Summit Reviews's Reviews
I'm all for a bit of pacing, and god knows combat as relentless as this needs a little, but when the combat is this smooth and the pacing this mediocre, the split is just baffling. Like that nice restaurant or amusement park, once you get to the good bit, Homura Hime is absolutely worth the time—I just wish the rest wasn't such a slog.
Esoteric Ebb is one of the most unique, well-crafted, superbly written pieces of gaming I've had the pleasure of delving into for a long time. I wouldn't be exaggerating by putting it on the same shelf as Disco Elysium or Baldur’s Gate 3, as far as the quality of roleplaying and writing are concerned. It’s nothing short of a masterpiece, despite it lasting just about 25-30 hours, not counting the excellent replay value. To think a few people in some basement managed to craft a roleplaying experience of this level is astonishing: it makes much bigger and infinitely higher budget titles eat the dust, and a lot of it too. If you’re a fan of CRPGs, or even just narrative-based games in general, this is a top pick you shouldn’t miss for any reason.
Inky Blinky Bob wants and tries to be a lot of things: a vehicle-based FPS, a survival horror, an open-world RPG and, at times, a quest-based nonlinear adventure and a stealth game. The saying goes: ‘too many chefs spoil the broth’, and in this case, perhaps ‘too many genres spoil the game’. In some ways, this mish-mash of genres actually works pretty well; in others, much less so. It’s good and all to experiment and blend things together to craft a fine mix, much like cocktails; however, even for the most experienced studios, never mind an Indie one on their first Steam release, this would be a daunting task. The result of great ambitions and only passable execution is still better than most similar cases: a game that works and plays out just well enough to be passable, but not nearly well enough to be actually good, let alone great.
Facing many of the same issues, it's not particularly insightful or convincing of me to write all this just to tell you that the difference between the first and second Code Vein is the extent of the problems, yet that really is the crux of the comparison. Code Vein's horrendous heavy-handedness was the pillow smothering its poor narrative's face, but the sheer likeability of II's cast narrowly averts the same fate. And while the first game's combat was crippled by Blood Codes so restrictive and grindy I'd hate to ever engage with them, the vastly increased modularity and complexity of the sequel's allows those build systems to inject some much-needed life into battle. In truth, I don't think there's a huge audience for a soulslike I'd recommend primarily for its story and characters, but for those few, I'd still recommend Code Vein II all the same, however muted that endorsement may be.
Resident Evil Requiem feels like the perfect capstone for everything Capcom has been working towards since 2017, and for one of the most impressive franchise reinventions the industry has ever seen. Its execution of action and horror is masterful, both in terms of how they deliver that to the player through its larger environments and its more linear set pieces. It’s a step up in terms of character performances and storytelling, pulling off emotional moments in a way no previous Resident Evil has accomplished before. All of this is wrapped into an incredibly well-paced journey with not a single bit of fat to trim, yet still leaves you wanting more. While I think its partial retreading of scenarios and increased linearity holds it back from being the very best the franchise has delivered thus far, it is the perfect game to mark 30 years of one of gaming’s most important franchises, celebrating everything that has come before it, and getting you amped up for everything that will come after.
Nothing quite stings more than the inherent brilliance of the Nioh series just barely hanging on. The build systems are arguably bigger and better than they've ever been, the handful of bosses I didn't just steamroll were a pleasure to fight more than they weren't, and, despite feeling a little familiar, the core combat mechanics are still a stroke of genius, no matter how you slice it. But there's a snake in the grass—an open world structure so utterly banal, so profoundly vacuous, and so comprehensively incompatible with the franchise, it poisons and thoroughly corrupts everything that should have made Nioh 3 truly great. Team Ninja spent so long pondering what makes a shogun, they lost sight of what makes a Nioh game.
All in all, even though it’s a smaller game, Motorfest is a solid step forward for the series. It improves significantly on the aspects of a car game and defines its own patch in the larger framework popularized by the Horizon series. While the experience suffers from the microtransaction hell that has unfortunately become the Ubi standard, there’s enough to see in terms of racing cars, boats, and planes to steal a few dozen hours of your life. People are still playing it in 2026, there’s a little something for everyone, and the amount of raw content dwarfs most other rivals’, even if the world map is one of the smallest you’ll find in the genre.
But I'm not here to miss the forest for the trees. I'm well aware that a mountain full of life and covered in stuff makes for a far better game than the alternative—and what an extraordinary game Cairn is. Nothing else has ever quite captured the freedom of the mountain, the sense of scale as you pan the camera out to analyse your path, or the feeling of just finding a place to plop down and gaze at the horizon for a while. If an irritating protagonist and slightly more human influence than I'd like is all I have to suffer for objectively the finest, most accurate climbing sim ever made, that's a bargain I'll never grow tired of striking.
The brilliance of The First Berserker: Khazan is almost paradoxical. Flashy yet deliberate, intricate yet effortless, it's an utterly singular experience perfecting a style of combat I thought could not be perfected. Wrapped in a narrative so wonderfully bleak you can't help but feel something by the end, Khazan is far and away the best game I played last year, and perhaps the finest combat I have ever played, soulslike or otherwise.
So, where does all this leave Bloodlines 2? To tell you the truth, hopefully far away from your digital library. If a pair of protagonists who are easy to get attached to and a strong emotional core are all it takes to get you gushing over a game, you’ll find enough to love here, but it’s all aesthetics of something more past that, without ever fulfilling the premise; aesthetics of complex characters, aesthetics of a brutal combat system, aesthetics of political intrigue, aesthetics of an RPG. To experience Bloodlines 2 feels like finally being able to play through one of those “All Cutscenes” compilation videos you’d find on YouTube. I’m looking at the screen, and it looks like I’m playing a video game. But am I really? And I definitely wouldn’t recommend pulling up one of those YouTube videos, as you’d be relieving yourself of the opportunity to make that little bit of heartfelt storytelling your own.
I certainly got more than I bargained for with this experience, and my fancies were absolutely tickled. Would I recommend this to any budding shopkeepers, occult lovers, and puzzle aficionados? Heck, I’d recommend it even if you’re not a puzzle enthusiast. What could go wrong, right?
As odd as it sounds, I think Death Howl's side questing best sums it up. The first you'll find asks you to return a bird to a tree (don't question it), and, of course, that bird manifests as an expensive card that worms its way into your deck, conveniently reviving fallen foes if left in hand at the end of your turn. Whether you simply wound enemies until the thing's safely in your discard pile or you perhaps opt for a deck built around cards that can dispel it from your hand, that damn bird is a problem set upon you for only four battles—a curveball that knows exactly how long it's interesting for, and disappears forever when its time is up. The deckbuilding delights through its constant flow of transient new cards. Ro's loss resonates in the smallest interactions. A quiet corner of the spirit world will offer something flawed and beautiful, and not expect you to linger. Much like the life Ro desperately fights to save, Death Howl is a collection of fleeting but precious moments, and an experience I strongly recommend.
Far from perfect, but indeed, neither was the original release. Syberia’s strengths aged like fine wine, be it Catherine Peyrot’s writing or Benoit Sokal’s design and unique visual style, but the game only manages to partially do justice to the original wonder, and its weaknesses are hard to ignore. It’s more of a museum piece than anything else, yet Syberia Remastered clearly involved a lot of love and passion during its production. I just wish it were more evenly spread.
Constance is proof that the pursuit of the new is not the only path that matters. Conceptually, you've seen almost everything it tries running rampant across the genre, but rarely have you seen its strengths executed to such a degree, and rarely have you seen its stumbles offset by such transparent passion. All told, I don't imagine Constance will knock anyone's socks off, but between its stunning presentation, deft handling of heavy themes, truly fantastic movement, and stalwart vision, it's a metroidvania you certainly won't regret spending time with.
Little Nightmares III is easy to like, and thus, it’s difficult to truly hate it. Simultaneously, it’s a very hard game to praise past a certain point. It nails the visuals and atmosphere, and the journey is solid all the way through, but it feels too familiar and safe in terms of the IP, horror more generally, and the genres of puzzle-platformer and co-op that the game exists within. It’s not what I’d call a ‘bastardisation’ of the IP by any means, but if this franchise is to continue to exist under Supermassive, then they need to push the boat out further next time, because I don’t think the IP can keep making entries like this and have people still be engaged.
Despite a lot of expectations, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers isn't just another soulslike. It iterates on things the genre should have never left behind, and its innovations are actually new and refreshing in a space widely known for how derivative it can be (it's in the name!); yet, with From Software's crown looking ever more untenable, you have to make good on your pitch. Wuchang's level design may be up to par, but between its clunky combat and nebulous, practically incomprehensible storytelling, I struggle to find anything else worth recommending.
Alien: Rogue Incursion is not a triple A cinematic experience, nor does it try to be. Its structure, the way it circles in on itself in this self-contained, minimalistic way, making use of a limited cast and toolkit to tell an otherwise faithful yarn, is definitely fun without overstaying its welcome. It drops the ball somewhat in the combat department considering the standards of a modern survival horror, with clunky ballistics, bullet spongy and often dumb aliens undermining an otherwise stressful and fitting atmosphere, and many of its aspects lean a bit on the barebones side, but the reduced price tag and scale denote awareness towards this aspect.
The Riftbreaker is largely what it looks like. The story serves primarily as an excuse to provide a clear direction to the rest of the game. The various aspects of automation, action, and tower defense, while shallow, are extremely well-polished and flashy. That’s about it. It’s a fairly mindless game that probably won’t stick with you, but I’d say it does what it sets out to do. We all want our actions to mean something—to go somewhere. That is what The Riftbreaker provides. Though simple and mindless, your actions all serve the goal of fueling and defending the rift portal in a clear and tangible way. Each action helps to make the others easier and more efficient. It provides that feeling of progress or, at least, the illusion of it. You push the numbers up until the credits roll. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Cronos: The New Dawn is a competent, interesting, and enjoyable survival horror, but it underuses interesting concepts and has a story that feels obscure for the sake of being obscure more than anything else. If you’re a fan of survival horror, you should definitely consider it, because it’s good at what it does.
The pathfinding will remain poor, Soulstorm’s balance still has room for improvement, and the match options won’t let you have that game of your dreams, but this is still a version of an exciting, unique RTS that you can get running with slightly less hassle than the original. More recent Warhammer 40,000 titles have better campaigns that better integrate what’s best about their gameplay with the presentation and remain fun even on a replay. Yet none of them offer the sheer carnage combined with awe that Dawn of War does. I think that part of it will always remain solid, all issues considered, and easily recommendable until it's outdone. It’s just a missed opportunity that can equally be said of the original release.