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Shadowplay: Metropolis Foe is interesting and challenging, but definitely not recommended for players new to deck building games. The amount of strategy needed to progress through even the early stages can be far greater than more basic deck builders such as Ascension and Star Realms. However, deck building veterans should already have the skills needed to properly build and maintain their deck as they play and can work with equipment that goes along with it. If you want a challenging deck-building game, Shadowplay: Metropolis Foe will give you that challenge.
Monster Harvest is retro in how it looks, which is great, but also in how it plays, which isn't as great. The gameplay doesn't feel addictive enough for a farming simulator, and the monster battle portion feels tacked on. I had fun with the game, but I never felt drawn into the world.
Life Is Strange: True Colors is a fantastic slice of life from an idealized alternate universe. Alex is an excellent protagonist, and her adventures with her attractive, funny friends in their beautiful town is a great way to spend about 12 hours. Beautiful, touching, temporary, artificial, charming, enchanting, and strange, True Colors will touch your soul like the three-minute indie pop songs it loves so much. The taste of ashes in your mouth at the end is purely optional.
Bus Simulator 21 is for everyone. Being able to cater to your playstyle from the most basic of set ups to as realistic as they can make it, the game gets its hooks in you after a few hours. I always wanted to run one more route before getting up from a play session. The vehicle AI leaves something to be desired, but we can all think of a few drivers that give us road rage.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla: The Siege of Paris is less of an expansion and more of a continuation, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. While Eivor's character development seemed to take a step backward, fans of the base game will still enjoy another 10 or so hours of gameplay thanks to Francia's new storyline, characters, weapons, and abilities.
Garden Story is not the apple of my eye, nor is it rotten. I enjoyed my time helping Concord clear the rot, especially with the boss fights, but by the third town (out of four) I felt I had picked more apples than I could eat in a week. Dungeons were exciting, but the other mechanics left a sour taste as they were introduced too late to matter and became another mechanic I could easily ignore. Garden Story simply was not my jam.
King's Bounty II is a great tactics game nestled within an okay open world RPG. While nothing in the exploration is offensively bad, it is clear early on that the real meat of the game lies within it's fun and engaging battle system.
For every good bit there is something bad, and the end result left me feeling like the package was less than the sum of its parts.
Twelve Minutes is a nice little point-and-click adventure game that will leave you stunned. Some points of frustration can make the game longer than it needs to be. Can get tedious at times if you're stuck.
Islanders: Console Edition trims every bit of fat from the city-building genre, stripping it down to the core mechanic of plunking down buildings for points. While the controls are a bit fidgety, the chill gameplay and focused mechanics more than make up for it. Play for a few minutes or a few hours, either way, Islanders delivers.
Harken back to the late 1990's and early 2000's and the survival horror genre was enjoying a golden age in video games. Song of Horror emulates the greats of that time but, unlike those franchises which have since evolved with modern game development, Song of Horror seems stuck in the past. For nostalgia's sake, it's worth checking out for fans of that era, but otherwise it's a hit-or-miss experience that falls well short of contemporary horror games.
Action roguelikes is a genre seeing a bit of a surge of new entires lately, and Hades is as good or better as anything you will find in that field. It offers an overall experience in storytelling and gameplay that is top-notch regardless of genre. It's this incredibly unique type of game and play loop that turns your every failure and death into a reward of unlocking more story, injecting more humor, and inviting you to take a stab at one more run. It's won numerous game of the year awards on PC, and there is no reason for those accolades to stop with the port to consoles. Just don't forget to give Cerebus a pet on your way to the next run.
Fort Triumph might not be the biggest victory for the genre, but there is plenty of fun combat to be had. While not genre defining, it's easy to get wrapped up in combat, and suddenly have a couple of hours fly by. The UI is hard to read at times, in both docked and handheld mode, but that was about my only complaint. I enjoyed Fort Triumph, but didn't fall in love.
Fire Tonight is a very brief, albeit enjoyable, tribute to the early '90s and synth-pop band Information Society in particular. Though the mechanics in the game are somewhat basic, it is still fun to see a video game take the time to visit a world 30 years gone. People of a certain age (and Information Society fans) will likely get a charge out of this one.
A fantastic Metroidvania. The graphics and animation are great and the music is nice and relaxing, provided the occasional difficulty spike isn't stressing you out. There are performance stutters on the Switch version, and a couple of trial-and-error areas that can get annoying, but overall they didn't really sway my overall opinion on the game. If you're a fan of Metroidvania-style games, definitely give Unbound: Worlds Apart a shot.
Dreamscaper combines solid gameplay elements and narrative in an excellent and carefully crafted adventure. While there are occasional difficulty jumps that break the loop, there are mechanics to put things back together and push onward in a journey of discovery and heart. It's a good roguelike outright that also succeeds weaving in storytelling that most games are often too fearful to even try.
Tribes of Midgard struggles with an outside force it has no control over that prevents it from being near perfect; it requires friends to play with. Alone, or with strangers who don't work together there is just too much going on at once, making the game feel like an endless assault of chores that need done right away. But if you can get a regular group, taking down the seasonal boss is totally worth the effort.
The Forgotten City is a modern classic, an utterly compelling video game that reinvents the adventure genre through intriguing writing and exploration. With stellar voice acting, sparkling conversation, and story twists to spare, The Forgotten City is one of the best games I've played this year, and one of the best video game narratives I've ever encountered. Utterly original, completely entrancing.
Ayo the Clown is a fun, light platformer with origins that can be traced directly back to any number of Nintendo classics, putting it in esteemed company. Though the difficulty might be a bit much for the smallest kids, Ayo the Clown is a light-hearted, family-friendly game that deserves attention from platformer fans.
The developers of Cris Tales set out to make a love letter to the genre. When writing a love letter it's easy to cloud your judgement at times. You're after all so head over heels into it. Do you really care what others think? The load times, basic story, and unsatisfying ending are easy to overlook when you're in love with the genre. Cris Tales is too pretty to pass up if you want a taste of a nostalgic JRPG.