Cubed3's Reviews
While Shantae and the Pirate's Curse may fall on the simple side when it comes to Metroidvanias, its simplicity winds up being one of its biggest strengths.
Rad Rodgers is a love letter to games from an older time, and manages to succeed in delivering a violent and satisfying 2D shooting experience. Unfortunately, unpolished platforming and a short length keep it from being a must play, especially considering the plethora of alternatives out there. The humour may not be for everybody, but for gamers looking for a blast from the past, Rad Rodgers is a rollicking and violent nostalgia trip to a simpler time.
Little Triangle is a simple, yet gruelling, 2D platformer but the loose controls of the Joy-Con means that playing in handheld mode is probably not recommended.
The Long Reach just barely misses the mark thanks to a painfully tone deaf script full of juvenile dialogue and puzzles that rely on process of elimination as much as actual thought-work. The general aesthetic of the world is appealing, with just well-crafted sprites, and the atmosphere is appropriately oppressive, but the overall story feels bound together by a script that can't decide between humour and tension. When every character speaks the same way, alternating between sarcastic quips and actually moving the plot along, it makes for an exhausting experience. Along with repetitive dialogue trees, it's hard to immerse oneself into the narrative. The game is short enough and might be worth buying on sale, but it certainly shouldn't be purchased for full price.
Even for a Bullet-Hell, there's just too much going on at once. It's overwhelming, but not in a way that encourages players to try harder. Ultimately, it left this critic feeling a little cold.
Swim Out for Nintendo Switch certainly won't rock the world in terms of its originality; however, it is definitely good at doing what it does, which is to combine great, pick-up-and-play puzzle gameplay, along with a very relaxing, summer atmosphere that will keep gamers looking for some pleasing entertainment more than satisfied.
Much like a relic from a forgotten age, Assault Gunners HD Edition struggles to find its place in today's gaming landscape.
The premise and the varied paths one can play through in alternate World War IIs are by far the shining points of Hearts of Iron IV and encourage multiple replays; the problem comes from the very complicated and particularly number heavy aspect of everything. The complexity and slow speed of how things evolve take the fun down notches lower than it otherwise would deserve. Endless clicking through menus, and a glacial speed, ruin what could have been a pretty slick overall experience.
Having more small nations might seem good, but the reality is many of the nations are completely unplayable, short of some strict gambit or cheap AI tactic. The nations are too small, too irrelevant to matter and, as a result, the entire premise of this DLC is rendered negative. Sadly, Hearts of Iron IV: Together for Victory falls into the issues seen with other downloadable content from Paradox Interactive.
Bleed 2 is a master-class in how to design a sequel.
MotoGP 17 is a good motorcycle-racing game that does offer a deep managerial mode, which takes the cake for this recent offering. While it's really an expansion of the Rider mode, with the added focus on running the team, managing the riders and staff members, signing on sponsors, while upgrading the bikes performance and managing marketing campaigns, this is a robust mode that can easily steal plenty of hours. For those just after a pure racing experience, playing this on the hardest difficulty is a heck of a challenge, or jumping online and racing real-world drivers is the sure-way to go.
Hitting the right notes of the genre, Galactic Civilization III: Crusade is a fun play and there is always the feeling of wanting to have just one more turn. The main issue holding it back from being truly great is the mid/late game grind of simply far too much stuff happening that needs to be dealt with. It will be interesting to see if the next major update fixes these issues, but fans of the genre will more than likely still enjoy this classic.
Being given the ability to play some of the 'major minors' of World War II in Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor is a solid expansion of content for the original base game. It is not quite as good as it seems, though, as they all have to be played in the 1936 scenario to be viable at all. While not as entertaining as the main powers, it can offer replayability for those that in general that actually want to try a different path of history.
A blend of gameplay inspirations and styles, melded into one solid experience, the voyage of The Next Penelope is kept to one straight short path, but has notable value in revisits and repeat play. A shockingly robust, if also rather brief, multiplayer mode, and a gorgeous visual style round off a package that evokes the classic gameplay of F-Zero and Micro Machines, yet somehow makes the experience its own. Those looking for a lengthy narrative may be disappointed, but the Time Trial features and quick burst gameplay will keep many coming back for more.
A Clockwork Ley-Line: The Borderline of Dusk is a decent-to-good light mystery visual novel that will please for those who look for something Harry Potter-ish to fill a couple of evenings with. Its flaws are its somewhat strong prologue-vibe, the awkwardly removed 18+ scenes, and its lack of anything substantially different than what the genre offers, but, as a whole, it's a decent read.
It's always good to try something new but, conversely, it doesn't always work. Here, it really doesn't work. Scribblenauts' charm was always in challenging the players to use their imagination and their diction to come up with fun and original solutions over the obvious or the mundane. While there's still some of that in Scribblenaut Showdown's Sandbox mode, it's too little to truly enjoy and too much focus has been placed on the mediocre party games instead. Even for the low cost, this is a considerably disappointing entry into the series.
Super Toy Cars feels like a preview build of a game that is not yet ready for home release.
Last Day of June is a great example of how to turn a short tale into an engaging interactive experience, one that importantly does not overstay its welcome. There may be one or two frustrations along the way but, all-in-all, it tugs at the heart strings in the right places on the story front, and also engages the brain on the gameplay side of things enough to make everything feel extremely satisfying once it reaches its conclusion.
Kiryu's final chapter is a beautiful one that has its heart in the right place, but feels slightly let down quite likely due to the new engine not allowing the developers the time they required to flesh out other areas such as the battle system and sections of Kamurocho. Despite slipping in parts, though, Yakuza 6 recovers with a compelling and intricately woven narrative featuring an appealing cast, rounded off with the side distractions expected of an entry in this series. This is an emotional sayonara to Kazuma Kiryu that may not have been all it could have been, but serves up a fine game befitting the Yakuza name.
The gameplay is explosive and dynamic, the ODMG is an absolute joy, and there's enough content to keep playing for a very long time. A.O.T. 2 is a must-buy for anime fans and one of the best spin-off musou titles out there.