Bryan Lawver

Los Angeles

Favorite Games:

58 games reviewed
71.8 average score
70 median score
37.9% of games recommended
- Pine
Nov 26, 2019

Pine's interesting diplomacy system can't save it from its dull combat, repetitive quests, and severe technical problems.

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May 23, 2019

Eden Rising: Supremacy has an interesting premise, but it absolutely fumbles its execution. It combines awkward combat with a mediocre tower defense game and a bland open world that never feel connected. Add to that poor optimization and shoddy network stability, and Eden Rising squanders its unique free-to-play model and what sounded like an interesting multiplayer time sink.

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45 / 100 - Windscape
Mar 26, 2019

Windscape may look like a decent lo-fi adventure at first, but it doesn't have much to offer beyond its initial cartoony charm. With sleep-inducing combat and an absolutely skeletal crafting system, it just does nothing to keep your attention.

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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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55 / 100 - Falcon Age
May 5, 2019

Falcon Age has some extremely interesting ideas at its core, but never gives them the chance to shine. It tells the story of an indigenous woman fighting back against colonial oppression by training a falcon in line with her cultural traditions, but hides the best parts of its premise behind repetitive combat and boring presentation. There are moments when Falcon Age let me feel the bond between my character and her bird or see the culture she was fighting for, but never enough to be satisfying.

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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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Nov 11, 2020

Whether in a boss fight or out in the wild, one area where The Pathless does deliver consistently is in its score. The music by Journey composer Austin Wintory is somewhat sparse, but never fails to ramp up the game’s feeling of danger and adventure whenever it swells up. The Pathless may have a bit of an identity crisis, with its disconnected segments never really combining to their full potential, but its impressive presentation and exhilarating speed make it worth a try nonetheless.

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60 / 100 - Sea of Solitude
Jul 11, 2019

Sea of Solitude is a boldly personal game that has a lot going for it, notably its fantastic art style and score. Kay's story toward understanding her fraught relationships can be genuinely moving at times, but more often it comes across as scattered and heavy-handed. Add to that its clumsy, far-too-traditional gameplay, and Sea of Solitude feels like an interesting idea poorly executed.

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60 / 100 - Mana Spark
Mar 18, 2019

Mana Spark is a middle-of-the-road roguelike that gestures toward a lot of interesting ideas, but doesn’t fully develop any of them. It’s a fun game at first, with a good combat system and a nice variety of unique enemies, but it doesn’t offer nearly enough to stay fresh on repeated runs through its samey dungeons.

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60 / 100 - Vane
Jan 15, 2019

Vane lets players shift from the form of a bird to a child as they explore a strange, hallucinatory world set to a fantastic synth soundtrack. But what starts as a liberating flight through a vast desert eventually devolves into a linear trek through cramped corridors. Vane is a strange, haunting game that deserves attention, but it abandons its most interesting ideas too early on.

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60 / 100 - Days Gone
Apr 25, 2019

Days Gone features some potentially interesting community-building mechanics and the appeal of a bikers vs. zombies game is hard to ignore, but it never lets its best ideas take center stage. Instead, it focuses on lackluster combat and a repetitive set of missions. It moves along on the kind of momentum that exists almost by default in big open world packed with activities, but I could never get fully engaged, partly due to its dragging pace, scattershot story, off-putting protagonist, and frequent bugs.

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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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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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65 / 100 - The Outer Worlds
Oct 22, 2019

For better or worse, The Outer Worlds is a perfectly middle-of-the-road open-world RPG. It doesn't take any big risks, but that also keeps it from falling on its face. Despite some great writing, the game doesn't have much to say about the corporate dystopia it establishes, ultimately playing it too safe to justify the premise. Obsidian's expertise with the genre makes The Outer Worlds a competent RPG, if not an especially interesting one.

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65 / 100 - Minoria
Aug 31, 2019

Minoria may not be Bombservice's best game to date, but it may still be worth a look for action platformer fans looking for a challenge. Though its combat feels more frustrating than satisfying at times, the fundamentals of its swordplay are still solid. Add to that its excellent art and music, and there's a lot to like here if you can overlook its underdeveloped story and exploration.

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65 / 100 - Unruly Heroes
Apr 13, 2019

Unruly Heroes features a mix of platforming and combat with four characters that you can switch between on the fly. With a handful of interesting bosses and plenty of mechanical variation between levels, the game never locks you into one style of play for too long. Ultimately, though, I didn't find any part of it that much fun to play, which wasn't helped by its leaden controls and uneven difficulty.

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65 / 100 - Fitness Boxing
Jan 14, 2019

Fitness Boxing doesn't have a lot of features to speak of, but it does provide a solid workout. Its exercise routines are challenging and enjoyable enough, despite their atrocious background music. Fitness Boxing isn't going to be the most fun game on your Switch, but it's worth checking out if you need a little extra motivation to get your heart rate up.

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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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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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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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