Gaming Nexus
HomepageGaming Nexus's Reviews
Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy give you a tremendous amount of bang for your buck. The three games contained within are long, detailed and beautiful, and they feel right at home on the Nintendo Switch.
Bus Simulator 18, at its core, is a good simulator game with a whole lot of soul. It brings a lot of playability options to the table, whether you want to just drive a bus or manage the whole company. The driving is complex enough to keep the player involved, and the economic systems provide a respite for players tired of being behind the wheel. However, the game is hurt by some frustrating bugs and sub-par traffic systems.
In a way The Crew 2 is a better game from the old, but in another way, it is also very much the same flawed racer. There is a lot of good here: open world, four racing types, huge customization, and tons of races. However, as a racing game, you'd do better with Mario Kart.
New Gundam Breaker is such a bad game that it makes me feel bad for Gundam fans. I picture a 12-year-old Gundam fanatic that has saved up weeks' worth of lawnmowing mowing money, sitting with a controller hanging loosely in her hand, staring at the screen and crying. This is a game that should never have come to market, regardless of how much hard work went into its creation. To ask anyone to pay money for New Gundam Breaker is outright offensive.
Dream Alone has a tired story, clunky controls, and flawed mechanics, and most of its problems can be traced to the near-fundamental incompatibility of this type of horror with this type of platforming. Its most promising aspect—multiple dimensions—is by far the creepiest part, which is enjoyable, but it seems to sabotage itself with a few key flaws that impact the entire game's playability.
Pode is a fun and relaxing puzzle game that starts out simple and becomes more complex as the game progresses and you gain new abilities. While the game is meant for co-op play, it plays just as well single-player, though you will have to constantly swap between Glo and Bulder. Having a second player can also help with solving puzzles as you have a second person helping you out, but alone or with a friend, with its enjoyable art style and relaxing atmosphere, Pode is a puzzle game worth checking out.
The Fractured But Whole is a solidly good RPG game that incorporates the South Park attitude with a lot less “in-your-face” crudeness than The Stick of Truth. It has a better fighting setup, an easier-to- digest storyline, and is still laugh out loud funny at times. What else do you need from a South Park game?
There is no doubt that Yet Another Zombie Defense HD is more crisp and graphically pleasing than the first, but where the game could have had more distinct zombies, different backgrounds, and more customization, it stayed with the same ole' boring. For four bucks you can have a decent time with the game, just don't expect it to be a regular pull on game night.
Conan Exiles is one of the most disappointing games I have played this generation. I have not experienced another game on PlayStation 4 as broken as Exiles. It is hard to believe that a game could be released for purchase in such bad condition. In another genre, the bugs in Exiles might be fun or amusing. In a survival game, they are crippling. Gamers deserve, and should demand, better.
Red Faction Guerilla: Re-Mars-Tered is, in the end, a terrific, if seriously flawed, open-world game. I do admit that I'm a bit biased against this thing called colonialism, but the writers should have examined the wider ramifications when trying to inject even a semblance of emotional connection into the game. Overall, it's a fun jaunt through the past, and although I'm sure I'll get tired by the eventual repetitiveness, just like all open-world games, it's a great experience for what the gameplay provides.
I Hate Running Backwards is a fairly good game, but I can also understand people's mixed feelings about it. The game is basically a thirty minute top-down shooter (if you can survive that long), but the further you progress, the more difficult you can make it if you wish. Add in a dozen characters to choose from across Digital Devolver's games and there are plenty of ways to have fun taking down Mental's minions.
This is a good collection that runs the gauntlet of arcade fighting games of the '80s and '90s. Whether or not you are a fan, this is a good entry point in the series, and there is something here for everyone.
I want to like this game, I really do. But it's holding me back from doing so. Reading into it, I find a lot of near-depth, but nothing that the game actually employs has much depth to it. There are a ton of amazing aspects that boost the game, but its larger ambitions lies just outside the reach of its execution. But it is worth a try, and an admirable achievement. In truth, I think this game is more a 7.8, but I feel the current rating it has adequately describes its qualities, while acknowledging its flaws.
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux is a really long title for a really long game. But this game is a great swan song for the 3DS hardware and the perfect JRPG for on-the-go gaming next to Persona 4 Golden.
Jurassic World: Evolution is an island-making sim where frustration and wait-times are scarier than any of the dinosaurs. The idea of creating 40 dinosaurs and their enclosures sounds like a real treat, but in this case, I'm sure Dr. Grant would have stayed at his dig site.
It's easy to scoff at the idea of VR making any appreciable difference in a VR game, but you would be wrong to do so. Moss, a combination platformer/audio book, is exactly that, and it is very, very well done. If asked if I would have enjoyed it as much "flat," I have to say that I wouldn't have. The VR aspects are subtle, but still make large contributions to the overall game play. It appears to be a small kid's game at first, but the difficulty does ramp up to a fairly challenging level.
Unravel 2 is more than just a puzzle game. It's a journey of working with someone, sometimes that someone being yourself, and going on a journey that will change you. It's a marvel how the developers evoked such feeling out of this slick combination of gameplay and visual storytelling, even one without words. Like me, it will leave you speechless at the end.
Battle Chasers: Nightware is pretty typical as far as turn based RPGs go, but its tight combat, beautiful production values and faithfulness to its source material make it worth checking out on Switch.
While it is provably true that VR can be a good fit for shooting games, it is not true that a game can simply be built for a VR platform without putting a lot of thought into the vast differences between a flat, finger-based model and the VR model. Sniper Rust VR does not demonstrate that any such thought went into at all. Do yourself a favor - try the free demo before paying for this one.
If Rick & Morty: Virtual Rick-ality were a discount title, I would say "Take a look, but keep your expectations in check." However, this is one of the more expensive VR titles, and the brevity of the story combined with the frustration of some broken mechanics make this a mixed bag. The game is fun when it is working correctly, and the world building and writing are top notch, but don't expect to spend more than a couple of hours in Rick's garage, with some of that time spent wrestling with broken mechanics.