Leonardo Faria's Reviews
Technical issues aside, the main problem with the Panzer Dragoon remake is that it’s a remake of a painfully short title that was originally rushed to meet a surprise launch deadline twenty-five years ago. There’s just not a lot of content in here to justify the somewhat steep price.
Bears Can’t Drift!? doesn’t have many things in its favor, but it’s not the worst racing game I’ve played this generation. At the very least, it does feature good controls. I don’t exactly see why you would decide to buy it for your Xbox One besides looking for a kid-friendly kart racer not named Race With Ryan. Those bears sure know how to drift, but they’re not really good at anything else besides that.
Yakuza 5 only trails behind Yakuza 0 in terms of quality. It is a game with a fantastic story, solid technical performance, fun fighting mechanics and a ridiculous amount of content.
I can’t help but feel that a good chunk of Rainbows, Toilets and Unicorns‘ issues could have been mitigated with the addition of a life system. Since the silly visuals aren’t the reason you’d want to keep on playing it for too long, fixing how ridiculously unfair this game can be would have turned it into a much more enjoyable experience. As for now, all we have is a shooter that, despite featuring really good controls, doesn’t feature other good selling points.
Gigantosaurus: The Game is perfectly adequate comfort food. It’s a game that looks and feels like licensed platformers from back in the day; an Achilles’ heel and guilty pleasure of mine. It obviously doesn’t feature the best visuals and gameplay from this generation, but as I said before, this is a perfect entry-level title for kids, as it is chock-full of content without ever being challenging at all. Hell, even collectathon enthusiasts in general will appreciate the vast amount of macguffins this game has to offer.
All in all, although the Switch port of Saints Row IV still features framerate issues and isn’t exactly a pretty game, it compensates by being hilarious, chock-full of content, and incredibly fun. The sole act of fooling around the map with your superpowers, wreaking havoc, and killing everyone in sight, will entertain you for hours.
Bubble Bobble 4 Friends is the kind of the game that doesn’t break any boundaries, as it didn’t need to. All Taito needed to do is bring one of its most famous franchises of all time back to the spotlight and make it accessible to a brand new generation of gamers. By doing so on a console that is perfect for a little and cutesy multiplayer game like this, they succeeded.
Your enjoyment with Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure will depend on a few factors. First of all, if you’re a fan of the podcast and therefore, a massive Playstation fan. Second of all, if you’re into Breakout clones, because that’s basically what the game still is, even though it has a backstory and a few gameplay gimmicks.
Wurroom is really unorthodox, trippy, abstract, experimental, and any other fancy adjective used to describe something that is just plain weird. It sure looks nice and I do appreciate its usage of the Vita’s screen, but this is barely a game. It features the minimum amount of interactivity to make it qualify as a commercial video game. It might work as a very brief (and very forgettable) art presentation, but as a piece of entertainment, it’s just not good enough.
Nightdive knocked it out of the park once again with yet another remaster that is so well-crafted that makes the original game look unplayable in comparison.
To sum things up, Id Software had a colossal challenge trying to improve upon what was already perfect, but Cacodemons be praised, they did it. Doom Eternal is one of the most technically advanced games from this entire generation, a masterful achievement in graphics, framerates, gameplay, and sound. It is a game that is hell-bent on giving you a gigantic smile at all times, making you feel like a brutal god of destruction, a force to be reckoned with, someone to be feared.
TT Isle of Man – Ride on the Edge 2 still has some issues, but this is a great sequel that improves upon its predecessor in almost every single conceivable way. If you’re into fast-paced motorbike racing, there isn’t a better game out there than this one.
I think the main question here is: who is Dead or School for? It’s definitely not suited for fans of story-driven experiences because its writing is so bad it almost looks intentional. It’s definitely not suited for otakus because there are way better options on the Switch eShop as of now. It’s not suited for metroidvania enthusiasts because, frankly, the console already has options like Ori and the Blind Forest and Hollow Knight.
Hidden Through Time is best described as “okay”. It’s just a simple pastime that, although somewhat fun and useful as a mental exercise, features some poorly designed hints and not enough levels to last for more than a few hours. Its replayability factor and overall lasting value will depend on how many people end up buying it, on how many of those will bother creating custom puzzles, and how many of those will be well-designed enough for other people to bother downloading and playing.
I don’t remember the last time I liked a game so much even though I really hated its controls. Ironically enough, it must have Castlevania 64, now that I think about it. I really liked almost everything Wallachia: Reign of Dracula had to offer: its visuals, its really good voice acting, its overall gameplay loop, its new take on the whole “Dracula hunting” schtick, and so on. If only its controls weren’t so clunky and the if only the button mapping wasn’t so limited and nonsensical, Wallachia could have ended up being one of the biggest surprises of the year.
There are so many roguelikes being released every single week, it’s no surprise that some of them end up being as forgettable and underwhelming as Roundguard. It’s a game that might have a creative premise, but fails to deliver due to its hideous visuals, disappointing soundtrack, and lack of replayability.
Mystic Pillars is a fun ride, even though it’s a bit too easy. It has a neat concept, beautiful visuals, and a nice background story. While I had fun with it, I don’t think playing it on a PC is the right choice. Its gameplay was designed with touchscreens in mind and its puzzles are best experienced in short bursts.
The main problem with One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is that it just isn’t fun to play. It doesn’t retain the show’s charm because it completely misses the mark when it comes to its tone and setting. One Punch Man is all about how dumb the Hero Association’s bureaucracy is and you’re basically forced to climb the same ladder the show constantly made fun of. It is also a show about how boring Saitama’s life is due to the fact he’s so overpowered and that is visible whenever you’re actually able to play as him for the mere seconds he’s onscreen.
All in all, BE-A Walker is far from being a bad game, but it’s pretty hard to recommend. Its gameplay loop gets tiresome pretty quickly, and being inspired by one of the most generic and uninspired movie plots of the entire century really doesn’t help. You can have a few minutes of fun blowing up tons of natives (or humans, it’s up to you) with a rocket launcher-powered mech, but this won’t be a game that will captivate you for hours on end.
I had so much fun playing Dude, Stop that I was really bummed it ended so quickly. Very few games manage to make me laugh like a stupid hyena like this game did. It’s smart, extremely original, and very self-aware. I just really wanted for the game to be a little bit longer, because you can see everything it has to offer in less than two hours. Those will be two hilarious hours, however, and I still recommend this title to any Switch owner out there. Turns out that being an annoying human being is actually tons of fun. No wonder a lot of people did that back in high school.