Bryan Lawver

Los Angeles

Favorite Games:

58 games reviewed
71.8 average score
70 median score
37.9% of games recommended
Jun 15, 2018

Smoke and Sacrifice tells a compelling tale of a mother searching for answers after being forced to give up her son. While the game's gorgeous art brings its grim world to life, its story is ultimately undercut by poor pacing and vague objectives. Smoke and Sacrifice shines in concept, but falters in execution.

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70 / 100 - SpiritSphere DX
Jun 27, 2018

Spiritsphere DX remixes a well-worn genre, adding tons of variety on top of a simplistic core mechanic. It offers plenty of unlockables and play modes, but they don't add much to its replayability. Spiritsphere DX shines in short multiplayer sessions, but likely won't hold solo players' attention for long.

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A clever addition to Mario + Rabbids that plays to the original's strengths without takings many risks. While Donkey Kong Adventure likely won't win the game any new fans, it's a treat for anyone who were left wanting more. The expansion trims some of the fat from the original, delivering a quick, focused game that quits while it's ahead.

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60 / 100 - Earthfall
Jul 17, 2018

Earthfall is a cooperative FPS with a few interesting ideas that it fails to deliver on. Built on a poor foundation of unsatisfying combat and repetitive mission structure, every aspect of the game is mediocre at best. With some serious retooling, its light building mechanic could be an interesting twist, but there's little reason to play Earthfall in its current state with so many better examples of the genre already out there.

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75 / 100 - Graveyard Keeper
Aug 15, 2018

Graveyard Keeper makes a lot of bold choices, replacing the friendly, relaxing atmosphere of typical life sims with a more goal-directed structure in a more cynical setting. While I found its pace tedious at times and would have preferred more focus on the grave-tending mechanics, more patient players will find a lot to like in its wealth of well-developed diversions, fantastic art and music, and pitch-black comedic aesthetic.

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80 / 100 - Guacamelee! 2
Aug 21, 2018

Guacamelee 2 recaptures everything that made the original great and adds a few new tricks for good measure. It's a joy to look at and it feels great to play, especially when it focuses on challenging platforming. The game feels a little padded out with lots of backtracking and locked-room combat sequences, but it's still an absolute blast to play.

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75 / 100 - Death's Gambit
Aug 28, 2018

Death's Gambit is buggy, unpolished, frustrating, and derivative. At the same time, it features some interesting bosses and unexpected storytelling tricks. It's sure to be a divisive game, but you may be won over by the atmosphere its fantastic art, music, and voice acting create, if you can overlook its flaws.

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65 / 100 - The Low Road
Sep 1, 2018

Despite an extremely promising opening, The Low Road fails to capitalize on its own interesting premise. Every part of its presentation, from art to music to voice acting, is fantastic, but the puzzles that make up the game fall flat. Though I was happy to spend time with The Low Road's characters, the game around them doesn't hold up.

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Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner --- M∀RS is one of the best looking mech games out there, despite being a remaster of a 15-year-old game. Its fast, flashy combat still looks and feels good, but is constantly undermined by an extremely unwieldy camera. With its short, linear campaign, dull story, and terrible dialogue, The 2nd Runner seems stuck in 2003, despite its slick graphical upgrade.

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Sep 25, 2018

The Bard's Tale IV could be a fun — but seriously flawed — game if it weren't hamstrung by technical problems. Its frequent framerate drops, bugged combat abilities, and crashes are compounded by an archaic save system that makes it far too easy to lose progress. Though it features some great combat and challenging puzzles, they're not without their own flaws, and become extremely repetitive over the game's 30–40-hour playtime.

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Oct 18, 2018

Dark Souls Remastered doesn't add a lot to the Dark Souls formula, but then again it doesn't need to. Its graphical updates are subtle, and sometimes dubious, and the tweaks it makes to the game will only be noticeable to the already converted. But a refreshed pool of players means more opportunities for jolly cooperation, and the Switch makes it more convenient than ever to play the sometimes unapproachable classic. For better or worse, Dark Souls Remastered is essentially the Dark Souls you already know on a new platform.

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Castlevania Requiem: Symphony of the Night & Rondo of Blood does the bare minimum, but it's still well worth playing. While there are no extras included in this anthology, the two games it contains are some of the best ever made, and one of them has been pretty difficult to come by until now. Aside from the replacement of Symphony of the Night's wonderfully campy voice acting, both games are delivered in perfect shape and are still as worth playing today as they've ever been.

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Cybarian: The Time Travelling Warrior is a difficult, often frustrating retro action platformer that values its old-school aesthetic over all else. Everything from its graphics and sound to its difficulty and controls recall an earlier era of gaming, but it does nothing to expand on that legacy. Players looking for a challenge may take some pride in conquering Cybarian, but its short playtime and mostly empty levels leave very little to sink your teeth into.

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75 / 100 - Moonlighter
Nov 11, 2018

Moonlighter's original conceit blends shopkeeping with monster-slaying in a way that's satisfying for most of its length. While both its combat and trading eventually get repetitive, the gorgeous graphics and pixel art make it a pleasant journey while it lasts. Unfortunately, your character's quest comes to feel as shallow as the merchant's life he wants to escape with its uninteresting goal and uninspired conclusion.

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Nov 23, 2018

Pathfinder: Kingmaker sets up an epic story, expansive world, difficult combat, and lively characters, but all these elements eventually become tiresome. Its unforgiving difficulty and strict adherence to Pathfinder tabletop rules will likely turn away more players than it attracts, and while its kingdom management sim sets it apart from similar RPGs, no part of the game ever feels wholly original. Despite boldly putting players in the role of a king or queen, it never engages enough with the consequences of your decisions, or whether you have the right to make them at all.

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Dec 4, 2018

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden's blend of turn-based tactical combat with stealth is interesting, but not always successful, and its story doesn't take advantage of its unique setting. Although the ability to explore the world and sneak up on enemies adds a fun twist to the genre, it brings unwelcome complications and technical hiccups as well. I also ran into numerous performance issues, including game-ending freezes, that strained my initial fondness for the game.

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65 / 100 - Desert Child
Dec 11, 2018

At its best, Desert Child captures the feeling of working toward a big dream while struggling to even buy your next meal. Unfortunately, those moments come sandwiched between a lot of repetition as the initially fun races become a chore that you have to do over and over again. Desert Child's unique setting, filled out with great art and a killer soundtrack, is fun to explore for a while, but the game runs out of gas a little too quickly.

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85 / 100 - Book of Demons
Dec 13, 2018

Book of Demons introduces a unique card-based skill system and a sense of humor to the stuck-in-its-ways ARPG genre. It has plenty of tricks in its dungeon to keep you on your toes, but gives you ample ways to form your own strategy. With three distinct classes and an endlessly replayable quest, you can get lost in Book of Demons' papercut dungeon for quite a while.

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100 / 100 - GRIS
Dec 13, 2018

Gris is an incredible achievement, using its art, music, and gameplay to tell a thematically consistent story about a woman overcoming her grief. Despite the weighty subject matter, the way its protagonist's triumph over sorrow is reflected in increasingly fluid and diverse platforming makes it a joy to play. While Gris is low on challenge and impossible to fail, it still feels exciting. Even if it doesn't sound like your kind of game, Gris absolutely deserves a try.

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75 / 100 - BELOW
Dec 19, 2018

Below is a dark, mysterious game that invites you to illuminate its secrets, then punishes you for trying. While it does a great job invoking a sense of wonder, thanks in part to its sparse, tense soundtrack, its genuinely great moments are spread far too thin. Below will certainly be a divisive game, but it offers a compelling experience for players willing to put up with a good amount of frustration and tedium.

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