Once Upon A Jester isn't like too many other games out there, but if you're willing to give it a chance, you'll find that it does what it sets out to do incredibly well.
Even if Castle Renovator delivered on exactly what its name promised, I have a hard time imagining it'd be much more fun. There's a way to make these job sims fun, and a way to make them feel like a dull slog, and every design decision here ensures that this game falls squarely in the latter camp.
Part of the reason it feels like MLB The Show 23 is treading water is that, for so many years, it was far and away the best sports game available. When you nail a sport so accurately, all that's left is the sort of tinkering around the edges that MLB The Show 23 does here. But unless you have a burning need to play as Satchel Paige -- and who could blame you if you do -- it makes it really difficult to see why you'd want to pick it up rather than just sticking with MLB The Show 22.
It's great to see an established series take risks like this, and it'll be interesting to see where the series evolves from here, but as of now, there's still much room for improvement.
To be sure, Fashion Police Squad isn't going to make you forget the games it's borrowing from. But part of why it's so fun is because it's poking fun at a genre that can sometimes feel like it hasn't evolved much since the original DOOM, and showing that there's still room for it to grow and evolve. As Fashion Police Squad shows, there's still some life -- and some room to innovate -- in the old genre yet.
Justice League: Cosmic Chaos is surprisingly fun -- and surprisingly funny.
Scars Above is a competent enough game that efficiently gets you through its six-hour runtime. It won't make you forget its influences, but if you can find this one on sale, you could definitely do a lot worse.
Digimon World: Next Order seems to think that the most enjoyable part of monster-training games is endless, repetitive grinding.
To get Sonic Colors: Ultimate's fun gameplay on PC means putting up with graphics that are, at best, an eyesore. Given that there are plenty of other options for playing the game, it may not be a trade-off you want -- or need -- to make.
Pretty much what you'd expect from a 2D Kirby game -- but seeing as the baseline for those is "cute platformer that won't tax you too much and that you can play with pretty much anyone," that?s hardly a bad thing. Add in a few new elements, and you have the ingredients for a pretty solid remake.
If you're after more Castlevania, without actually playing Castlevania again, then that's fine, and Elderand will provide you with a perfectly competent experience. But given that other games have taken that route and shown far more personality, it's hard to see why you'd want to choose this game instead of any of those other ones.
To be sure, Akka Arrh is a niche game: to enjoy it, you not only need to enjoy old school arcade shooters, you also need to enjoy Llamasoft's specific brand of psychedelic weirdness on top of that, as well as the weird idiosyncrasies in the game design. But if all of that appeals to you, then the good news is that Akka Arrh exists, and it's pretty fun.
Just about the only complaint I could think of for the game is that its online multiplayer isn't well-populated given that it's not exactly setting the charts alight -- but a) it's fun in single-player, and b) that's the sort of thing that could be fixed if Sackboy had the popularity it deserves. Do your part to help with that by checking it out, and get a pretty wonderful 3D platformer in the bargain.
If we're tallying up Season's problems, again, by far the biggest is that it's a shallow game that desperately wants you to think it's deeper than it is. It has some pretty visuals and solid voice acting, but at the end of the day, there's really not much more here than trying to give historical import to snapping that perfect Instagram moment.
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 -- or, as no one has ever called it, MMS21 -- is one of those Switch ports that doesn't seem like a whole lot of attention was put into it, and you don't need to look very hard to see why.
It's not too often a game will work your brain and whet your appetite, but Freshly Frosted manages to achieve that rare double feat.
Almost everything about Lunistice feels as if it could've come out alongside Nights into Dreams or an early 3D Sonic game, with lots of flashy environments and moving pieces. Not only that, everything has a slightly blurry, blocky look, which makes you feel like you're watching the game play out on a CRT screen. Add in a fair number of collectibles to pick up in each level, and you can see why the game practically screams "1990s."
Hogwarts Legacy doesn't just bathe in the reflected warm glow of nostalgia. It contributes to that lore, and stands up as a worthy entry in the Harry Potter canon in its own right.
Despite the sheer amount of words that have been written about the game, the reality is that it's just a forgettable, mediocre game. It does plenty of things very poorly, but it also does one or two things well enough that you can't say it's completely and irredeemably awful. There's no real reason to seek the game out, and there's no reason (apart, maybe, from that stupid talking bracelet) to avoid it at all costs: Forspoken is just kind of there.
The Forest Quartet clearly has its heart in the right place, and any game that gets people thinking about overcoming their own demons is a good thing. But as a game, there's just nothing interesting here.