Leonardo Faria's Reviews
This ain’t it. There are good ideas in Highrise City, but the game is just plastered with nuisances that result in it not being as relaxing or accessible as other city builders. It is too deep in its logistic mechanics, almost to a fault. The beginning of each new save is also painfully slow, poorly explained, and convoluted, meaning that this game also lacks the “pick up and play” aspect seen in Sim City or Cities. It tried, and I respect that, but it needs an extra phase of fixes before I can call it a city builder worth hanging out with the other big boys.
Considering its origins as a money-hungry mobile game, I have to say I expected a lot worse from Mega Man X Dive Offline. It’s still painfully dumbed down and far from being one of the best Mega Man games released over the past few years, but there is fun to be had with this “gotta catch ’em all” take on the franchise’s long history. It is bogged down by some repetitive grinding, but being able to play as pretty much everyone you can imagine, without having to overspend like a whale, is indeed appealing.
I feel like It’s A Wrap is, more than anything else, a great foundation for much better sequels. Its core gameplay idea is sound, but it needs a bit of tinkering with its difficulty spikes (even though the hint system is already excellent) and its visuals. Even though they are great, you can barely look at what’s happening onscreen on portable mode, while you don’t have access to its great touchscreen controls on docked mode. As for the rest, it’s a bit short, but it’s still worth picking up.
The fact that Fort Solis is devoid of gameplay isn’t what made it so unbearable to experience. Filling it with clunky walking physics, pointless quick-time events, and plot decisions only a braindead idiot would make, are what ruined it for me. It is an impressive showcase of what Unreal Engine 5 can provide to smaller games, but also a game so devoid of interesting interactivity I can’t help but think it would have been a better experience had I just decided to watch someone play it on YouTube, or if the devs just decided to turn it into a movie (it’s as short as one).
It doesn’t matter if you’re playing it on a PC or on an Xbox. Sadly, Age of Empires IV feels like a massive step back when compared to the immense levels of fun, customization and depth offered by Age II, III, or Mythology. Playing it on a controller just adds an unnecessary layer of complexity towards the gameplay, even though I still commend the developers for their impressive efforts. I doubt anyone else would have been able to pull off such task. With that being said, I can’t recommend playing this particular version, or Age of Empires IV as a whole for that matter. Just stick to its much better predecessors.
What Sega needed to do with Samba de Amigo: Party Central was to ensure that the foundations were solid, the controls worked as intended, and the gameplay loop was fun enough both on your own or with friends. This game is an absolute blast. It retains that wacky, experimental vibe from the Dreamcast era, with utterly ludicrous visuals, a bunch of nonsense blasting your senses, and enough content to keep you busy for a while… at least until the release of the next song pack.
The Making of Karateka is a fantastic trip down memory lane, teaching you everything you never though you’d want to learn from such an iconic game and its creator. Even though the game itself isn’t exactly THAT entertaining for today’s standards, I still had a good time learning more about it, as well as its predecessor, Deathbounce. That being said, I think the collection is missing some essential versions of Karateka, such as the 16-bit, Game Boy, NES, ZX Spectrum and 2012 versions.
Initial impressions of Deadlink were mixed. Whilst its presentation captivated me from the start, it took a while before the game’s core loop eventually managed to win me over. After a few rounds and some upgrades, I’d finally get a hold of its occasionally confusing controls. I’d start jumping around, shooting everything in sight, all while being bombarded with some great visuals and music.
This game has aged a lot. Although I did have fun with Red Dead Redemption, I can’t help but think this is just a bit below the average of what we expect from a 2023 title being released at a ludicrously premium price. Having this on-the-go, whilst a novel concept, is a bit detrimental to its epic, movie-like plot and structure. This benefits from being played on a bigger screen, and by doing so, it looks a bit worse. Not to mention the fact its controls and physics are simply too clunky, even for Xbox 360 standards.
This isn’t trying to be mere nostalgia bait or an ultraviolent shooter for the sake of it. It’s well-written, it’s well-designed, it’s smart, and it sounds incredible. It was a perfect mixture of slightly retro visuals thrown into a futuristic, Ghost in the Shell-esque setting, with all the post-processing effects and gimmicks featured in a more modern game, and juicy combat sections which will please both adrenaline junkies and those looking for a more methodical take on the genre.
Ikki Unite is not very polished or well-balanced, but once you get into a good run, with a character that’s actually fun to play as, it’s hard to put the controller down. As a blatant clone of Vampire Survivors, it does manage to copy some of that game’s most appealing features. Sadly, there’s not a lot of creativity in display. It’s just that: yet another Vampire Survivors, but inferior.
It’s not that Quantum: Recharged is bad, far from it. The thing is: it’s beyond basic. It feels like the Recharged games released a handful of years ago, back when they were basically vector-based remakes of old arcade games with little else to offer besides new visuals and an EDM soundtrack. This is still a somewhat entertaining game for a handful of minutes at a time, but after playing more interesting games by Atari in recent times, I’ve started to expect more from their outings. The best thing I can say about it is that it’s… fine.
It is quite punitive with its harsh sanity setbacks, tough enemies and slow-paced gameplay. Nevertheless, it covers a particular niche, and after waiting for it for what felt like an eternity, I’m pleased to see that the folks at Covenant.dev have successfully managed to come up with one of the most interesting strategy games in recent memory, even if it’s not one of the more entertaining ones.
This is possibly the best remastering effort by Nightdive I have ever seen. This isn’t just “a means to play Quake II on modern platforms”. Just like how a remaster should be, it is the ultimate way to play Quake II, the one version to rule above any other, the port that makes every single previously released iteration feel like unplayable garbage as a comparison.
Gravity Circuit is one of the best Mega Man-esque retro platformers released in recent memory, even if we aren’t so desperate for new games stemming from Capcom or lookalikes as we were back in 2016. This is everything Mighty No. 9 wanted to be, but failed to deliver: it looks the part, it sounds great, controls like a dream, it’s brutally challenging, and most importantly, it still manages to stand out on its own, all thanks to some excellent art direction and a handful of unique elements.
There’s little else that needs to be said, or can be said, given how simplistic Astro Flame: Starfighter is. Just like its predecessor, it’s a simple, somewhat generic, but surprisingly fun bullet hell shooter. Even if it’s not particularly interesting to look at, much less innovative (if anything, it only slightly manages to stand out from I, AI), it got the job done with its level of polish, great controls, and addictive upgrade system.
Watching demons’ guts fly through the air is fun at first, but the repetitive encounters, poor presentation, bad framerate and minuscule scope all make Demonic Supremacy feel underwhelming. It’s the poster child of the saturation of the retro-styled first person shooter genre, being lackluster in terms of vision, presentation, polish, and gameplay.
I get that Flutter Away was made with the best of intentions, but I can’t, for the life of me, even begin to question who is this for. This feels less like a game and more like a competent student project, lasting for about an hour, meant to showcase some mechanics and some cute visuals. As a game, however, I just don’t see its appeal. There is no catharsis, no semblance of a challenge, no rewarding for complete its mundane objectives.
I liked the concept behind Ninja or Die, and even though I just ended up feeling lukewarm towards it, some of its biggest issues can be mitigated with some patches and some extra content. As of now, dealing with glitchy controls and unfair level design makes this game a hard sell, but there is potential in this idea. It’s a really innovative roguelike, one that looks decent and makes you feel really cool once everything clicks.
Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara is, sadly, just another bog standard 3D platformer that does very little to stand out from the deluge of platformers available on the Switch. Not featuring the same gameplay loop as its predecessor makes it a hard sell for fans of Summer in Mara, and being so canonically tied to a farming simulator also makes it a hard sell for platformer enthusiasts looking for another hidden gem on the Nintendo Switch. Add in average-at-best visuals, music and level design, and what you get as a result is just a very middle-of-the-road game that fails to appeal to anyone.