Connor Nichols's Reviews
I really was pleased by what I played in this pack, and while I don’t think this has as much bang for your buck as the other William packs, this definitely paves the way as a good chance to get more licensed tables. Could we possibly get some of Williams’ other best licensed tables, such as Popeye, Terminator 2 and Star Trek this way? Here’s hoping that this is a good sign for things to come in the world of Pinball FX3.
Psikyo Shooting Stars Alpha is a fantastic compilation in terms of quality, packing five outstanding games and one good game into a single package. While it’s depressing that none of the games have any sort of history features or in-depth manuals, I was pleased to see that this compilation offers a great value compared to buying each game by itself on the eShop, and having the whole Strikers series in one place makes it a really great holdover until Strikers 2020 launches this year.
Considering the tight controls, the great soundtrack, and the outstandingly faithful recreation to the hardware, this came as quite a surprise to me, considering how it originally seemed like Squidlit was just trying to ape the style of Mr. Tako. In the end though, I found myself vastly preferring this squid platformer over that one, and while both are solid platformers, this one’s shorter length and simplistic, fun platforming makes this a must-have for the $2 pricepoint, as the game manages to make a name for itself and stand out on its own.
Link-a-Pix is yet another entry in Lightwood’s puzzle series that works just as well as all the others. As the developers continue to make minor QOL tweaks and bug fixes to the engine, it’s the puzzles themselves that make each package worth the buy or not, and I’m happy to say that this game is on the higher end of quality, right next to Block-a-Pix as one of my favorites in the series.
New Super Lucky’s Tale is a fantastic 3D platformer, polishing up a game in such a fashion that it becomes nearly unrecognizable from the original, despite not being a sequel or really doing much else. In a way, New Super Lucky’s Tale could be compared to the jump between Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II, in that the game still feels similar to control with the same outline, but nearly everything else about it is polished and tweaked for the better, leading to a far more engaging platformer that’s perfect for anyone to get into, yet has enough to do in order to satisfy the completionists or older players.
Gotcha Racing Second is a racing game that reeks of genericness. Barebones presentation, generic music, boring track layouts, and little reason to keep more than one vehicle around, since you can replace your worst parts with better newer ones and just keep improving on the vehicle you already have.
The Adventures of Elena Temple: Definitive Edition is a rerelease done right. While I was very impressed by the original game for the sheer fact that it was the developer’s first ever game, this rerelease feels like that developer used his knowledge from the past year and a half in order to polish the game up and keep what works while tweaking what might have not.
With that being said, the core gameplay loop may be fun for a while, but there really isn’t much of a surprise to some of the endings after a certain point, since a lot of them are obtained by dying, befriending, or killing NPCs. The more creative ones happen to be what produced a laugh out of me, but after a while it grew tiring starting over and over and over again. I kinda feel some more variety would have been much appreciated, and the gimmick wears out far too quickly.
Williams Pinball Volume 5 is a great bit of DLC. While the other packs are great in their own way, I feel that Volume 5 is the best of the table packs since Volume 1, due to two of the tables being of outstanding quality while the other one is just average. Either way, you’ll have a lot of pinball scorechasing to enjoy from this pack and I really do give this DLC a good recommendation.
It’s a shame too, since if this had a bit more tweaking to be a more exciting multiplayer game, this could stand as a very addictive puzzler just like what inspired it, but as it stands now, only the single player aspects succeed in that regard.
In The Hunt is a pretty OK game. Coming off as a generic and typical 16-bit shooter, the game’s art is really the most memorable aspect of it. However, the multiple endings and the competitive co-op multiplayer are still really cool things to see here, and shooter fans will find enough to enjoy throughout multiple playthroughs, even if the first stage is a drag and the entire game has crippling slowdown.
"I can only really recommend this game for fans of the original machine, or for those who love score chasers, button mashers, or have the sort of USB controllers I’m referring to and want a game that makes good use of them. But for the $8 pricetag on offer, it’s a tough buy for anyone else."
When my only major gripe with this game comes from the stupid save file limitations, that’s a testament to how solid this game is, and I honestly even feel it’ll be one of the Indie classics people will look back on a decade from now.
Here you get what feels like a successor to Neo Contra, but one that tries to innovate in such a poor way that it feels like it forgot the basics, and it needs a lot of polishing up in order to really be memorable. I really tried hoping that this would still be a hidden gem in the end, but unfortunately even I couldn’t get into it despite an update being released, as that update did almost nothing to improve the core experience.
Here, you have a great four-player battle mode with plenty of options, and a fun endless mode, but that’s basically it in terms of meaningful content, and for $14 I honestly can only recommend this game for a very specific niche. The basic controls may be simple enough that anyone can join in and mess around, but when there’s also not much to the game as a result, then it doesn’t really bode well for being a lengthy investment of your time.
Still, if you can get past the bumpy story mode, you’ll get one of the most enjoyable minigame compilations that I’ve played to date on the Switch, and those who like picking these games up to play with friends or family, or for those who want to take on the online leaderboards or play with friends online, you’ll be very satisfied with this game’s quality. For those hoping for the story mode to be super engrossing and worth the price by itself however, you should hold off on this one.
When the only gripe I have with this version is that the US border art for the game looks dreadful, you know you’ve done an outstanding job on a retro re-release. Most Sega AGES games do a great job at updating things and adding extra content, but there haven’t been too terribly many that have made me convinced that they put in their full effort. Thankfully, Shinobi does do just that, and joins Phantasy Star in being the ultimate version of a featured game in the AGES lineup. If you’re a fan of this game, then you owe it to yourself to buy this ASAP!
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD is a game that I really enjoyed at first, only for things to hit a brick wall upon noticing the edits they made to try and change levels with normal controls in mind, as with the case with the aforementioned hellish challenge that is Stage 7-2, alongside those boring waiting levels and boss fights.
Really, either of the three Disgaea games are worth picking up, but I definitely felt 4 was very close to 5 in terms of quality. The story may have not engaged me nearly as much here, but the speed of the battles and overall enjoyment factor was just as fun, so this still leaves Disgaea 4 Complete as a great entry in the franchise. Just don’t expect this to have anything too terribly unique. Here’s hoping Disgaea 3 Complete becomes a reality soon, so that I and other newcomers to the franchise will get to experience all five main entries on modern platforms!
Keen Dreams ended up being a barebones port of a barebones game. While Commander Keen does have a reputation of being a solid platformer, this game certainly isn’t one of them, as the combat is bad and the few bits of “remastering” they tried doing here are just horrible. The speedrunning potential for this game ended up being a lot better than I realized, but with no in-game speedrun leaderboards there really isn’t much incentive to do so unless you want this game to be over faster.