James Cunningham's Reviews
3D Don't Die Mr Robot is a ridiculously-playable arcade game that feels great whether just making things explode or chasing after a new score.
Techtonica is more story-oriented than most games of its type, but it's still an automation game with a good hundred hours of assembly and debugging.
Shady Knight's first-person action is as much about movement as it is hitting things, and both features are used in multiple ways.
The thing that sets Enotria: The Last Song apart from other games in its genre is that it's set in a theater-fantasy version of Italy.
In a game with the scope and polish of Satisfactory one hundred hours can be just the beginning of building the industrial powerhouse of your dreams.
Core Keeper is a strong survival game that can easily chew through the hours, providing a great balance between adventure and homesteading. There's a sense that no idea was left out, whether that be a constant pet companion or minecart rail lines, and while these may not get fully fleshed out, this is a rare occasion where quantity manages to make up for depth. The pet levels up and sometimes enemies drop treats that give it a nice experience boost, and that's all it needs to do. Minecart goes on tracks, riding it beats walking and maybe it doesn't need a complicated system of switches and sidings to get the job done. The underground world of Core Keeper stretches on for functionally forever, filled with chasms, monsters, resources beyond measure and even an underground sea. There's a huge amount of ways to play with it all and sometimes that's more than enough.
Race to get better. Race for self-improvement. Race to understand how knocking a few hundredths of a second off a best time can feel like victory.
The heart of the game, though, is that it just feels good to tinker with electronics, with almost no penalty for experimentation aside from the bomb levels that run on a generous timer. A few hours with its logic and you'll be putting together intricate machines while prodding at the shape of a solution, hooking up multiple components of varying complexity with only a bit of rewiring when it doesn't quite go to plan. The dozens of parts and change in puzzle style for each chapter of the story keep Linkito moving along from start to finish, and it's hard to stop before every last bit of stray content is fully solved.
POed: Definitive Edition is an excellent version of a middling game, with only some of its problems due to it being early days for the FPS. It's hard not to feel affection for what it's trying to do, though, and you can see as you play how it fits into the evolution of its genre. It would have been nice if the game had figured out an identity, either leaning into the weirdness or going for straight sci-fi action, but it's almost thirty years too late to fix that now. POed's legacy was almost nonexistent, that of a kind of ok-ish game that landed right in the middle of the FPS genre figuring itself out, and from a gaming history perspective that's more than a good enough reason to check it out.
Animal Well is a stunner of a metroidvania, usually charming but frequently creepy, mysterious but by no means unapproachable, and filled from top to bottom with secrets that are always satisfying to uncover.
Phantom Fury simply doesn't feel like it's ready yet, with too many bugs and nowhere near enough polish to become the game that it could be. Too many encounters are designed to only be beatable once you memorize enemy placement and a giant-mech boss shouldn't be an easier, more enjoyable encounter than a handful of guys in a hallway. Bugs are also abound, with enemies zipping between cover points while stuck in the kneeling position, music that you can almost hear playing in the background despite the volume being maxed out, or getting trapped in an elevator when its doors won't open. "Reset to checkpoint" is always an option, but in this case it was an open service elevator, and while sticking to the '90s/early-2000s gameplay convention of a hero who can't hop over a waist-high obstacle is authentic, it's the wrong kind of authenticity. Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison has the potential to be a great 90s throwback character, but Phantom Fury is nowhere near what's needed to see her reach her potential.
It would have been nice if Planet Crafter had gotten the AAA budget and polish, but the game as it exists nails all the important parts in ways that can make multi-hour gaming sessions fly on by in minutes. It's a dead cold rocky ball without a hint of life when you get there, but each new crafted item is another step closer to the terraformed paradise it can become.
Minishoot Adventures is an excellent twin-stick quest in a wonderfully-illustrated 2D world that's equal parts shooting and poking about to see what might be hiding under a bush or between the rocks. The story isn't particularly deep, but it gets the job done, and at the end you'll have an energetic little village filled with a number of different friendly ships that have each helped the adventure along in their own way. Fighting through the enemies also feels like an achievement, especially seeing as the number and variety of encounters means that few fights end up similar to each other. Zipping and dodging through enemy firepower while sending back a fan of bullets, deciding when to use the overdrive and when to hold back, and getting ready to figure out the pattern of the next barrage never gets old, and interspersing the encounters with a secret or two is the best way to cool down between one burst of intensity and the next. Minishoot Adventures is a fantastic little game that deserves all the love it can get, and a great fusion of two genres that don't get to play together anywhere near often enough.
Outcast - A New Beginning is an excellent sequel with a lot of great gameplay elements that go a long way to make up for its need for further polish. Bugs are common, from an outpost with the robots stuck in the floor to breakable helidium crystals floating several feet above the ground they should be poking out of, and the conversation trees are in desperate need of re-ordering. Despite this, though, it's almost impossible to resist seeing what the next villager is up to and their relation to the rest of the world, following the dialogue and fishing out quests as an excuse to see and do more. The world is also beautifully designed, with each village having its own architecture and style while the world map is covered in points of interest and different biomes, providing gorgeous views from just about any spot in the landscape. Combat is also great fun, especially when stumbling on a particularly effective gun combination or figuring out how the latest upgrade fits into the flow of the next hostile encounter. It took over twenty-four years for Cutter Slade to return to Adelpha, but the wait has paid off with an epic adventure on an alien world.
Bore Blasters may have one rough edge in terms of its time limit, but the rest of the game is a solid blaster through a large series of fully-destructible levels backed by a pounding soundtrack. Each biome has its own hazards, like growing blocks that can regenerate right in your path, or lava blocks shooting fireballs, and all the firepower in the world isn't going to be a substitute for paying attention to the level hazards. Even a failed Bore Blasters run is a lot of fun packed with satisfyingly-explosive moments, but there would be a lot more them if there was time to amble to the end rather than sprint.
Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game has a lot of tidying up to do to become what it should be, but there's a wonderfully-rewarding game in there once you've learned its quirks.
Phantom Abyss is a trek into a lost and trap-filled temple that constantly has you on your toes. Each room is filled with several ways to die, or at least take a good amount of damage, and the constant pressure from the guardian means you have to think while moving. While there's something to be said for tearing through the level at top speed, the rooms are frequently interesting enough that it would be nice to stop and look around for a minute without being pushed forward. The secrets are highly satisfying to find, and when a guardian is dropping poison bombs or just relentlessly advancing that can feel like it's working against the necessary concentration or experimentation needed to reach them. A lot of the time it can feel easier to just dash on through, ignoring the intricate room design to reach the door to the next one, and the next and the next until finally reaching the exit. Every once in a while, though, Phantom Abyss manages to balance the speed and exploration, and that's when it's at its best.
While rough in places, Cookie Cutter manages to brawl its way to the top thanks to a strong combat system and wonderfully-bad attitude. The story and world-building are surprisingly well done, and Cherry is a strong hero despite being on a rage-fueled spree of bloody vengeance. While the ending has everything but a "To Be Continued..." dialogue box, the game is a satisfying first entry that does a great job of introducing its cast and detailed setting. Cherry's world was broken long before she was created, but that's not really her problem. Doctor Fallon's abduction destroyed her in more ways than one, and if the world of Cookie Cutter is improved by a rage-fueled robot's ultraviolent rampage, then that's just going to be a bonus.
A Highland Song is a wonderful adventure through mountains that were old before people arrived and will be there long after their ruins have eroded away. Moira's journey is as much about the Scottish Highlands as it is about her life so far, with history and myth being equally important to both. It can sometimes take some thinking and experimentation to find the way through a new area, clambering back and forth over rocks and cliffs to find a clue that points to the path forward, but the information is there for an attentive explorer to uncover. It all comes together to make for an engaging, unforgettable and frequently musical trek you'll want to make several times over to learn the histories and hidden paths of Moira's mountain home.
What makes While the Iron's Hot work is a combination of a pleasant series of tasks and quirky, entertaining characters in every new town and point of interest.