It’s got some interesting new features, but nothing that makes the game even better. Though seeing as Super Mario Bros. Wonder is one of the best 2D Mario games ever, the phrase “gilding the lily” seems fairly appropriate.
I wouldn’t call it a great game or a hidden gem, but it’s decent enough that it lives in that same so-so range that so many other GameMill games sit in.
There’s one major drawback that prevents Fear the Timeloop from being a great game: for some reason, the developers cheaped out when it came to voice actors.
That’s kind of what this year’s version of The Show feels like: that it rolled off an assembly line without any attempt to make it new or interesting or different from last year’s version…which itself felt like a clone of the year before that. It’s really hard to say that, unless you’re coming to the franchise brand new, that there’s any reason to pick it up over any other version in the last few years.
While I’m not about to pretend that MindsEye is secretly a masterpiece, I think saying that it’s one of the worst games ever made is stretching it a little far. I know we’re in an age where everything has to be either one extreme or another, but there’s a massive range in between those two poles, and MindsEye fits somewhere along that spectrum.
Does it ever come close to matching Portal? Obviously not. But it doesn’t need to, either. Chromagun 2 may not do a whole lot new, but the fact that so many other games are out there now that are also copying Portal makes that easier to forgive.
There’s a sense of wonder and silliness that not many other games share, and it’s enough to suck you in and keep you entertained right up to the end of the closing credits.
If you go in expecting a terrible game – say, one of the worst games of the year – then you may be pleasantly surprised. For all its flaws, it’s actually kind of fun.
As someone who misses the old Sony and the way they’d try weird things (and not just go for big and cinematic with every one of their games), it feels weird to criticize them for a game where they try something different. But the problem is that God of War: Sons of Sparta isn’t particularly fun. It’s a perfectly adequate metroidvania at a time when there are plenty of very good metroidvanias that are more worth your time, so unless you desperately want a Kratos: The Very Early Years game you can safely skip this one.
As a single-player game, it’s solid enough, but add in some friends and multiplayer, and you’ve got the makings of a party classic.
Of Ash and Steel brings to mind games like Risen or Gothic – you know, janky RPGs that were objectively kind of terrible but that sort of had their own charm, even if you had to look hard to see it.
If I managed to enjoy Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator despite the stressfulness, that means everyone else should absolutely love it. It’s completely nuts, but it’s got enough imagination that if you like betting it all on the role of a die, you’re guaranteed to get addicted to it.
As someone approaching Painkiller with a fresh set of eyes and no preconceived ideas of what it should be, I can’t say that I found it that much better. I mean, I didn’t loathe it, but I certainly can’t recommend it to anyone, either.
Beneath is pretty terrible.
It’s hard to say that The Outer Worlds 2 is a bad game, or one that doesn’t offer players plenty to do. It’s undeniably a well-made game. But that doesn’t make it particularly compelling.
The problem is that Saborus is a stealth puzzle-platformer where the stealth sections aren’t that interesting, the puzzles aren’t difficult, and the platforming is a mess.
The competition today is a lot more fierce than it was a decade ago – and yet, even with that tougher playing field, Yooka-Replaylee still manages to stand out as being one of the better 3D platformers you’re likely to come across.
Sometimes, all you want is a game that provides a quick blast of action, and Clawpunk delivers that in spades. If you just want to cause mayhem and blast away enemies for a few hours, there are worse ways to pass the time than with this game.
In any other year it would stand head and shoulders above the competition. But in a year like this, where we can compare and contrast CrossWorlds with Mario Kart World so easily, its faults seem a lot more glaring. As it stands, it’s a very solid kart racer that has the misfortune of being compared to one that’s just more enjoyable.
It’s absurdly easy to pick up, and it only sucks you in more and more as you see your accumulated wealth get bigger and bigger and bigger. It’s not likely to replace Balatro (or whatever your deckbuilder of choice may be), but if you want something that gives you a quick hit of adrenaline without being too demanding, you should probably check it out.