Ian Howarth's Reviews
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.
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.
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.
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.
The final word is the game is great, with a lot of content for those that can't get enough, and should be played by any platformer lover, whilst the soundtrack needs to be listed to by absolutely everybody with ears.
It just feels so unnecessary and obnoxious to, in my opinion, ruin a mechanic that has been used time and time again in combat-based games as a test of skill and timing, as well as a nice way to reset the battle from a distance.
Simply put – Samus Returns is the new benchmark against which all other games of this genre will be measured against.
Even the upgradable powerups, such as slowing down time or raising a shield have shared cooldowns, forcing both players to communicate their usage and what they're going to be attacking to avoid tackling the same enemies and inevitably being overrun.
All of these little pieces come together to form something completely new and intense; I hope to see a lot more like it in the future.
conclusion, with the interesting part kicking in way, way too late into the game and being left quickly after with an unsatisfying conclusion made me feel like I had simply wasted my time. Having to drone through shallow plots and mysteries that the player figures out ages before Katrielle does just left me wanting to skip directly to the next puzzle or go back and play a much better Layton game.
Whilst the game is densely packed with a ton of stuff to do, I still believe most of it is much too easy or repetitive – resulting in it feeling mostly like constant fetch quests.
In all I'd recommend A Hat in Time as a quick pick up game when there's a lull in the market (which 2017 definitely hasn't had), but not at it's current price.
The challenge and fun are waiting right there at the end for those who want to power through for it. It's just a shame there are so many little things that pile up against the experience, like the pokémon-infused pokédex that never stops asking the same questions over and over or the lack of Pokémon-worthy music.
That's pretty much Fallen Legion in a nutshell – it has its fair share of ups and downs but I still really enjoyed my time with it.
It may sound like I'm dishing out a lot of praise but I think just 'fun' describes Aegis Defenders quite perfectly.
A basic platformer with the same old clichéd mobility tools and a pretty underwhelming world to be a part of just isn't enough to make its mark these days, making Shu feel a little played out. It's by no means a bad game, but hardly a good one too; it falls quite neatly into the comfortable, average middle-ground.
The game is seriously addicting thanks to the gratifying mechanics and simple, fun premise that it's built on. I can see myself jumping online almost daily to claw my way through the ranks but I do worry that the long wait times for matches will only get worse if High Horse Entertainment don't manage to pull in some more players. I wish them all the best and hope to see Disc Jam continue to be supported by them for the foreseeable future.
Truly, Penny-Punching Princess feels more like an indie experiment than a full-fledged game and that's totally fine.
Even though the main game wraps up the story nicely, albeit with a fairly predictable ending, now that we've seen it's possible to both add depth to the characters and their lore, and push the gameplay to the next level with the Nightfalls DLC, we want more.
Even from an objective standpoint, I honestly can't think of a part of Celeste I didn't like.