Leonardo Faria's Reviews
If ProtoCorgi was merely a cute ’em up with decent controls, that would have already been enough to make me recommend it to fans of shooters in general. It’s just that good. Thankfully, there’s more to it than just adorable pups with fricking lasers. The inclusion of a level editor makes it stand out from its peers. It’s not the most intuitive of editors, but I’m sure someone else will get a hold of it and exponentially extend this game’s lasting appeal.
My past experience with Hatsune Miku games has been shockingly positive, but The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes is just too shallow and brief to be considered a worthy purchase, even for fans of the vocaloid diva. Even though some its minigames were indeed fun to play, there’s not a lot to enjoy in this package, and you can’t even play them with a friend. Its boring story, dialogue, and mediocre soundtrack (again, a shocking thing considering the source material) weren’t enough to make up for the overall lack of content.
At the end of the day, what matters is that Street Fighter 6 did manage to overcome a ton of odds. It might have an issue or two when it comes to the visual fidelity of its campaign mode, as well as some odd artistic decisions, but as a complete package, there’s little to complain about. It’s Capcom, yet again, delivering. Great controls, buttery smooth performance, and one of the best single-player campaigns ever put in a fighting game are but a few of the highlights in this roaring success of a title.
This one was quite a surprise. With the appropriate pair of rose-tinted glasses, you can actually have quite a lot of carefree fun with Terminal Velocity. I’m not going to sugarcoat the fact that this game is beyond dated, but there is enjoyment to be had with such a simplistic gameplay loop. It is the quintessential “shut your brain off and have some fun” kind of experience.
We Love Katamari has always been the fan favorite of the franchise, so having access to a modernized port, which retains everything that worked in the original (namely, almost everything), all while slightly improving its UI and giving players even more content than before, is something worth celebrating. Would I prefer an actual modern Katamari game, with new levels and content to enjoy? Sure, but I get that this franchise is a really hard sell. I would, however, absolutely recommend picking the remaster of We Love Katamari up. This kind of ultra-dumb but ultra-fun game is rarely seen nowadays.
Shame Legacy might possibly be one of the most “okay” horror games I’ve played in a while. There’s nothing about it that’s bad. It’s glitch-free, it controls well enough, it has one or two neat ideas. At the same time, nothing about it impressed me, be it its underwhelming plot, 30fps cap, or an overall lack of innovation. It’s just… there. A game worth a look if you’re into horror, but not one to expect a lot from. If anything, the best thing I can say about it is that it didn’t infuriate me or gross me out like Outlast 2 did.
There is little else that needs to be said. Shinobi Non Grata is a very straightforward retro platformer that isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel or offer much more than a retro-infused action-platforming experience that might look, sound, and feel like an old-school Ninja Gaiden/Strider hybrid with a handful of quality of life improvements. But that’s not a bad thing. If anything, the fact it’s so down to the point in its premise, being focused on being challenging but fair, is what made me like it so much. It’s no The Messenger, but it wasn’t trying to compete with that game’s level of ambition. It’s just fast-paced, challenging, and above anything else, fun.
After Us is a game of contrasts. A game where the harsh grays and pollution of its desolate landscapes contrast with the gorgeous rays of light and greeneries summoned by its protagonist. Where its unwelcome setting contrasts with its easy-going gameplay loop. It’s also a game where the decent gameplay loop contrasts with its excessively on-the-nose story.
Puzzle Bobble Everybubble is basically more of the tried and true formula that has been going on for the past thirty years. Despite that somewhat dismissive statement, don’t call that criticism. The franchise has tried to reinvent itself in the recent past with a 3D iteration, and it didn’t work very well. Returning back to its more successful format, with just a few additions here and there to pretty much justify its existence as a brand new, commercially-available product, was the right choice.
Pulling No Punches is a very hard sell unless you fall into its specific target audience: fed-up Brazilians who had to deal with a stupidly stressful couple of years during the pandemic. If you fall into this niche demographic, this is the catharsis you’ve been waiting for. If not, you can still have fun with its good controls and decent art style, but the in-game jokes and overall premise will mean nothing to you.
Gekisou! Benza Race: Toilet Shooting Star is a truly baffling waste of time I would have clearly ignored if it was kept as a Japanese eShop exclusive, as it should have been. It wasn’t the case, however, as some mad mind decided to release it in the West with absolutely no translation or localization efforts. What we ended up getting as a result was a near criminal waste of thirteen dollars, where you can’t have fun with its premise, nor can you understand what the hell is happening onscreen. Fittingly enough, a game about toilets deserves to be thrown into one.
Whatever gripes I may have faced during my dozens, perhaps hundreds of hours with Tears of the Kingdom, don’t make it any less engrossing and amazing. It’s not perfect, it’s not my favorite Zelda game of all time, it’s not even the best game we’ve played and reviewed in 2023. But does that really matter? At the end of the day, it’s an improvement over Breath of the Wild, a really impossible task that Eiji Aonuma managed to achieve.
Humanity is the kind of experimental breath of fresh air we rarely see being released nowadays. Evoking the spirit of the more bizarre and experimental games from the Dreamcast era, it features a bonkers premise and a pointless plot, but also excellent controls, a really intuitive gameplay loop, and of course, as to be expected from a game published by Enhance, trippy visuals and great music.
I’m not going to say that Pretty Girls 2048 Strike is terrible because, honestly, it isn’t. Especially when compared to some other atrocious games released by the same publisher in recent times. Sadly, it’s just very unnecessary. By the time the game becomes somewhat challenging and interesting, you’ll be wondering why the hell weren’t you just playing 2048 on your phone, for free, while doing something else at the same time.
Herodes is way more interesting than it seems at first glance. Sure, its difficulty curve borders on the unfair at first, and its in-game economy basically means you are forced to replay some levels in order to afford its borderline mandatory upgrades, but once you’re finally upgraded to a desirable degree, everything clicks. Each level features a unique gimmick or objective, the presentation is decent enough, and the controls are pretty good.
Even if some of its levels felt poorly designed, I ended up enjoying Panic Porcupine quite a lot. From its silly premise (never thought I’d give a crap about this game’s plot, but here we are), sublime presentation, and somewhat fair initial difficulty curve, the game did a great job at mixing the gameplay styles from both Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Meat Boy in a cohesive and enjoyable way. There’s little else that needs to be said about it: if you’re into either franchises, Panic Porcupine is a no-brainer.
What a massive disappointment. Sure, the fact this overly ambitious game was a single developer effort is something worth commending, for the scope is quite surprising, but this ended up being its main issue as well. Molly Medusa shouldn’t have been this ambitious, or at least it should have spent more time in the oven before being sent out to the public. It’s chock full of terrible gameplay decisions, poor puzzles, and nauseating camera controls.
Coming from a newcomer to this criminally underlooked classic, Final Fantasy V captivated me in ways I wasn’t expecting. Even though I cared very little about its admittedly generic story, its insanely addictive Job system, coupled with a handful of quality of life improvements stemming from the Pixel Remaster edition won me over like very few JRPGs, either modern or retro, have ever been able to.
At the end of it, I couldn’t help but just constantly ask myself, “what’s the point of all this?” I will never not appreciate a developer for coming up with a unique premise for a game, but make it fun, or at least moderately coherent for it to justify its existence as a piece of entertainment.
I still need to commend the fact that, indeed, Kill It With Fire VR is much better than its non-VR counterpart, but mostly by default. That game just was plain bad to begin with, so adapting it to a more immersive medium, with the addition of (clunky) motion controls to mess around with would automatically make it more engaging. Sadly, just like the original Kill It With Fire, it is fun for an hour, maybe two, but it will then get boring pretty quickly.