After playing through certain games, I get all emotional and dazed because the experience, even with some issues along the way, has been so exceptionally strong. The Medium is one of those games. Its distinctive art and sound design, bare-bones gameplay, Marianne’s tender persona, and stripped-down story create a poignant tale.
Olija’s atmosphere is spot on and despite its huge pixels, the game manages to channel Hugo Pratt’s fabled Corto Maltese graphic novels that take place in similar exotic corners of the world. The gameplay also works most of the time, but as is often the case with indie games, the authoritarian developer has gone overboard. The less is usually more but here, the style simply went over the substance and 12 hours of playtime more than overstays its welcome considering the game's ultimately shallow bounty.
Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy is a great entry point for those unfamiliar with JRPGs but who would like to get acquainted with this perhaps mythical genre. At the same time, you also have to learn and put up with grinding, because now and then you will encounter bosses that are a bit too much for an under-leveled party. Thanks to the snappy combat, quick gameplay and easy traversal, you are back in the home base in no time for another go. Ryza’s bright attitude will rub on you and make it easier to go through chores and grinding of real life.
Shenmue III takes a certain state of mind because it’s unmistakably what Shenmue used to be, and not how it’s supposed to be now. I hope that there will be Shenmue IV to give closure to the story and like this, it will stay true to what it is.
The game comfortably speeds along a yellow brick road that goes neatly between calculated appeal of Forza Horizon and the excess abundance of The Crew, and that’s why I liked it better than those two.
It took about 15 tumultuous hours to see Blacksad’s investigation through, including repeated quick-time events. Years’ worth of reading and watching detective stories didn’t go wasted as I figured out early on who must be the mastermind behind the crimes and in the end, I was really pleased that I got it right. I was happy how my story concluded but there’s a lot of variation how individual scenes or even bigger lines can turn out based on choices you have made along the journey.
Crying Sun is stylish, fast-paced and simple to play but its content runs thin and it can also be often unfair because of its high reliance on random factor. It may be true that half of everything is luck but in the long run, it doesn’t always turn into meaningful gameplay.
If the game features a trophy for dying 50 games, you will know that it won’t be a walk in the park. Especially when you’re most likely to score it early on and there are even no difficulty levels, putting everyone to face the same ordeal. It’s an entirely different matter whether the challenge is fair or unfair, though. After all, the line between the two is notoriously thin.
I love the game that is bubbling under all the excess garbage. This year’s MyPlayer is pretty much what I would have liked to see before in the series, even though I had to play it with Plan B characters as photo uploading in-game didn’t initially work. Despite its crappy presentation, MyCareer is also endearing and inspiring.
Including all unavoidable failures and retries, it only takes two hours to play Stela through. In that sense, the asking price of twenty bucks is a bit too steep. However, the game is well done and the gameplay focuses only on the essential as there’s nothing extra to distract you.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered advocates certain innocence that is lost in the today’s gaming climate. Too often games are about killing, killing and some more killing, told in gloomy, cheerless tones.
Not to mention your character is actually someone with a purpose in the story’s luscious context and not just some putrid-faced nobody fighting for whatever unclear reason.
If you shun DiRT Rally’s authenticity or F1 series’ almost tiresomely detailed race weekends and don’t mind the deficiency of online features, GRID is just about the best game you can get if you only fancy racing fast.
The combination of a prose through plentiful and well-written dialogue and a peculiar, detailed cartoon art is really invigorating. Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones caught my insatiable imagination in a way no other game in the genre has done in a long time.
However, for all that talk about the game’s subject matter, its satire is no stranger than what you used to see in South Park’s heyday. Agatha Knife is all barks and no bite as it makes fun without being mean or mocking. I expected to sit through some profound lesson but much to my surprise – and without spoiling too much – the outcome was positive for all the parties involved. In the end, the unique presentation and a curious premise hide a somewhat familiar parody and the so-called criticism the game likes to think it represents isn’t as sharp as Agatha’s knifes.
Before long, you will notice that the sweat you once poured trying to get through brawlers like Streets of Rage and Final Fight is absent here.
When the most critical bugs are eventually squashed (developers have promised a steady stream of patches) and the penalty for dying hopefully toned down a bit (or conversely, more resting points added to the world), Decay of Logos will rise up to its full promise.
WRC 8 screams mediocrity in every turn, something akin to a budget title, but still it’s sold for a full price. It’s not a bad game by any means but not that great either.
Control has bucketloads of what Remedy can do best; a characteristic world, an intriguing mystery building and a quirky story that’s not even meant to be fully understood.