Leonardo Faria's Reviews
The biggest problem with Micro Machines: Mini Challenge Mayhem is that, despite featuring some interesting ideas, it feels incredibly tame, limited, and dated. It could have been the VR equivalent to Hot Wheels Unleashed or Re-Volt, but it ended up being nothing more than a slot car racing simulator with simplistic visuals and an overall lack of excitement.
House Flipper 2 still has flaws, but it’s a massive improvement over its predecessor, and one of the most relaxing titles I’ve played in a while.
For as much as I want to believe there were good intentions behind Bootlegger’s Racing Story, nothing about it works. It’s not fun, it crashes constantly, and it’s devoid of any kind of excitement. If you want to drive like crazy as a bootlegger, just play Mafia instead.
I wouldn’t consider The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to be the best asymmetrical multiplayer game I have ever played, but the sheer fact it has managed to carve a somewhat entertaining gameplay loop, whilst maintaining a steady playerbase for nearly a third of a year, is already very impressive. Playing as the cannibals is obviously more fun than being a victim, and the progression system is a bit unnecessary, but it could have been a lot worse.
Super Crazy Rhythm Castle has its fair share of issues, namely on how its strongest selling point, having to deal with a tyrant with a childish tantrum, can also be one of its most frustrating aspects. It’s a fun rhythm game if you’re in the same mental vibes as itself. If so, you’ll be able to enjoy a very unique mixture between Guitar Hero and Overcooked, covered in some cute visuals and random sense of humor. It might not be the best party game out there, but it certainly is one of the more unique titles to be released in recent times.
Yeah, this one is impossible to defend. The Walking Dead: Destinies is just truly bad. Granted, it might not be the worst game I’ve played in 2023, by a mile, but it’s a borderline charming exercise in incompetence. With poor combat mechanics, uninspired level design, and an enemy AI so (fittingly) brain-dead you can literally complete levels by simply walking by a horde of zombies, this game fails at being scary, tense, or even a great companion piece to The Walking Dead franchise.
As a whole, I did enjoy my time with Sniper Elite VR: Winter Warrior, but I can’t stop thinking this was probably supposed to have been released as an expansion to its predecessor rather than a standalone title, due to its short duration, identical graphical style, and very specific winter-themed setting.
As a game to dedicate hours of your life at a time, Strike Force Heroes isn’t very interesting. For as much as its gameplay loop is decent enough, it lacks a bit of depth and substance. Now, as an arcade-like distraction, this game shines. It’s great to pick up and play, to simply join a match and proceed to blast everyone near you with your carefully crafted character build.
To say that LEGO Bricktales impressed me is an understatement. The idea of playing with LEGO bricks in a VR environment was already great in my head, but I was completely taken over by how ClockStone Studio managed to mix diorama-like adventure segments with building puzzles in such a natural and addictive manner. I can’t even believe this wasn’t developed first and foremost with VR in mind; the transition was absolutely perfect.
Getting lost in the absolutely gorgeous world of Pandora and having fun with the brutal, tribal-like combat make up for the weak story and the fact that, at the end of the day, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora does suffer from some of the traditional Ubisoft open world tropes.
If the intention of this collection was to preserve the (mixed-at-best) legacy of the original Jurassic Park‘s tie-in releases, then I feel more worked should had been put into it. As it stands, this is not a terrible first attempt from Limited Run Games in terms of remastering and emulating games, but they do need to improve upon the amount of extras and title variety included in their compilations.
Even though The King of Fighters XIII: Global Match is, by and large, the same game originally released in 2011 for Xbox 360, with just a handful of technical improvements, that’s not exactly a bad thing. Granted, it suffers from having a particularly small roster (for KoF standards, that is), and its story mode is a waste of time, but it’s still a top-notch King of Fighters game that’s well worth your time if you want a brand new fighting game fix with some juicy rollback netcode.
With such a paltry amount of content and limited gameplay loop, there’s little else that can or should be said about Pickleball Smash. Even if it’s not glitchy or broken, it’s just really boring. There’s not enough substance to keep you entertained for more than a few minutes at a time. The pickleball ruleset also doesn’t translate very well to an arcade-like environment, with matches possibly lasting for a damn eternity if players keep breaking each other’s serves. There is no reason to grab this over any other racket-based sports game, even if you, somehow, prefer pickleball over tennis.
There is a reason why Turok 3 isn’t as well-known as the first two games in the Nintendo 64 trilogy: gameplay-wise, it might be the weakest of the bunch. Still, it’s a shockingly revolutionary and monstrously underrated title that deserves a lot more love. It was way ahead of its time in terms of presentation, storytelling and level design. Too bad the N64 just couldn’t handle it properly. Nightdive, on the other hand, could. Thanks to them, Turok 3 can finally shine, with vastly improved visuals and gameplay. The excessive linearity and focus on storytelling might annoy fans of the previous Turok games, but it’s still a fantastic conversion of an underrated gem.
Vengeance of Mr. Peppermint is a clear example of style over substance. As cool as the game looks and plays at first, there’s not a lot of level or gameplay variety to keep you entertaining for a long period of time. All you do is sluggishly move to the right and beat the hell out of some goons at a time. As interesting as its nods to Oldboy can be, that movie was fast-paced, captivating and stylish all throughout. This game, on the other hand, is just stylish at best.
Virtual reality makes PowerWash Simulator more intuitive and immersive, but still very relaxing. Sure, the convoluted nature of having to put a visor onto your face for lengthy periods of time means that this game won’t be played in sessions as long as the ones you’ve been playing on PC or console. Still, you’ll still have tons of fun with PowerWash Simulator VR. I sure did. The superior control scheme, and the novelty of playing such a game on VR are enough to make this particular port of the cult hit my favorite, even though I don’t think it’s the best one, at least technically speaking.
In short, Assassin’s Creed Nexus was one of the most impressive surprises of the year. I wasn’t expecting much from it due to Ubisoft’s lack of pre-release promotion, but what I ended up getting instead was a true testament of what the Quest 2 can do, and how to properly adapt a third-person action-adventure series into VR. It’s shorter than your average Assassin’s Creed, but still substantially meaty for a VR game, complete with occasional pseudo-open worlds with extra challenges to discover.
Barton Lynch Pro Surfing satiates, at least momentarily, the need for a surfing game. It’s such a shame that it’s so utterly hideous to look at, because, for the most part, it is indeed a decent game, with intuitive controls and enough content to keep you busy for a while. If you really want to play a surfing game, this works out just fine. If you’re not particularly into the sport, I doubt there is anything in here that will grab your attention for too long, however.
Don’t get me wrong, Until the Last Bullet is far from being considered a good game. With the exception of admittedly having a good usage of the Joy-Cons’ gyro functionalities, this is a super low budgeted shooter that is so unbelievably crappy-looking it almost looks endearing. But this is what makes it oddly charming in some twisted kind of way. It feels honest in its crappiness.
Sociable Soccer 24 impresses with its ludicrous amount of playable clubs to choose from, but I think that’s basically where the novelty ends. At its core, it’s a fun little throwback to simpler electronic footballing days, but maybe it is TOO stripped down of features. Even other titles from the 90s featured more mechanics and customization options.