Here’s the key thing to know about Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal: as long as you go in with the right level of expectations, it’s a whole lot of fun.
Even with its bugs and glitches, there’s still a decent game to be found in The Lamplighters League. It doesn’t quite hit the highs it could, however, so if you’re enticed by the promises of XCOM-meets-Indiana Jones, be aware that performance issues mean it’ll never quite be as good as it could be.
Everything about Bzzzt makes it stand out from the crowd. It’s a very fun old-school platformer that manages to stand out even in a very crowded genre, and it’s definitely worth picking up.
It’s a dull, plodding slog that does a grave disservice to its source material, and you’d be wise to search out that source material instead of wasting a dollar or a moment on this game.
Even if I was disappointed by Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, it was only a minor disappointment, all things considered. It may not reach the highs of the previous Turnip Boy game, but it’s still fun in its own right, and it makes me eager to see what shenanigans Turnip Boy gets up to next (and what genres he’ll get up to them in).
Lifeless Moon spends way too much time telling, and not nearly enough time showing. And on one level, I get it: a small indie studio isn’t going to have the budget to show how a civilization on the moon fell apart. But at the same time, when you’re this good at creating an atmosphere, it can’t help but feel a little disappointing when the rest of the game doesn’t quite measure up.
The big drawback to The Lost Crown is that if you’re not already a fan of Metroidvanias, it’s hard to imagine anything here will suddenly make you a believer in the genre. It’s a well-made Metroidvania, to be sure, but there’s nothing here that breaks new ground.
A quick look at the eShop shows more than 40 other solitaire games, many of them a lot cheaper than Super Solitaire. Given all that, it’s hard to see why you should play Super Solitaire over any of them. Mind you, that could probably be flipped to say that there’s no reason why you should play any of those other games over Super Solitaire. So, with that in mind, go for it, I guess?
If you go into Loddlenaut expecting anything in the way of stakes or drama or a challenge, you’ll probably be underwhelmed. But if you just want a relaxing, chill game that you can escape into for a couple of hours, it’s hard to think of a nicer, more pleasant way to pass the time.
Much like Dragon Quest Treasures last year, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is a fun entry point into a long-running series that doesn’t ask too much of players in terms of prior knowledge (though that surely helps). If you’re after a solid monster-training game with colourful cast of characters, it delivers solidly on that front.
While it certainly deserves praise for its ambition, and it can’t be faulted for not delivering a Rockstar experience on a fraction of the budget, it’s not too much to ask that game asking for your money to deliver more than this. If you can buy it on a deep discount and have no expectations – and, of course, you’ve exhausted everything else there is to do in Red Dead Redemption – it might be worth it, but otherwise you’ll want to give Guns and Spurs 2 a pass.
Murder on the Orient Express is proof that even if you mess around the edges of a classic murder mystery, as long as the core remains – and it does here – you can’t help but make a worthwhile game.
This is a destructible, semi-open world where you can run (er, roll) around smashing things to your heart’s content. That may not be enough to fully redeem Bang-On Balls: Chronicles, but it’s at least enough to make it fun in doses – even if it’s not as fun as I would’ve hoped.
With all these complaints, you might think I hate Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, but I don’t. I mean, I don’t love it, but given such a huge, richly imagined world, it’s hard to be too annoyed with it. There are definitely plenty of improvements that would make it more enjoyable to play, but as it stands, it’s a perfectly serviceable open world adventure.
Like grapefrukt games’ previous outings, it’s made for both quick gaming sessions and lengthy hours spent trying to get just a little bit better, and regardless of which way you approach it, you’re going to have fun.
It’s an interesting look at a neat experiment, and it’s fun to get a chance to discover – or rediscover – a game that finds Nintendo breaking out of their comfort zone. It may not be a perfect game, but it’s an interesting one, and that’s enough to make it worth checking out.
That’s what makes DreamWorks Trolls Remix Rescue so frustrating: it’s <i>so</i> close to being good, but its flaws make it almost impossible to recommend. It’s far better than it has any right to be or than its pedigree suggests, but it’s still going to be a letdown to almost everyone.
It ultimately comes down to how much you want a game that gives you insane levels of power but that also puts checks on it. You’re the creative type who appreciates that balance, there’s plenty to like in Teardown. If you just want to go smashy-smashy, you can do that here, too, but the end result may be more frustrating than you’re expecting.
I feel like comparing Abomi Nation to Pokémon is just about the highest praise I can give the game. It’s not on the same level in terms of…well, anything, really, but at the same time, it’s well-made enough that if you’re the kind of person it’s targeting, it’s absolutely essential.
For the second year in a row, Jackbox Party Pack 10 delivers a set of games where everyone is bound like at least one of the games on offer – certainly a far cry from earlier editions where you knew that an entry would have at least one dud.It's an outstanding collection from top to bottom, and it shows that as the Jackbox series enters its second decade, it's as strong as ever.