Leonardo Faria's Reviews
Forza Horizon 5 is the ultimate car enthusiast’s power fantasy. It’s a game that just wants you to go bananas and appreciate the beauty behind motoring, by offering every single tool, event, car model and online functionality available.
Popeye is… well, it’s something else. It’s a game. It doesn’t crash upon booting it up, and pressing buttons results in actions happening onscreen. That is the best praise I can give to this astonishing Switch exclusive. It makes me even wonder as to how the developers have managed to snag the licensing rights for the franchise to begin with.
This might actually be the best product ever made with the Smurfs named attached to it. The Smurfs: Mission Vileaf is not terrible, it’s just aggressively mediocre. It has some good ideas here and there, such as some above average level design and well-animated characters, but it is hampered by a series of technical issues. Then there’s the biggest culprit of them all: the fact it’s based on such a bland franchise to begin with.
Remember that time the great Michael Bluth said, “I don’t know what I expected” on Arrested Development? That’s me with this PlayStation 5 version of Jumanji: The Game. That game was beyond salvageable back when it first came out; brute forcing it with improved hardware specs in order to look, sound and play like a mediocre last-gen game wasn’t going to be a solution.
Some people will play The Suicide of Rachel Foster and think it’s a tense and engaging thriller that pushes the medium to new uncharted territory. Others will play the game and despise it, calling it gross and tone-deaf. My thoughts on their opinions? I think they are both right.
There’s nothing more frustrating than a game with so much potential, a game oozing style, with such an awesome premise, ending up being a disappointment. Aeon Must Die had the looks, the sound, even the interesting concept for a neat combat system. Yet, it ended up being one of the most frustrating and repetitive beat ’em ups I’ve played in years. This is the quintessential “all style, no substance” kind of the game.
Given how this is not a remaster, the fact I had quite a lot of fun with Panorama Cotton proves that, despite its many flaws, it’s more than just a technical showcase for a system released thirty years ago. It’s a well-developed shooter that managed to stand the test of time in terms of visuals and controls, even though it was clearly made as a novel technical proof of concept.
If you’ve played any other Atari Recharged title, you know what to expect from Black Widow: Recharged. It’s more of the same, but prettier and on-the-go. The thing is that we live in an era where we get half a dozen twin-stick shooters a week, so name recognition alone isn’t enough to make Black Widow: Recharged stand out from the crowd.
A lot of people will shy away from Far Cry 6, dismissing it as “yet another open world game by Ubisoft”, but I won’t try to hide it, I had way more fun with this game than I could have ever imagined. I got it for the idea of raising hell on a Caribbean island with a tank and a jetpack, and stayed for the surprisingly well-written story and likable characters.
Shantae: Risky’s Revenge clearly isn’t as featured-filled, polished, or exciting as its more modern counterparts, but it’s still well worth your time if you’re curious about the wonderful history of the Shantae franchise, or if you’re just a fan of 2D platformers in general. Why did this specific version need to have a brand new PlayStation 5 build is beyond me, as there is very little in here that justifies it being a “next-gen” game, but that doesn’t affect its overall quality.
If you’re looking for some casual puzzle fun on the PS5, you will get your fair share with this little game. With that being said, for as much as I commend the developers for trying to come up with brand new ideas for such a tried and true formula, I certainly do not think that this 3D gameplay is anywhere near as fun and addictive as the classic Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move we all grew up playing and loving.
At its core, Tandem: A Tale of Shadows is a good puzzle game with some unique features. It’s just very rough around the edges. Its short levels and progression system make it a perfect fit for a portable like the Switch, but sadly, you’ll have to endure some rough visuals and an uneven framerate in order to enjoy it on the system. Otherwise, you could check it out on other platforms, where I can only assume some of its performance issues aren’t present.
It’s not a game changer by any means, but it’s a great way to reintroduce the franchise to a younger audience, as well as provide the best the series has ever looked and played to old-time fans. What a way to make WWI look borderline adorable.
Inscryption is an utterly demented piece of software in the best of ways. I don’t remember the last time I played a game that made me go “what the hell am I looking at” with such frequency and intensity.
The Caligula Effect 2 might still have the excellent combat system that made its predecessor worth any JRPG fan’s time, but unlike that game, it doesn’t feature an engaging story with memorable characters, nor is it well-paced as it used to be. Sadly, it is as generic as a dystopian JRPG starring Japanese teenagers (a subgenre that is way bigger than one would initially believe) can be.
Metroid Dread is, well, another 2D Metroid, and that is worth celebrating if you’re a fan of the franchise. It will not, by any means, convert newcomers into die-hard fans of the series, given how it assumes you’ve played its predecessors right from the get-go, but it offers a crap ton of fanservice and excellent level design for those who know what to expect from a Metroid game. If only it didn’t have so many obnoxious stealth horror sections that did nothing but halt my overall enjoyment with it, this could have challenged Super Metroid as to which entry in the series is the greatest of all time.
It suffers from poor visuals and an even more unstable framerate than the one that plagued the original PS4 and Xbox One releases of the game. You will want to get Darksiders III on the Switch only if you’re a die-hard fan of the franchise or if you’re into grabbing these novelty Switch ports of games that supposedly should not be able to run on such inferior hardware.
Rogue Lords takes some of the most entertaining elements from Slay the Spire and adds its own macabre twist in order to create something that is equally derivative and unique. This is not a roguelike that will please everyone, since its difficulty curve is off the charts, but there’s a lot to like in here, from the horror themes and surprisingly captivating story to the sense of accomplishment when you manage to finish a run with a souped up squad.
I really wanted to like Tails of Iron more than I did. Everything about its presentation, from its graphics to its phenomenal storytelling, hooked me. It had everything to be one of my favorite indies of the year. But the gameplay just HAD to resort to annoying cheap tropes found in less successful Soulslikes, throwing you into waves of small rooms where you have to deal with hordes of enemies that can one-shot you just by blinking.
The weird thing about Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is that, despite being janky, low-budget, and lacking in content, it’s a lot of fun. It all boils down to its ludicrous concept and the fact that at the end of the day, it’s functional. It’s a power trip for anyone who grew up watching cartoons in the late 90s to early 2000s. Its online multiplayer also works surprisingly well, even better than Smash, to be honest.