Leonardo Faria's Reviews
Bassmaster Fishing 2022: Super Deluxe Edition is a game that gets the job when it comes to pleasing a stupidly specific niche of gamers (hardcore fishing enthusiasts with Nintendo Switches), but it’s a nearly impossible sell for anyone else.
I love Capcom Fighting Collection. It pays respect to the company’s past, all while giving players a brand new (and refined) way to play some of the best fighting and puzzle games of all time, complete in one, smooth-as-silk, pristinley remastered package. Its online play is reliable, its presentation is sublime, and its extras are satisfactory.
ElecHead is a delightful chunk of a game that is innovative, thought-provoking, and really entertaining… while it lasts. The biggest issue about it is the fact you can beat it in a sitting without making an effort. I can absolutely understand its minuscule length, considering this was made by a single person in his spare time, but it was so fun I just ended up wanting more out of it.
Destroy All Humans! – Clone Carnage is worse than dead on arrival. The thing had already rotted beyond recognition before launch. Online lobbies are absolutely deserted, there are no bots, and playing this locally, while possible, is boring. The worst part about this title as a whole is the fact THQ Nordic decided to release it as a standalone expansion that doesn’t require the base game at all. Not only does it cost more than your average DLC deal, but that also means it’s susceptible to being treated as a game of its own. And as a game of its own, this is an embarrassment.
When Sonic Origins was first announced, I honestly thought it was going to be the single most pointless re-release in the history of pointless Sega re-releases. Even though its dumb DLC packs are absurd, the compilation itself is excellent. This is the single best way to play all of the Mega Drive-era Sonic games with tons of extra features and quality of life improvements. It basically justifies its existence as something more than a mere cash grab to celebrate the franchise’s (belated) 30th anniversary.
Don’t expect a lot from THE Bass Fishing, other than being a passable and competent fishing simulator for a niche audience. Even if its presentation and amount of content leave a lot to be desired, it stands out from its competition with some really good motion controls, being one of the very few recent Switch games to take advantage of the Joy-Con’s capabilities.
Wreckfest is a shockingly good time on Nintendo’s handheld, even if it clearly doesn’t hold up when compared to other console ports in terms of visuals and performance. Being able to crash a bunch of cars inside an arena while driving a deranged combined harvester, on-the-go? I’d be a madman if I said I wasn’t having a ton of fun doing that.
I like Gravitar: Recharged more than the vast majority of Atari’s Recharged series of retro revivals. It’s the one game in this series where I feel like a lot more effort has been put in order to make it stand out among the myriad of arcade-inspired indies out in the market.
In short, if you liked the original Knights of the Old Republic, then you’ll certainly want to grab this port of Knights of the Old Republic II. For the most part, it’s more of what you’ve loved since 2003/2005, as well as more of what you’ve loved from Aspyr’s remaster of the original, but with the added benefit of a potentially game-changing free DLC pack meant to fix plot holes and an overall lack of content which plagued the original game ever since it was first released, making it the definitive way to play this underrated gem of an RPG.
I was pleasantly surprised with how competent Zorro The Chronicles ended up being. It uses elements from both old-school Assassin’s Creed and Sniper Elite in an easy and forgiving environment, making this game the perfect gateway title for kids to learn how to deal with a stealth game. I never thought I’d play a Zorro game in 2022, let alone one as good as this one.
More than simply a love letter to the golden age of arcade beat ’em ups, as well as the franchise as a whole, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is both Dotemu’s and Tribute Games’ best title to date. It is a quasi-perfect arcade title that perfectly blends fanservice, fantastic controls, a downright pristine presentation, and some chaotic fun with up to six players at once. I am so glad this game ended up exceeding my sky-high expectations.
Why Pizza? might be wacky and unique (for better or worse) in terms of its presentation, but at the end of the day this is yet another subpar indie platformer whose sole selling point is giving hoarders and compulsive completionists another easy platinum trophy in less than half an hour. No matter how unsettling its presentation is, there are literal hundreds of games like this one out in the market, a good chunk of them offering a lot more polish and bang for your buck.
You can enjoy Postal: Brain Damaged for the great retro-inspired first-person shooter it is as long as you shut your brain off when it comes to anything that links it with older Postal games, namely the bad voice acting, the edgelord “plot” and the terrible attempts at being funny with (innefective) shock value. At its core, this shooter has some of the most impressive level design I’ve seen in a while, and its combat is also pretty good. There was some love put into this title, something that cannot be said at all about the mainline Postal games.
In short, Remote Life is an interesting shoot ’em up with a strong art style, neat implementation of twin-stick shooting mechanics in an R-Type-esque setting, and the occasionally impressive boss battle. It is your standard “one and done” game, though.
It’s a great rhythm title with a shocking amount of content, both in terms of cosmetics and songs of all genres. I also did not expect for it to be that challenging. Sure, a bit of its difficulty stemmed from the sheer amount of visual noise onscreen, but its gameplay did not pull any punches.
Even though Cricket 22 is an excellent cricket video game, the sport of cricket just doesn’t translate well into video game form. You can’t just play a quick arcadey match when the sport is so slow, everyone around you (players and commentators) look and sound unenthusiastic, and matches take forever to complete. It’s just like chess: sure, it can be fun in real life (I guess), but not everything was meant to be turned into a game.
All in all, Wonder Boy Collection, as a compilation of older titles, is pretty good. It suffers from the fact that, while influential, these games are very flawed, with poor controls and collision detection being an issue shared among all of them. There’s also the fact that the best game in the series, The Dragon’s Trap, is the sole title not featured in the package.
Kao the Kangaroo is very flawed, but also very enjoyable. It feels like I’m playing the 2022 equivalent to Gex, Chameleon Twist, or Toy Story 2: a game that smells like jank, but has enough charm and redeemable qualities (namely its excellent level design) to be worth a shot if you’re a fan of the genre. It will probably not going to wow you in any way, or leave a lasting impression, but it is proof that B-tier mascot platformers are alive and well in 2022.
More than just a really bad soulslike, Dolmen is a major disappointment. After more than half a decade waiting for this game, as well as constantly losing faith in it ever being released, I was expecting for these constant delays to result in it feeling more polished, more akin to more modern soulslikes. What we ended up getting was the complete opposite: a clunky, shockingly behind-the-times husk of an action RPG which would have been considered dated back in 2016, let alone today.
It could have been a really pretentious and mediocre art game, but Mini Motorways ended up being the complete opposite. This is pure arcade bliss, a simple but ridiculously challenging puzzler that won me over like few games in the genre. I can’t remember the last time I played a Switch game until its batteries ran completely dry because of how addictive and perfectly suited for portable play it was.