Leonardo Faria's Reviews
There are times you can barely pay attention to what’s happening onscreen, with bullets and enemies flying around at a million trillion frames per second. And this is why I liked it so much. It’s fast-paced, it’s energetic, it’s incredibly challenging at points, and most importantly, it’s fun as heck. Step aside, Untitled Goose Game, we have a new waterfowl king in town.
I had high hopes for Beautiful Desolation, but this Switch version just doesn’t work very well at all. It’s absolutely gorgeous to look at, especially on a small screen, and its story is actually very compelling, but I felt I was struggling against its controls and egregious loading times throughout my entire time with it.
Are you a fan of the source material? Do you have kids who love the show? Then this is an easy recommendation, as they’ll have a blast with its decent presentation and easy-to-acquire platinum trophy. If neither you or your kids care about Spirit, then there’s little in here that will make you want to play it. It’s way too simplistic and quite unpolished, with little to no challenge or lasting appeal for anyone over the age of ten.
The franchise’s traditional layer of jank is still present here, but I won’t deny that I had a lot of fun playing Earth Defense Force: World Brothers, way more than I could have ever expected. It’s far more entertaining than it has any right to be. The adorable voxel visuals, coupled with an actually good framerate for the first time in the franchise’s history, result in a game that’s pleasant to look at as well as to play.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is a must-have. It will reignite your love for the franchise if you’re a veteran, or it will turn you into a brand new die-hard fan if you, like myself, are a newcomer.
Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World is a Mega Drive classic with a modern coat of paint, which isn’t a bad thing. Some aspects of its gameplay take some time to get used to, but you cannot deny it’s gorgeous to look at and way too charming to ignore.
The vast majority of these games have aged surprisingly well, being as fun and challenging now as they were back when they were first released. Sure, games like Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Bionic Commando are way too clunky for today’s standards, but when you have dozens of other extremely fun games at your disposal, you’ll ignore the fact some of them aren’t worth your time anymore.
RWBY: Grimm Eclipse Definitive Edition falls under the same category as most average-at-best licensed games out in the market: if you like the show, you’ll love this game. If you don’t know anything about RWBY, you basically need to be a die-hard hack n’ slash aficcionado in order to truly enjoy it. It’s not bad, far from it, but it’s just a safe action game with a bit of fanservice, decent controls, and not enough people to populate its online lobbies.
It might still not be a very good horror game overall, but Layers of Fear 2 is a much more enjoyable experience than its disappointing predecessor. Its story and premise were much more interesting this time around, but its limited gameplay and the fact it’s just not scary at all left a lot to be desired.
It tries to tell a story in a minimalistic way, but fails to deliver due to its poor presentation and awkward cutscenes. It wants to exude style and a hip hop aesthetic, but its disappointing soundtrack is comprised of short samples being looped ad nauseum. Finally, its gameplay is too shallow and uninspired to make you want to play it for more than a few minutes at a time.
Essays on Empathy feels like a collection of elevator pitches, of small technical showcases of what Deconstructeam will develop from now on. Some of the games in the collection are too vague and occasionally way too pretentious to be fully enjoyed, but other titles in here, while short, ooze potential.
Jetboard Joust masterfully blends retro aesthetics and the simplicity of arcade games from decades ago with an extra dose of challenge that makes it even more replayable. Being able to play this on the go is just the cherry on top of an already tasty cake.
In all honesty, yes, Subnautica: Below Zero is just more Subnautica, but don’t think of that as a bad thing. It might not have that many new features when compared to its predecessor, but considering how excellent the original game was, having yet another well-designed Subnautica, with a brand new map to explore and challenges to overcome, will always be worth celebrating.
The Colonists is a game whose main gameplay loop makes up for how underwhelming its controls and excess of busy work can be at times. Not exactly the most creative of city builders in the market, but just like most of its peers, once you figure out how to properly make your city grow in a sustainable way, you won’t be able to stop playing it.
Skate City isn’t terrible, but I can’t help but feel that I could just spend my time playing a lot of much better skateboarding games out there instead of this one, be them indies or AAAs. It has good ideas, but its execution feels undercooked due to its unnecessarily confusing control scheme and pitiful amount of content.
If I had to tell you which version of Layers of Fear is my favorite, then Layers of Fear VR takes the cake. Not because it makes its pseudo-horror experience more immersive, but because I could occasionally forget about its mundane plot and dumb jumpscares and fool around with its silly physics and glitches in VR.
-Type Final 2 is a hidden gem. It’s a love letter to a small but ultra-dedicated fanbase of a cult franchise, something we rarely see in this day and age. It doesn’t try to reboot the franchise or make it more accessible to newcomers: all it wants to do is celebrate the history of the R-Type series with what we love the most from it, namely a stupidly challenging but addictive gameplay loop and a jaw-dropping amount of unlockable content.
It might offer just the bare minimum to immerse you in a virtual reality world, but it features so much content and so much delightful fanservice, that it’s impossible not to love playing a few rounds of a nearly-realistic VR pinball experience while Grogu looks at you from a distance.
New Pokémon Snap is great. Some of its new gameplay features, such as the four-star photo system, are unnecessarily convoluted and its story couldn’t have been more forgettable. However, this is exactly what we’ve been asking for the past twenty-two years: a bigger, prettier sequel to the 1999 classic, with more areas to explore and more Pokémon to interact with.
Mom Hid My Game! 2 might be short and a bit too simplistic at times, but this charming little piece of weirdness is still a fun pastime for a few hours. Especially if you miss the absurdist experimental games that would come out of Japan a few decades ago. It’s entertaining, occasionally smart with its puzzle designs, and most important, very funny.