Smoke and Sacrifice hits the Nintendo Switch, offering a survival and crafting sim with a surprisingly dark story, but also endless busywork
Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior is a curious combat-puzzle game, but solid aesthetics and worldbuilding can't rescue its stifling gameplay design.
Sanabi is a stylish grappling hook platformer, but its cumbersome story and interrupting pace risks sacrificing the parts of the game that work.
AK-xolotl presents a cute run'n'gun roguelite concept, but an overall simplicity and lack of post-credits gameplay leaves it ultimately underexplored.
Much like the rest of the game, Dust & Neon’s bosses pretend that they’re interesting, but are absent of charm or character. Then there are the final bosses who require an arbitrary number of level-ups to reach, forcing players to chew through repetitive missions and farm XP, a task which only brings the game’s flaws more readily to the surface. In its finest moments, Dust & Neon presents serviceable roguelite gameplay with responsive controls, but there are better options available with way less meaningless grind required.
The Callisto Protocol brings high-def sci-fi horror to current-gen consoles, but it suffers from a lack of dynamic gameplay ideas outside of its gore.
Treachery in Beatdown City mixes classic brawls with turn-based tactics, but it's compromised by an easily exploitable combat system and short length.
Doctor Who: The Edge of Time on PS VR is filled with exciting bouts of fan service, but the VR game built around it feels considerably dated.
Warsaw combines the backdrop of the 1944 uprising with a tough-as-nails tactical roguelike, but bugs and design flaws compromise the experience.
In the end, though, the repetitiveness makes it difficult to fully recommend Slave Zero X, especially at its retail asking price of $24.99. Aside from just enjoying the story, replay value is restricted to high-score hunters (who themselves will have to deal with an arguably unpredictable grading system), and anyone not completely smitten with the presentation will find themselves looking for an excuse to persevere, even with its relatively short campaign. For the right player, Slave Zero X will seem like a custom-made surprise, but it’s a little too short to box with the beat ‘em up gods.
As it stands, though, The Thaumaturge remains quite special overall. Hanging out with Rasputin, shmoozing with turn-of-the-century elites, and exploring some unexpected golem developments with beset Rabbis make for compelling content, even when a few lines in the script fail to land. Anyone taken in by this setting will genuinely want to play The Thaumaturge, and it joins several other recent experimental Slavic fantasy adventures that prove the countless avenues video games have yet to fully explore.
Still, Endless Dungeon’s strong presentation, characterful sci-fi culture, and unique cooperative approach remains intact. It’s a game of on-the-fly decisions and intimidating combat encounters, with success often separated from failure by a hair. Those qualities should draw in the more patient and masochistic roguelite aficionados, and better still if they have a like-minded, agreeable team in tow, the players committed to see the treacherous paths to the reactor all the way through and come back for more. Ultimately, Endless Dungeon offers a smart and strategic co-op challenge with minimal hand-holding, but its structure feels all a little too delicate to deliver up the next real roguelite obsession.
Re:Call is worth investigating with a playthrough - just be prepared for a paradigm shift just when things are getting good.
High on Life is a mediocre shooter punctuated by sporadic humor that misses more often than it hits. Its self-mocking video game gags were tackled much more effectively in Trover, and the sheer size of the experience only places its faults into greater relief. There are laughs to be had, secret collectibles to sniff out, and some genuinely hilarious riffs on internet forums, but these are not enough to uplift the basic gameplay. High on Life gets the job done, but not in a remarkable way.
Three different endings are available to those itching to give The Chant another spin, and our own playthrough took only about six or seven hours from start to credits. Even though there are plentiful elements where the gameplay sags, The Chant is a spirited survival horror custom-made for adherents to the genre’s quirks, and they’ll be delighted at the finale.
The synthwave soundtrack by Jules Reves is also an engaging accompaniment to the combat, though it does drain enthusiasm after 12 hours on repeat. That estimation can be used to describe the wider game as well; Nitro Kid lacks the just-one-more-run qualities of other roguelites, whether it be a range of exciting progressive unlocks or a surprising gameplay curveball. The runs just quickly begin to bleed into one another. Nitro Kid’s foundational systems are definitely smart, but its emergent delights are slim, making it a tough recommendation when there’s so many fantastic, empowering deckbuilders to play.
Whether Gigabash proves enduringly sticky enough to weather the wax and wane of the console’s fighting game community seems up to chance, and its prickly price tag isn’t doing it any favors. It’s not a Smash Bros. killer but has its own eccentricities and charm, even while begging for that franchise’s array of match-changing items or epic single-player modes; just a tournament mode or randomized match queue would be welcome. As it stands, it’s still a smooth and quirky kaiju brawler packed with cities and buildings to crush to dust.
In its lesser moments, it comes off as a singular presentation looking for a more involved game underneath, better combat and better bosses which could more effectively serve these assets. It still remains a worthwhile quest to see through to the end, but games like Solar Ash are frustrating in that they could have been so much more.
There’s some merit in spending an hour or so dodging projectiles and dinging away at a half-dozen moving health bars, but Archvale would be immeasurably improved with more depth of content and character customization. A pure shoot ‘em up may not necessarily require those ingredients to flourish, but an action-heavy RPG definitely does, even one with such a pint-sized cute presentation. As it stands, Archvale poses some entertaining distractions for compulsive bullet-dodgers, but it could have been so much more.
When everything is flowing in The Good Life, it feels like a touch of Animal Crossing with alternatingly quaint and irreverent British pastoral television, all with a burgeoning murder mystery underneath. Unfortunately, some of its rougher edges seem possibly related to the Switch itself and, although loading times are usually on the shorter side, their frequent appearance interrupts the flow even more. The Rainy Woods residents are charming and strange and there’s a numbingly pleasant feel to smalltown life and chores, but stiff controls and muddled design make it hard to find a good rhythm in The Good Life.