Ian Howarth's Reviews
I'm not sure I'd ever go back to play Detached again and it's definitely not making it into my 'impress first time VR-users' catalogue. In fact, it has instead become my go-to example for how VR standards must be respected and how ignoring them can potentially ruin what might have been an otherwise fantastic experience. I'm not sure I can put it any better than that; great game but unplayable.
Bulletstorm is a nice little 8-hour time-sink where the player has to never think and can just go about blowing people to bits. Sure, it hasn't aged well but the combat side works fine and there's a bit of replayability if one wants to attempt to get every Skillshot, or try to see how far you can get with a couple of friends in the wave-based multiplayer mode. However, it is certainly a shame to see such little effort put into this new release even though it is perfectly OK.
The story is paper-thin, going into no more detail than 'some magical gems that are used to power portals have been knocked all over the place; find and replace them'. Even then that would normally be fine – we don't need a reason for everything we do in games, such as running to the right and stomping Goombas, but usually games like that instead provide a challenge as the motivational tool that keeps us going. Sadly, Snake Pass fails to deliver there too.
I found it a ton of fun and terribly addicting to the point where I just consumed it in about 2 days and I hope many others enjoy it just as much because I believe the best outcome from its release is that Yooka-Laylee facilitates the second coming of the 'platformer'. Not only does it show off the familiar mechanics we love but it plays off of them in both the gameplay and story, making jokes about the established traits of old-school games by having Yooka's humoring of the NPCs and Laylee's dry sarcasm almost be the voices of the player as they comment on the fact that the Pagies could just slips out of their cages and so on.
So the gameplay presents this strange oxymoron of being pretty easy, but still unfairly difficult because of the random element, which is never a nice way to add a challenge, but maybe that's the message all along – life isn't fair.
In retrospect I believe a friend put it best – 'it's a flawed masterpiece' he said and I truly believe that.
Until we do get that next genre-defining horror gem, Yomawari is a nice distraction that will hopefully be worked on to bring us something even more sinister and satisfying in the future.
In all, Lethal VR isn’t an experience that will change your life like some VR games claim to do but it’s so easy to get lost in as it blurs the lines of reality, whilst being extremely entertaining.
It puts fun above all else and I loved it.
With lacklustre multiplayer and a simplified single-player that timidly asks for only basic platforming skills, completion of race challenges that provide plenty of time even after a few screw-ups, and battles that allow unlimited lives with no time limit or enemy respawns, Unbox is definitely not something that should be played if looking for a challenge.
In all, the expansion does exactly what you’d expect from a cheap or perhaps even free update but unfortunately this one currently comes at half the price of the original FORCED SHOWDOWN and I’m afraid I simply can’t recommend it at that price.
SEUM delivers a good amount of entertainment, frustration, and the perfect bite-sized trials to hit, not just the ‘one more try’ feeling, but instead the ‘damn I was close and I won’t stop before beating this thing’.
With the lack of tight controls, an honest challenge and the addition of a generic plot and characters we're left with a totally average action platforming game that promised the world.
As mentioned above the game is only about 3 hours long and unless you want to get an S rank on all 9 stages on all difficulties there’s really no reason to replay it at all.
With nothing that stands out too much in the sound or art department besides, for some reason, making me feel nostalgic for Wild 9 on the original Playstation, what we have here is a fun game that can be mastered and beaten relatively quickly.
In all, it was a decent attempt at a new concept but didn’t quite ever make it further than that.
It's a great reboot/re-release. Maybe one of the best, but with a new story that doesn't focus on our heroes and the solidifying of their bond as partners I'm sure that newcomers to the series will only be staying for the fantastic gameplay, but quickly forgetting about the franchise once they put it down.
Nevertheless I have to give BetaDwarf props for trying something different here by mixing up an original blend of genres and for creating something innovative. And although I’m afraid I’m going to have to recommend the original Forced over Showdown any day, I really hope that this team keeps striving to create new and interesting concepts because that is sadly something pretty hard to come by nowadays.
It's unfortunate to see something new explored but not working out and becoming the 'simple but addicting' gameplay I assume it was meant to be.
I had a lot of fun and frustration during my time playing Clandestine and whilst I'm a huge fan of co-op and love to see how it being implemented in refreshing new ways, I still felt like I was playing an early access game, where only the core functionality had been completed, albeit with some pretty strange and often hilarious bugs, such as taking guards out through walls and the most randomly broken cutscenes I've ever seen.