise, the world-building, and sound all made the game into a wonderful sensory experience. But for some time, it also felt like a beast to wrestle with, and an experience that felt more Sisyphean than Lovecraftian. Perhaps that’s just on me to “git gud” in managing my damn cult.
With that, it could be time for Jackbox Games to slow down, just a little. I question the need for a new Pack every year, because the more games you throw at players, the more creative concepts go underplayed, because people will just keep going back to something like Drawful. I still think that every Jackbox compilation is a treat, especially now that the studio has perfected the visuals and presentation for their games—but they run the risk of turning their annual treat into a chore.
Pinball-inspired dungeon crawler/hack-and-slash Creature in the Well is short, sweet, and satisfying, whatever that word means.
Side-scrolling sequel Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair has creative ideas, assuming you have the patience to wrangle with its difficulty.
One of the most endearing traits of any Jackbox Party Pack is how high-concept most of the games contained within are — you can explain the premise of these games to any novice and create unlimited hijinx. But with Jackbox Games turning in a new collection every year, more concepts are going through the pipeline, and the mass volume of them are diluting the ease of use of these packages. The Jackbox Party Pack 7 is undoubtedly fun, but explaining these concepts to new players is more of a challenge than ever.
As ineloquent as this may sound, Black Ops Cold War is a weird game. It plays like a tug of war between the advancement attempts that Infinity Ward put forward in last year’s Modern Warfare and Treyarch’s own mechanical contributions to the series over the years. What results is a product that tries to have its cake and eat it too, except that Black Ops Cold War seems to want to eat multiple, different cakes. It’s a strange entry in the series that lacks polish and quality. Still, I have to admit that I am having a lot of fun with it, in the way I would with a flaws-and-all action flick.
There are countless video games designed to bring simple joy to players, usually with adorable visuals and relatively easy and relaxing mechanics. Even still, mainstream video games are obligated to include objectives and a sense of challenge, often to a point where you have to work and jump through hoops for some solace and a pleasant shot of dopamine. Enter New Pokémon Snap, the long-awaited sequel, and a game that has you grind to earn that wholesomeness.
The wait is over for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) on PS4, but perhaps that wait was too long, as it wasn't totally worth it.
I had the feeling while playing through The World Ends With You: Final Remix that with some more time, Square Enix might have made a combat system that utilized those darn buttons that the Switch has while still fitting everything on a single screen, which is wider and clearer than the DS button screen. Final Remix eventually became a physically exhausting chore to play—just try to find a comfortable position for long, extended sessions. The graphics and sound made the hassle all worth it, but by not taking full advantage of the Switch, the beauty of Final Remix runs the risk of only being viewed through YouTube walkthroughs.
The Towerfall-like party title Duck Game is now on Switch, and with it comes a package of wonkiness and absurdism.
House House's Untitled Goose Game is undoubtedly a hilarious experience, but it lacks a varied toolset to maximize said hilarity.
The novelty of Never Stop Sneakin's gameplay wears off after a certain number of hours, but the charm of the game's presentation is always intact.
Despite its mechanical flaws, in depicting a story of flawed characters, it’s hard to pass up on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. This title feels free of franchise-building and shady business practices. While it tries to ape on your familiarity with the property, it somehow all stands on its own. The visuals, lovable characters, and the promise of hijinx in space are inviting, but within this off-beat exterior is a solid emotional core.
If you’ve played the bulk of the previous Jackbox games, and you are down to roleplay, make your friends laugh, speak up, think hard, and take your time, then The Jackbox Party Pack 9 should have at least a few games to engage you.
This adventure game features amazing character designs and a fun puzzle battle system, but The World Next Door suffers from a lack of content.
Night School Studio's Afterparty falls short of greatness, with an unrewarding narrative, underutilized gameplay concepts, and technical issues.
RiffTrax: The Game is still funny — it will just be dependent on you to make it funny enough.
With The Dark Pictures Anthology, it is quite obvious and explicit that Until Dawn developer Supermassive Games is attempting to muck about with as wide a spread of horror tropes as possible. It’s certainly an advantage for the ambitious project — there are countless horror cliches and gimmicks stuck in our collective minds. But in the midst of my first playthrough of Little Hope, the sophomore entry of The Dark Pictures, I questioned whether or not these tropes were worth having any affection over.
While there was fun to be had with the absolute bonkers nature of Slam Land, the fun ran out very quickly. It soon became evident that the mechanics were half-baked, and the disorientation that the game depends on for fun eventually turns into annoyance. At $7.99, the game is at least at a decent price—but with so many four-player action party games out there, the only reason to choose this over the rest would be to check out its weirdness, and even that would only last an hour at most. There are more coherent, if but less flamboyant, games of its ilk out there, ultimately making Slam Land a difficult sell.