Those who’ve had any skepticism that visuals meant to accompany minimally-structured gameplay could strive for greatness need only look at Linelight to have their prejudices proved wrong.
Ultimately, Alwa’s Awakening feels like the foundation to what might have been a rather more substantial revisit of the glorious 8-bit like so many before it.
Though not the first of its kind and by no means the most original tale spun from out this current trend of liberty-vouching discussion, Mainlining is a smart and cleverly put-together point-and-click piece that is layered enough with its puzzles but prominently more effective in its use of real World culture in providing that added sense of personally historic immersion.
“More of the same” could very well be the simpler way to sum up what players should expect coming into Gravity Rush 2.
Had it not been for its plagued release on PC — not to mention the niggling texture work that pops up from time to time — Dishonored 2 just might have been in strong contention for best game this year.
Fans will be satisfied with how the tale running through Steins;Gate 0 is told with a narrative that rarely stands still in the present without coming off confusing.
While its world often lacks distinction beyond said notable color changes from environment to environment, there’s enough variance and all-round tension in the combat to make Creepy Castle‘s run-time a surreal but pleasant adventure to take.
Even with its safe confinement to a generally unchanged art-style and environmental aesthetic, HoPiKo remains enjoyably engaging and challenging from beginning to tantalizing end.
Despite the occasional dips in performance — be it visually or aurally — and the rather unavoidable slip-ups with its 3D animation not quite flowing as majestically, Aragami‘s methodical and gracious pacing offers an interesting tale on stealth based on more than just the merits of its unique shadow-manipulation mechanics.
Seraph is not just a great game, but a triumphant one built on fusing engaging gameplay with an elegantly-arranged world environment as well as an upgrade system that rewards both statistical investment and personal experimentation. A testament to the design philosophy that if an idea is good, it's usually very good.
There are always going to be games released that don’t quite meet the high’s you’re led to believe prior to getting rigorously stuck into the depth of gameplay and technical stability underpinning the experience.
Smaller loops of gameplay don’t inherently make a game weaker, providing each of these loops offer enough variety and degree of interaction to feel compelling and otherwise fun to play.
There’s few complex systems in place to either discover or manage and while that may feel like a misstep, Do My Best live up to their namesake when by setting the scene and giving even the most basic of pixel graphics feel like something far more grandiose and important in the wider scheme of things.
Whether you’re in it for the gameplay or find yourself drawn in by the looming mystery that steadily simmers over in due course, The Turing Test (minus the occasionally hard-to-decipher audio) is a smartly-structured and delicately-arranged puzzle game that knows its boundaries and leaves it to the player to fill in the missing gaps.
Even for someone as apathetic and straight-faced as me, I rarely deny comedy the opportunity to lift a smile on my face.
People can argue the merit and worth of roguelikes until the sun goes down, but while they’re not the most assorted or varied of role-playing experiences, what makes Brut@l work is the very procedural nature of its design.
At its best, Super Challenge is a commendable and well-sought (if not fully diverse) expansion to Mutant Mudds’ already satisfying take on the less-is-more approach to game design.
Inevitably, Rising Islands can be identified quite easily as a title riddled with far too many lack-luster components and even its core gameplay can’t prevent it from feeling both under-baked and underdeveloped.
It’s hard to surmise whether The Technomancer and its faults come by way of financial or otherwise creative pitfalls, because there are some interesting and rather enjoyable moments to take out of both the game’s easy-to-access combat system and the rather nostalgic return of a colonized Mars seen through the eyes of an 80’s motion picture.
There’s no getting away from the somewhat lacking visual fidelity and there will be plentiful moments where you stop to [mistakenly] consider you’re in fact playing a first-person shooter from the circa-2000 era, let alone circa-2011.