Leonardo Faria's Reviews
Crash Team Rumble features the solid foundations for a neat gameplay loop, as well as excellent controls and decent visuals… but this is something that should have been a multiplayer mode in a mainline game, not its own thing. I actually think that this should have been the better approach with this idea, as it is fun… for a few minutes at a time. The fact it’s a paid game with an additional payment towards a season pass just adds insult to injury.
Sludge Life 2 is basically Sludge Life, just on a new map. Were the original a good game, or even a passable game, I’d understand its appeal. But that’s not the the case. The original Sludge Life was a dour and pointless adventure game drowned in tryhard imagery and completely devoid of charisma… and the sequel is just that. Again. No fixes to visuals, controls, glitches, a dull gameplay loop, nothing. You are simply getting more of what you (don’t) love.
I don’t particularly think any of the inclusions in this package are game changers, be it the inclusions of new characters on older games or the many, many emulated ROMs of Game Gear titles, but the overall package is quite good. Considering the price tag and amount of content on offer, I’d say this is an easy recommendation.
Park Beyond is in a better place now than when it first dropped into digital storefronts, but even if some of its glitches were fixed, something else hinders it even more: the lack of content available on basic versions of the game. There’s just not a lot in it to make a savefile last for more than half an hour at a time, with most of its content updates being planned as paid DLC, which is just unacceptable for a game as expensive as this one.
Purists might feel this game is way too different from anything that had come before it, be it for its vastly darker tone or emphasis on hack and slash action. Others might not enjoy how long it takes for the game to stop being Final Fantasy XIII levels of linear before finally opening up for exploration. My position on it is simple: I loved it. I loved its gameplay loop, and I fell in utter love with its setting and story.
Silicon City is a much more limited and stripped down version of the traditional city builder simulator you’ve grown to love since the 90s, with small map sizes and a somewhat limited amount of buildings to place, but it’s also faster to learn, as well as to simply pick up and play. It’s a more casual take on the genre, all while retaining a chunk of the elements that made it so popular with PC gamers in the first place.
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.