Ian Howarth's Reviews
Even from an objective standpoint, I honestly can't think of a part of Celeste I didn't like.
Simply put – Samus Returns is the new benchmark against which all other games of this genre will be measured against.
Either way, when all is said and done – I kind of love this game.
It feels great to always be working towards several upgrades at once – there's never a playthrough that doesn't reward you with at least a little something.
Honestly, I could go on. About the exploration and how exciting it is to not know what you’ll find. About combat and how mechanically beautiful it is. About how beautiful the game itself is. About how gratifying it is to pull together a crazy set of cards and come out on top. About how there’s little narrative but each attempt becomes a sort of micro-story through the shaping of the team and deck. About the way each character’s distinct strategies and personality are built into their cards. But really it comes down to this; if you like deck-builders or ever have, you should give Roguebook a chance. Tainted Grail: Conquest isn’t for everyone and I knew that right away, even if I loved that game in its own way. Roguebook is one that everyone with even a passing interest should try. You may get your ass kicked but I doubt you’ll regret it.
I just had a total blast laughing my way through the narratives and there's no doubt the immaculate voice acting has a lot to do with that – it wouldn't have been the same without it.
I've likened TUNIC to Fez, a similarly brilliant game that also shattered expectations, hid riddles in a new alphabet, and had an entire community rally around some of the larger secrets.
In retrospect I believe a friend put it best – 'it's a flawed masterpiece' he said and I truly believe 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.
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’.
It puts fun above all else and I loved it.
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.
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 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.
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.
It may sound like I'm dishing out a lot of praise but I think just 'fun' describes Aegis Defenders quite perfectly.
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.
Whilst I cannot recommend anybody stick around for the story that I could honestly scarcely tell was trying to be funny, serious, or sarcastic, in general I highly endorse The Textorcist. Its compelling and testing gameplay, great art style (especially the hellishly stylistic demons), sweet soundtrack, and awesome theme make for a great title.
To echo my thoughts – no, Forever is not Super Meat Boy 2, nor was it ever meant to be.
Still, even without every fresh touch making it's mark on the genre or not quite living up to the high-difficulty level that many people boast the game has, I found it to be a great time.