Leonardo Faria's Reviews
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.
Even for a children’s racing game, Blaze and the Monster Machines: Axle City Racers is lacking in subtance and charm. It can and will be enjoyed by them, especially if they like the source material, but between the shallow amount of content and underwhelming performance, you’re better off just skipping a few learning curve steps and letting them play Mario Kart on the easiest settings instead.
eFootball 2022 might be one of the most disastrous launches I have ever seen. I’ve seen magazine demo discs with more content than this “game”. There’s no reason to play it at the moment: its online matchmaking simply doesn’t work, its offline content is more sparse than an Atari 2600 game, and its gameplay is simply not as fluid as the one featured in its last-gen predecessors.
Street Outlaws 2: Winner Takes All is the wrong kind of licensed shovelware. It’s the one that, no matter how much effort had been put in its design and mechanics, nothing decent would have ever come out of it because its source of inspiration was already bland and insipid to begin with. It’s a stupidly expensive (and poorly made) game centered around ten second races.
Actraiser Renaissance is an odd beast. It’s not exactly visually pleasing, and it takes an eternity before it becomes actually interesting, but if you endure its first couple of hours, you’ll be greeted with the reason why the half dozen people who played the original back in the 90’s love it to death to this very day.
You really shouldn’t dismiss A Juggler’s Tale as just another Limbo or Inside clone. I might even consider it as good, if not better, than its main sources of inspiration. Not only does it feature gameplay elements that take advantage of its unique setting, but it also has a really engaging story that captivates you right away thanks to some superb voice acting.
Centipede: Recharged is, well, for better or worse, just more Centipede. This is a reboot/remake that absolutely does not try to reinvent the wheel. Its vector-like visuals fit perfectly with the source material, its controls are serviceable, and for the most part, it delivers in what it wants to offer: be a less cumbersome way to play a classic arcade game on a modern system.
Its setting and story are basically unheard of in gaming, given how devs are not exactly comfortable tackling Abrahamic religions in this kind of medium. As a concept, it’s fantastic. As an action game, it’s quite shallow.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is way better than I could have ever imagined, and I’m absolutely addicted to it. Are there better racing games that came out or are due to come out this year? Absolutely. But I doubt any of them will surprise me as much as this game did.
It might have a few issues regarding its gameplay and presentation, but I’d still easily recommend The Addams Family: Mansion Mayhem. It does everything it promised with flying colors, offering tons of fun levels, an easy-but-not-patronizing level of difficulty, local co-op, and a surprising amount of minigames on the side.