Paul Broussard's Reviews
Burning Shores flickers between highs and lows constantly, and while there are still enough positives here for me to say it's "good," I come away from it feeling somewhat uncertain about the franchise.
While it doesn’t feel like it quite reaches the heights of Yakuza 0 or 7, it still stands out as another fun romp through an insane story with an entertaining batch of characters.
WHALIEN is a reasonably entertaining puzzle-solving game with tools that have a lot of potential, but it probably won’t tax your head or your fingers.
It’s pretty evident this is the team’s first action title in a while - there are more than a few mistakes on display - but it’s hard not to applaud the ingenuity and sheer fun-factor.
I certainly respect the desire to create something different and the courage to tell a story with challenging themes, but I don’t feel like the game's components ever quite mesh and work together well.
The revamped visuals are, for the most part, breathtaking, and the new control schemes allow just about anyone to enjoy the experience. Even without sequence breaking opportunities it’s still an exceptional game.
A mostly competent Soulslike, but hard to praise beyond that.
The moment-to-moment combat is pretty fun, and the enemy variety is solid, but the lack of weapon swapping and the same old arena do hamper the experience.
As an experience it’s honestly one of the most engaging and engrossing I’ve played this year.
Chop Goblins shouldn’t be dismissed just because it looks cutesy and has a short run time; it’s genuinely fun, endearing, and, for $5, an absolute bargain for one of the most charming and enjoyable hours of the year.
The combat, when it’s clicking, is genuinely fantastic for a more action-driven horror title. But much of what is built around that combat lets it down: the pacing and atmosphere are largely non-existent; the level design, UI, and checkpoint system are very player-unfriendly; and there just aren’t enough set pieces and gameplay diversions to prevent the combat from getting somewhat repetitive by the game’s end.
Ragnarök’s fantastic narrative and enjoyable characters ensure that it isn’t getting out of here without a recommendation, but its gameplay shortcomings mean that it ultimately falls short of some of its loftier ambitions.
The saving grace is that Resident Evil Re:Verse is free so long as you own Resident Evil Village, but does that really count as a point in its favor when this is such a bland, uninteresting offering to begin with?
I'm left walking away with a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth for what was one of my most anticipated games coming into 2022, even if I still largely enjoyed most of my time with it. Bayonetta 3 ultimately feels like a solid action game, but not one that was worth waiting eight years for.
I certainly can’t claim Prodeus is a bad game, it just left me thoroughly underwhelmed. Perhaps this encapsulates the underlying issue with the desire to create a game whose primary ambition is to recreate the feeling of playing older titles.
This probably isn’t a bad game if you approach it as its own thing, independent of any of the expectations created by previous entries. But as a Saints Row title it leaves a very bitter taste.
Ultimately, a combat game has to be judged by how good its combat is, and in that respect Soulstice passes with flying colors.
Ultimately, Kirby’s Dream Buffet consists of a lot of good ideas unfortunately hampered by Nintendo’s continued online bugaboo and what I suspect are technical limitations.
Everything that Fobia does has been done both worse and better by other titles. There’s potential in the concept, providing some of the rougher edges are smoothed off, however as it stands Fobia is the horror game equivalent of a plain bagel.
For most of its runtime Neon White is a real treat to play, and the unique tradeoff of gunplay and movement choices is a fun gimmick that holds the title together quite well.