Joseph Pugh's Reviews
There are so many great tactics games out there, that any new one that enters the fold has to give me a good reason to spend my time with it over the others. While Legends of Kingdom Rush isn’t truly a bad game, it really doesn’t bring anything notable to the table. It simply exists.
Startup Panic is charming and its soul is there, but the body it occupies is just incredibly shallow. I didn’t dislike my time with it, I was always interested in what was to come. At the same time, however, I had to ask myself what I was doing. The reality was, I was just hitting the same few menu buttons over and over again with no real engaging agency. I was reminded of things like Farmville, where you are hardly playing at all.
Trash Sailor’s frantic gameplay and variety of hazards and enemies certainly elevate it above the heap of a dumpster dive. But the frustrating controls and lack of challenge mean it still smells a bit after taking it home.
It’s a faithful remaster that will send old school fans on a serious nostalgia high without tainting your memories of it, and that’s fantastic. Newcomers might not be swept off their feet and its gift of pleasant memories may only work out for fans of the classics. But that’s okay, we’ve been waiting a really long time.
King of Seas has all the ingredients to bake into a fresh riveting pirate game. It just feels like the cook tripped on deck, and seagulls flew off with some of them while leaving the others half-eaten.
Returnal’s shooting mechanics are solid, the game is gorgeous, the enemy variety is nice, and the boss fights are stellar. So, it’s a shame that literally everything else kind of falls apart. The rogue-lite aspects are sub-par at best and outright bad at worst.
The heavy repetition and strange way it gatekeeps critical knowledge brings down an otherwise clever game about creating a successful battle plan by summoning monsters.
Roundguard is a small, lightweight, and simple game about pinball physics in a dungeon-crawling setting. I feel that it’s asking price is a bit much on PC and consoles, but it’s a perfect choice on Apple Arcade.
The Survivalists combines a poor survival experience with a lacking adventure game. The result is a gimped title that struggles to be anything at all. Its novel monkey system isn't enough to salvage this shipwreck.
When I first started playing, I thought for sure I had a game-of-the-year candidate in my hands. If Dragons Dogma 2 wasn’t such an unbalanced mess, it would be one of the best games released this year. The good news is, Dragons’s Dogma 2 can be fixed. We shouldn’t have to wait or hope for it to be fixed in the first place, but Capcom could certainly address the issue in an update. I sincerely hope they do, because Dragon’s Dogma 2 is begging to be a great game, the awful lack of scaling is the only thing standing its way.
Granblue Fantasy Relink is the greatest game I don’t want to play. Its stellar combat, great AI, interesting world, and epic quests forge the experience to a sharp point, but the lack of any meaningful challenge severely dulls its edge.
This Means Warp is incredibly fun and shines the brightest with friends. It could do with a bit more variety in some places, but the biggest thing holding it back is the crashing issue, and I sincerely hope it’s resolved soon.
Green Hell is a game that’s going to be great once the developers have maggots eat away all the infected bits and patch the wounds in a lovely update-lined bandage. It just isn’t there yet, and I’m somewhat sad I’ve had my experience soured before it got there.
The phobias themselves have a fantastic aesthetic design and animation too. The rigid and puzzlelike nature gives the game a unique playstyle that’s a lot of fun to solve. The lack of polish is very apparent, however. Between the bugs, strange design choices, and lack of cohesion the game feels like it needed more time in the oven, and maybe some focused direction.
As it stands Against the Moon will likely fizzle out faster than the games that inspired it, with repetition setting in quicker than it really should. Yet, the brilliant upgrade system and solid tactical combat are worth experiencing, and I sincerely hope the game receives more content simply because I want to enjoy the game more.
The simulation and management elements are almost non-existent. The few that are present tend to be obtuse and poorly explained. Yet, the game within a game is brilliant and will really test your ability to think about strategy in a different way. The fact that champions get nerfed and buffed based on how tournaments play out is clever beyond description. I just wish the rest of the game received the same loving attention.
In the end. Gears Tactics has the heart, body, and soul of a true Gears of War game that makes it shine in combat with blood-pumping action despite being turn-based. The repetition and linear focus make it a few cogs short of being a Marcus Fenix instead of a Carmine. Fun and lovable, but destined to die quickly.
I may not have any desire to return to the game, but I enjoyed my time with Biomutant. I think most fans of the genre will too, jank and all. Its world is a beautiful one worth exploring, even though it’s a bit static. Evolution wasn’t entirely kind to it, but Biomutant still grew up to be a respectable but flawed fur-filled adventure.
The fast-paced nature makes Jupiter Hell stand out from the crowd alongside a retro-style interface that’s nostalgic while incorporating all the modern conveniences we have come to expect. The shallowness and repetition hit faster than I would like, but there’s no denying that Jupiter Hell’s combination of rip and tear with chess-like flair is a mixture Doomed to succeed.
It retains the same charm, fun physics, and team coordination that made the base game great. It’s on the short side with just a couple of hours of content, a problem that often plagues many party games. The DLC is on the cheap side though, so it may just be worth moving in on.