John-Paul Jones's Reviews
Without online multiplayer, all the stages and possessing visuals that are inferior to the console versions, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round manages that rare and horrible thing of making PC players feel like second-class citizens to their console brethren and in doing so, succeeds in heavily tarnishing what is actually a pretty incredible fighting game in the process.
More than anything else, from a technical standpoint Bladestorm: Nightmare is a disappointingly subpar port of what is effectively a last-gen console game. With the tremendous amount of grunt available to them, the developer should have produced the definitive version of the game, instead of the poorest which really, is a position that no PC gamer should ever find themselves in.
Underneath the thick red skin of its unpolished exterior there is an entertaining and surprisingly sophisticated roguelike brawler to be found in Hellboy Web of Wyrd. It's just a shame that sluggish combat, uninteresting lore and poorly executed exploration all conspire to drag Hellboy Web of Wyrd down into the depths.
In the end, though Dust & Neon nails the fundamentals of a twin-stick, looter shooter it feels far too limited, familiar and simply isn't ambitious enough to stand out from its genre peers. Though still reliably satisfying to play at times, Dust & Neon just doesn't offer anything new.
With more time in development and tweaks here and there to its overall design, Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX could really have been something. As things currently stand however, the superb premise, gorgeous visuals and compelling platforming roguelike gameplay all feel stifled under the weight of some really nasty game breaking bugs that make the game almost impossible to play for any decent period of time. A real shame.
Though well-intentioned as an interactive educational documentary about the spectacular lives of sugar gliders, AWAY: The Survival Series simply isn't sufficiently sophisticated or well designed enough to pass muster as a videogame that will keep you coming back. As it is, AWAY: The Survival Series is an attractive, if clunky edutainment title that only the youngest and most inexperienced PlayStation gamers will truly enjoy.
Attractive visuals and decent handling isn't enough to pull Red Wings: Aces of the Sky out of the doldrums of mediocrity, thanks in no small part to a distinct lack of variety in the mission objectives and uninspiring game design.
Jedi Outcast then is still capable of delivering modest morsels of Star Wars infused fun, it's just a shame that while the lack of effort which has been made with the port justifies its budget price, it does not make magically make a 2002 title equally as compelling in 2019. Here's hoping that next year's remaster of Star Wars Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy is better, because the force is not quite so strong with this one.
By only making skin deep improvements to the game and not touching any of the deep-seated flaws that lurk at the core of Gods original 1991 offering, Gods Remastered ends up being a largely disappointing and straight-laced remaster that will likely only appeal to the most die-hard of fans.
A visually attractive, if uninspiring take on the Vietnam War, Hours of Darkness feels little more than a re-skinned Far Cry 5 rather than something more ambitious.
An unevenly executed mish-mash of ARK's cornerstone components, ARK Park shows some promise but is ultimately too flawed and poorly constructed to be recommended to anyone but wide-eyed, dino-hungry youngsters.
If you're looking to immerse yourself in a meticulously rendered world for a few minutes at a time, or just relax for a bit after a stressful day, then Perfect has you covered. If however, you're expecting anything, anything more than that then Perfect simply doesn't do enough to maintain interest.
Overly fiddly controls combined with a brief duration, slow starting narrative and inflated price point make Loading Human's opening episode difficult to recommend, which is a shame given the sizeable ambition that lurks behind its otherwise subpar execution.
An effective if not particularly ambitious or polished reboot of an arcade classic, Q*Bert Rebooted is as accessible as the franchise has ever been but offers little in the way of significant new additions to keep players hooked in the long term and remains hobbled by a lack of leaderboards.
What should have been a glorious marriage of Binary Domain and Smash TV in Ares Omega ends up as something far lesser on account of its many flaws. While a serviceable roguelike shooter ticks away at its heart, there simply isn’t enough here to recommend Ares Omega to anybody with a hankering for a well-crafted, progression focused blaster.
Clunky, frustrating and a world away from the series best efforts, Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia limps over the finish line, completing a spin-off trilogy and closing the door on a concept that simply deserved better.
As such, it's difficult to recommend Styx: Master of Shadows to all but the most hardcore shadow skulker when the many other games that have come before it have all done the whole stealth thing that much better.
While younger folks might still get a kick from its occasional scares and familiar locations, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection is a desperately linear adventure that struggles to break free of its humble technical origins and fails to both do proper justice to the setting of its source material and the PSVR2 hardware itself.
I really wanted to like Twelve Minutes, but by playing through it multiple times I've come to understand that in order for the timeloop to concept to really work in videogames, it needs time to breathe - both in physical game world terms and also in the various elements that it requires players to solve and master in order to progress. As it is, Twelve Minutes is an undeniably stylish looking and sounding thriller that finds itself summarily undone by poor writing, unwieldy controls and a shoddily frustration execution of its overarching timeloop concept. A shame.
Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice delivers exactly what you'd expect it to; sex-based jokes and puzzles that integrate that. Even with expectations set there, it's somewhat unfortunate that it serves up such an underwhelming blend of puzzling and puerility. It is at least a passable point n' click effort that occasionally elicits a genuine chuckle.