Lee Mehr's Reviews
The well-weathered gamer can easily spot its debt to Counter-Strike and Overwatch, but that shouldn't dismiss how those mechanical & aesthetic philosophies succinctly fuse together through Riot's own due diligence. As the saying almost goes: it's more than the sum of its plagiarized parts.
Jordan Mochi's singular vision can occasionally get ensnared by questionable design choices, but it's still a ride easily worth volunteering your time and money to experience.
While a satisfying audio-visual experience, SCHiM's design is but a shadow of its true potential.
While CLeM falls short of wowing you in wild narrative complexity or visual fidelity, Mango Protocol nevertheless succeeds through exact pacing and creative puzzle design.
Occasional missteps aside, Richard Hogg & Hollow Ponds' latest experience succeeds by treating you like its plethora of colorful creatures: warmly coaxing you to stay as long as you wish.
Stale, repetitive, and unengaging would be the first adjectives that come to mind for Aerial_Knight's latest, were it not also buggy and unfinished.
Even after tempering expectations for a modest indie title, Lifeless Moon runs dangerously low on oxygen while playing and no useful reserves are found while watching.
While this current-gen version's polishes don't remove design annoyances endemic to most TellTale-esque adventures, Under the Skin is nevertheless an enthralling noir yarn worth unspooling.
The team's reputation in visual design and soundtrack are supplemented by a tautened horror thriller that's oftentimes engaging to watch; however, it's degraded by shallow mechanics that are typically unrewarding to play. Like oil and water, there's an incongruous mixture of creativity within its setting (both spoken and unspoken) and utter predictability within its foundation. Genre fans can treat it like oil spill remediation, mentally separating the two enough to at least appreciate its better qualities.
The good news: Ingame Studios is giving out Cagnali's Order for free (for a limited time). The bad news: neither this expansion nor the main game are worth your time.
If willing to accept this expansion's tradeoff of creativity over longevity then pay the toll and cross into... Night Springs.
Hypercharge's fun conceit and impressive suite of content earns appreciation given Digital Cybercherries' modest means, but its mediocre mechanics make other toys more tempting to play.
Although Cosmonaut Studios' temporal narrative adventure doesn't capture the true gameplay potential of its trippy concept, the storytelling still makes it worth your time.
Leave it to Ubisoft to craft a hero shooter in as boring a fashion as its weaker open worlds.
There were several different ways Midboss could've approached this sequel, likely all of which would've been better than Read Only Memories: NEURODIVER.
Between atmosphere, mechanics, and storytelling, Crow Country gets caw-fully close to bonafide classic status in the survival-horror pantheon.
Surgent Studios' debut title is a tale of two extremes: enthusiasm for this heartfelt story about grief and apathy for the Metroidvania around it.
With its closest inspirations at the forefront (Playdead & Studio Ghibil), Wishfully's debut makes great strides in honoring them both, despite also retreating back to safe design tropes too often.
While some gameplay limitations dampen its mechanical & narrative potential, Loretta remains a harrowing & surreal ride through a twisted psyche.
While it's impossible to ignore the surfeit of launch-window technical issues, Abstraction Games recaptures the mechanics & magic that places Gigantic among the best multiplayer games of the past decade.