Leonardo Faria's Reviews
Shovel Knight Dig is a great Downwell-esque roguelike adaptation of the franchise’s formula, though its somewhat unfair steep difficulty curve can be a bit irritating at times.
It’s hard to recommend PBA Pro Bowling 2023, even though there’s nothing inherently bad about it. Sure, its presentation is really subpar, but as a bowling experience, it does offer more than I was expecting. That’s the problem, though: it’s a bowling video game. It’s very limited in terms of scope and gameplay, despite featuring a career mode and licensed players. You can’t help but feel like you could get similar experiences in other games that just so happen to feature bowling as one of their side activities.
Some unnecessary design choices hindered my overall enjoyment with Hardspace: Shipbreaker, namely the monstrously uninteresting story and short work shifts, but I still spent a shocking amount of time with this curiously relaxing mix between a pasttime simulator, a puzzle game, and a survival title. It featured one of the most enjoyable, innovative and relaxing gameplay loops from any game I’ve played this year.
Its online modes are bland, and its gameplay is really sluggish for modern fighting game standards, but the sheer amount of content and fan service make JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R a must-have for fans of this utterly ludicrous but endearing franchise.
I love that Easy Come Easy Golf exists for the Switch. Everything that was wrong with Mario Golf: Super Rush (and honestly, all Mario sports games released over the past decade or so) isn’t present in this adorable title that keeps thing simple, but also fresh. Its gimmicks are minute, only improving what’s still an easy and intuitive gameplay loop. It might be a bit grindy, but it’s also quite addictive. In short, this might actually be the best Mario Golf game in years, and it doesn’t even feature any Italian plumbers in its roster.
The developers behind the project had a specific niche of players they wanted to target, and delivered in spades. You need to like heavy metal, DOOM and rhythm games in order to enjoy this innovative, slightly flawed, but ultimately amazing experience. Brutal, fast-paced, mechanically sound, replayable, and most importantly, a blessing for metalheads’ ears. You will need some time in order to get used to its mechanics, which feel confusing at first, but once everything clicks, you will have the loudest and bloodiest of times with this hellfest of a shooter.
This is not an easy recommendation, given how unbelievably challenging this game is, even on the easiest of difficulties. Radiant Silvergun is a gem of its time, but one that has managed to age gracefully. Few bullet hell shooters released in this day and age are able to stand next to it and its sequel, Ikaruga. Being able to take this absolute classic on a portable, with a handful of simple, but welcome quality of life improvements, is worth the entry fee if you’re a fan of bullet hell shooters.
The only thing that makes NBA 2K23 better than its predecessor, even if by just a little bit, is the inclusion of the excellent Jordan Challenge mode, a great love letter to the best player of all time. Does that make the game worth your time? Well, if you’re into basketball, you don’t exactly have a choice, but, at the very least, 2K23 isn’t worse than the games that preceded it. Small wins, y’all.
It’s a bit janky and it has some questionable design choices, but Steelrising is yet another pretty good effort from Spiders, solidifying the small French studio as one of the most interesting developers in the industry nowadays. Its absolutely unique premise, mixing the freaking French Revolution with robots and Dark Souls, is the main reason you’ll want to play it. Even though it has some progression and level design issues, as well as a bit of AA jank, it’s still well worth your time.
As a whole, I can’t stress enough how impressed I was with Rollerdrome. Roll7 perfectly picked up two completely different gameplay loops and mixed them together in a cohesive and addictive title with a shockingly intuitive control scheme. It’s fast-paced, it makes you feel cool as hell while playing it, and it’s ridiculously addictive. It’s one of the perfect examples of creativity still looming in today’s seemingly tired and creatively bankrupt industry.
You’re here because you want to witness first-hand the fact that a Behaviour Interactive-endorsed dating simulator where you can date serial killers and monsters actually exists. Thankfully, the novelty aspect isn’t the only appealing factor in this game’s favor. It’s funny, snarky, and really well-written. There’s not a lot else that needs to be said. Hooked on You is exactly what it looks like. One of the weirdest games I’ve played this year, but one I certainly do not regret tackling.
I would have already loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection if it were a mere collection of a handful of TMNT titles from back in the day, with little to no extras. But the addition of online co-op, gameplay modifiers, regional variants, and that adorable Nintendo Power-esque tips guide for each title just elevates this compilation to nonsensical heights. This is Rare Replay levels of good, one of the best retro compilations of the past years.
For its time, Pac-Man World was a revolutionary revival of a long dormant franchise. Nowadays, PAC-MAN WORLD Re-PAC is still a fun platformer, but it does feel a bit by-the-books, especially since we’re aware of the improvements featured in the original game’s sequels.
The remake of Destroy All Humans 2 takes what worked in the previous remake and polishes things up to remove a good chunk, but not all, of the jank that made its predecessor feel a tad bit disappointing at times. It’s still short, and it’s nowhere near as feature-filled as other open world games in the market, but there’s nothing else that looks and feels like this delightfully dumb title out there.
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? feels like your bog standard Wii shovelware title released fifteen years too late. For as much as I enjoy the fact developers are still making games with local multiplayer shenanigans in mind, there is very little in this title that makes me want to consider it over Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, or other party games in general.
Saints Row is much better than its terrible reveal trailer made it look like, with some great controls, a ton of side content, a ludicrous character creator, and some truly amazing story missions, but its tone suffers from a proper lack of direction. At times, it resembles the ultra-imbecilic Saints Row we all know and love. Other times, it tries desperately to pander to a dab-appreciating, hashtag-tolerant, Twitter-addicted, Buzzfeed-consuming Gen Z generation that would never consider buying a game in this franchise to begin with. It’s a game that feels like it was written by two completely antagonistic committees. If you can ignore its tonal discrepancies, as well as some glitches, you’ll have a great time with yet another strong outing from Volition.
More than just a reskinned version of a very old Atari game, Yars: Recharged is the culmination of what this particular subseries from Atari was intended to be. It’s not a mere HD version of a classic arcade game with one or two new elements, it fully reinvents the formula of the original with a brand new gameplay loop, all while staying true to its roots. Add in an addictive (and very infuriating, may I add) mission mode, and you get what’s possibly the peak of the Recharged series, and most certainly the best title Atari has released in more than a decade.
Tinykin is the kind of the game that completely changes the image and course of the developers and publishers behind it. I was shocked at how amazing this game was. I just couldn’t stop playing it. The mixture between Pikmin, Toy Story 2 and Super Mario 64 resulted in a stupidly creative indie darling with a ton of charm, great controls, and a fantastic presentation.
Thanks to its slick presentation, which is enhanced by either the Switch’s or your TV’s speakers, Please Touch the Artwork is a really enjoyable audiovisual experience that requires your attention and rewards you for it, unlike your average casual mobile outing. This game is clearly not for everyone, and its pretentious atmosphere will put some players off, but I had a good time with it regardless. Way more than I could have ever imagined.
This is the bad kind of Switch port of a mobile game. This is the kind of game you just ask yourself “why would I want to play this anywhere other than a phone?” It features little to no graphics, sound, or anything else that would require the bare minimum of attention needed to play a mobile game for a couple of minutes at a time. With a portable system with a library as vast as the Nintendo Switch’s, Understand does very little to convince you to give it a shot.