Leonardo Faria's Reviews
I can’t help but constantly feel like this game, or its predecessor, could have just been part of a cheaper upgrade DLC pack, or something akin to what Konami did with PES before its demise a couple of years ago. There’s just no reason for Monster Energy Supercross 6 to be a full-fledged game. If you really want a supercross game and don’t own a single one so far, then sure, Monster Energy Supercross 6 is an excellent choice. But if you already own any of its predecessors, just stick to them.
Color me impressed, Justice League: Cosmic Chaos was actually quite fun. Is it too simplistic? Yes. Is its combat beyond shallow? Yup. Did I dislike the fact I only have three playable superheroes at my disposable? For sure. With all that being said, it was pretty hard not to fall for such a cheerful presentation, with some high quality voice acting, and an open world that was just fun to full around as a cocky and pun-loving Superman.
If you love Digimon and want to play some great Digimon games, don’t worry: between Cyber Sleuth and Survive, you have more than enough content to satiate your needs on the Switch. Digimon World: Next Order is nowhere near as good, fun, engaging or memorable as these other titles. Sure, it might be a love letter to a PS1 classic (?), but there’s a reason as to why not a single other Digimon World besides that first game had Tamagotchi-based gameplay, it just wasn’t fun.
This is a straightforward recreation of a simple, but addictive Atari game very few people have even heard of. That’s probably why Caverns of Mars: Recharged feels oddly fresh. It feels like the kind of indie roguelike any small team would develop as its first title. It’s also a game that manages to overcome some of its flaws, namely an average presentation and questionable collision detection, by simply being way too addictive, the perfect kind of game to own on a portable.
Once you get used to the controls in the Story mode, skip towards the game’s sandbox mode. With little to no stakes or objectives, Hotel Renovator quickly becomes a relaxing game to be enjoyed while listening to music or a podcast, as the game itself barely has any music to begin with. That’s the bizarre magic behind games like this one and House Flipper. They are beyond flawed, buggy, messy, not very intuitive, but there’s an inexplicably relaxing gameplay loop in the middle of all this mess.
This game is unbelievably silly, almost to a surrealistic degree, but man, it works. Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star is a fun mixture between a workout session you can take with you on-the-go and a fun homage to one of Japan’s most famous franchises ever. It looks the part, sounds the part, and its controls are way more reliable than I was expecting.
Even if I didn’t care at all about its plot, and there were a handful of issues with its gameplay, namely feature creep, I played it for hours and hours. The brilliant mixture of Nioh, Sekiro, Bloodborne, and even a bit of Battlefield resulted in a game that feels familiar and fresh at the same time, and one of the most exciting action RPGs released in recent memory.
It is an ungodly flawed game in need of some patches, without a doubt. Some of its design choices are questionable, to say the least. Yet, somehow, I still liked Clive ‘N’ Wrench way more than expected. By no means was this up to par with some of the other love letters to the collectathon genre released over the past decade, but its charm and creativity somewhat outweighed its cons.
So this basically ends up being the typical licensed game that feels like a godsend to fans of the franchise in question, but is a cautionary purchase for everyone else. Gigantosaurus: Dino Kart is easily 3DClouds’ best attempt at a kid-friendly racing game, and it has enough mechanics to make it feel like the perfect introductory racing title for your kids before you teach them about the horrific tale of the Blue Shell, but it’s a bit too brief in terms of content.
The classic case of a jack of all trades, master of none. I also have to commend the developers for a truly gorgeous presentation, decent tutorial and a user interface that isn’t half-bad, despite being made with a largely forgettable gameplay loop in mind. We have enough city builders and strategy games out there right now. Just get one of each and enjoy their vastly different purposes. You don’t need a game trying to be both at the same time.
With that being said, this is not bad DLC. Far from it. This is the perfect kind of content I’d want from a PowerWash Simulator crossover expansion. The Midgar Special Pack uses the base game’s inexplicably appealing gameplay loop as a foundation for players to immerse themselves into some extra Final Fantasy VII content. It’s lengthy enough, giving fans of both franchises more of what they love, be it some healthy doses of fan service or just more horrendously dirty machinery to clean up.
Sure, a full-fledged remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin! would have been the better deal, but finally being able to play a localized version of this ludicrous Yakuza spinoff is still great. Even though it’s a bit dated for those used to the Dragon Engine, the controls are still excellent, the sheer amount of content is staggering, and the combat styles at your disposal are some of the best the franchise has ever seen. This is what we’ve been asking for years, and Sega delivered. I can’t complain that much.
Inti Creates knocked it out of the park with a game that feels right at home on the Nintendo Switch. What little I have to complain about is so minute it feels like nitpicking. If you’re a fan of Castlevania, but are fed up with the sheer volume of metroidvanias flooding the indie scene nowadays, Grim Guardians: Demon Purge is the perfect pick.
If this is what Atari will keep releasing from now on, I’m game. It might be a brand new title, but Akka Arrh feels like the perfect marriage between the Atari of old and the technology of today. It’s also weird as hell. It took me a while to understand what on Earth I was supposed to do in this game, but once I got the hang of it, I had a blast with this bizarre mixture between a space shooter, a puzzler… and a golf game.
Just like other FMV-based games by Wales Interactive, Ten Dates is not an easy sell. You need to be into this different kind of visual novel with limited interactivity, you need to like dating sims, and you need to like rom-coms. With all that said and done, Ten Dates might be my favorite Wales Interactive game so far.
I feel like this particular version of Zero Wing isn’t the one that should have been preserved. Or, at the very least, the folks at Bitwave Games should have added the option for us to change between the arcade port (the better one, mechanically speaking) and the Mega Drive port (the one with the meme that made it famous) via a menu option. It’s not a bad game, far from it, and Bitwave did a good job at porting and remastering it, but this was a missed opportunity. Vanilla Zero Wing just doesn’t have that many interesting elements that make it stand out from the ten billion other space shooters released in the early 90s.
Red Tape is a really tedious and mundane game… and weirdly enough, that’s why I actually kinda liked it. The joke was turning Hell into a boring and bureaucratic office building where you’re told to spend the rest of eternity as an intern doing pointless jobs, and against all odds, the joke landed. The fact the game was short and, oddly enough, somewhat visually appealing, also did help a bit. It’s not for everyone, and there are other office-like comedic games that are way more enjoyable, but for the minuscule price tag the publisher is asking for, you could do a hell of a lot worse.
Pharaoh: A New Era doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to city builders. As a straightforward remake of a 1999 game, it did gain a much better UI and faster gameplay, but it’s still a slow-paced experience focused on micromanagement and logistics. Only a specific niche of city building fans will really get a kick out of this game, but it’s still one worth checking out if you’re into strategic titles which reward patience and long-term planning.
This is how a remaster of a Nintendo game should look, run, and play. What was already near-perfect is even better, all thanks to Retro Studios just improving upon every single aspect of the original game, making this particular version of an all-time classic the ultimate way to play it. Not to mention the fact you can now take it on-the-go. I may have one or two small issues with it, but to call them deal-breakers would be damn near blasphemous. In short, grab Metroid Prime Remastered.
There’s more to it than your average demo, but way less content than your average sports title. It’s very simplistic, feeling like a remaster of a Nintendo 64 sports title at times, but it’s cute, runs well, and its controls are pretty good. Also, as a means to test the Western public’s perception on a Japanese-as-hell franchise, this isn’t so bad. And considering it costs a mere dollar… eh, what the hell, we only live once, go for it.