Cubed3's Reviews
Hue is a charming indie puzzle platformer that presents a very unique mechanic and makes it central to the game's progression. Its fantastic visuals, refined gameplay mechanics and intriguing story are truly a delight to experience. This should be more than pleasing to those who enjoy the genre or are just looking for a new gaming experience with a good story.
Sadly, despite an attempt to include in-depth story threads and bring in intriguing puzzles, Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma falls down on too many occasions. Be it the convoluted yarns that do not tie things together well enough, puzzles that fluctuate in difficulty and interest levels far too much, as well as a poorly thought out flowchart system that leads players into numerous dead ends, either requiring sheer guesswork and random replaying of certain scenarios, or caving in and using online guides.
To those players who always were interested with the hunting genre of games but couldn't get on with Monster Hunter, God Eater 2: Rage Burst may be the game for you. It's like an "Arcade" version of Monster Hunter, thriving on fast action and fun combat, while still capturing the feel of the genre. It has an engaging story, fun gameplay, and a mammoth amount of content - perfect for anyone searching for a game to really sink their teeth into.
Hue has gotten plenty of press, but it manages to be an absolute indie juggernaut that far exceeds its hype. It's a haunting accomplishment, and manages to be just short of a perfect title. Any gamer, whether a fan of puzzle-platformers or not, needs to dive into this. With any luck, Hue will become an instant indie classic.
Attack on Titan: Wings of Freedom is absolutely superb and is all the fans could have hoped for—and more. Exhilarating and addictive, it manages to do justice to the source material and deliver moments fans will adore. A must-buy for any fans of the series and even worth picking up for newbies, too.
For fans of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Eyes of Heaven is a dream come true, filled with nods to even the most obscure of references. It's a love letter to a decades long franchise that never forgets to cater fully to its audience. Compared to other competitive fighters, it might come off as a bit lacking, but more casual fans of the genre and those unfamiliar with the series will still be able to enjoy the more simplistic mechanics. This really doesn't require anything more than an open mind and a love of fun, and while that might not make for the best game ever, it certainly does make for one worth playing.
Lost Sea had an interesting premise from the get go, with its use of procedurally generated stages and the quest of finding the tablets in order to escape the Bermuda Triangle. However, the randomly generated stages seem there only due to constant necessity to replay levels because of the inability to save the progress. While this may have been aimed at increasing the replay value of the game, after a few hours of play, it still feels like little to no progress had been made. This is a cause for many infuriating moments and seriously detracts from an otherwise clean and simple game with a lot of potential.
Armikrog looks amazing, with the stop-motion claymation performed to perfection. However, that is as good as it gets, with clunky gameplay mechanics and the significant glitches found that are the true enemy for Tommynaut and Beak-Beak. This is the equivalent to being thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool without learning how to swim, and then trying to select the nearby life ring, only to discover that only the dog can select that option for some illogical reason. Armikrog feels like an unfinished game that was rushed out the door, with any form of character progression or story left on the cutting room floor. While it was created with good intentions behind it, Armikrog only serves as a sad reminder of just how great The Neverhood truly was, and that it may never be successfully replicated.
Worms W.M.D provides enough new features to keep it feeling fresh, with plenty on offer for solo players. Those with friends should also be more than content with the high amount of customisation, plus support for up to six players with eight worms each, potentially making matches of 48 worms. While it might not be a revolution, it is a very solid entry in the series, and at its core Worms is still Worms. It is to the TBS genre what Mario Kart now is to racing - both different and accessible enough for newcomers, in-depth enough for long-term fans, yet also enjoyable enough for those formerly not fans of the games. It's a title that's good to have in anyone's collection, ready for an unexpected batch of friends. For a lapsed player of old (or somehow having lived life to the maximum, without participating in mass wormicide), W.M.D seems a great time to ninja rope on over and join the creative carnage.
There's one great and one awful thing about Western Press, and both can be summed up in one word: simplicity. The non-complexity of going mano a mano against another gamer, and just having to press a series of buttons as fast as possible is surely fun, despite not being something special… but the excitement cannot exactly last for long - especially when the basic premise is as simplistic as the bonus stages of far older video games.
The irony of this re-release's subtitle is staggering. It's easy to become jaded with the experimental indie scene after seeing so many promising concepts fall flat, but Life Goes On: Done to Death accomplishes the difficult task of being both wonderfully original and fully realised. There's nothing life-changing here, but the healthy mix of personality, accessibility, and challenge makes it pretty much solid from start to finish.
Hitman: Episode 4 - Bangkok isn't bad, and it certainly isn't worse than the "just good" third one, but, it feels so… déjà vu! It's as if IO Interactive took the first episode and gave it a Thai skin, but, while the Parisian level was fun and all, it was just the first, the introduction, the beginning. In other words, while fun in many ways, this episode hasn't… evolved. It offers the same things all over again, when it should not.
There is no doubt that at its best Battleborn is a very fun game. It is a colourful delight and the visuals really pop amongst the chaos of flashing lights, explosions, and movement. The characters are all quite memorable and well designed, with humorous charismatic touches to their personalities. Not to mention it is a fine shooter in its own right. The disappointment is that a lot of the experience lacks a certain polish that would have really taken it to the next level.
LEGO Marvel Avengers for the 3DS is another lacklustre conversion of a superb LEGO game. Hopefully, the rumoured NX hardware will finally give gamers the opportunity to experience the full package on a handheld. To be fair, it's not all bad, and, yes, there are some great stages, and the game is stuffed to bursting with the series signature humour and style. The low price tag helps, but overall this just feels forgettable.
This educational video game is certainly far better than most Sometimes You titles, but it's also an average one. Note, however, that it's not average compared to "the real deal," but to similar material, because there are games, novels, toys, and TV shows that are far better company to a three or five-year-old… It's not like they have a long attention span, after all.
Type:Rider is an enjoyable 2D experience through the history and advent of typography. By combining the haunting and dreary visuals with captivating and clever stage designs, this is a game worth checking out. While not a long game, it can be quickly completed while still providing quite a challenge in terms of puzzle solving. If learning about typography doesn't sound immediately interesting, Type:Rider has surely made it an amusing way to learn and there are some memorable stages that make replaying it for the time trials fun.
Mighty No. 9 fails on so many levels it is tough to forgive. Despite a huge budget, it feels incredibly cheap. The platforming is not smooth, the voice acting is horrendous, the story ham-fisted, the challenge more frustrating than fun, and it's impossible to not be compared to better platformers. It fails to use so many modern conventions, all while still lacking any sort of retro style, leaving it in a weird lurch where it neither has nostalgia going for it, nor any modern sense of fun. Not even fans of the genre will enjoy this as a lesson for what not to do. It is lacking in anything that might redeem it, such as style, or heart, and, unfortunately, tries to slide by mere virtue of a Mega Man-clone and fails even at this task.
The developers technically made a smart design decision by limiting the player's available timeframe to eight in-game days (or a couple of real-world hours), because it facilitates unlocking all the endings through multiple playthroughs. However, those eight days are so incredibly dreary and underwhelming that most players will be immediately discouraged from doing so. Considering that only a new form of disappointment awaits at the end of each path, however, that's probably for the best. The commitment to a unique, indelible atmosphere in Breached is admirable, but it absolutely cannot carry the entire experience, especially not when the rest of that experience is so dry and under-realised.
Puzzle Labyrinth's only redeeming aspect is its idea of combining genres. The presentation is dull, and the direction is too disjointed and arbitrary, which makes the experience fade quickly into a frustrating and unattractive one.
Phantaruk is a mixed bag of both off-putting and exciting ideas. It would be a stretch to say it's one of the scariest games around, but it's definitely not a chump. Any survival horror purist should put up with the myriad of issues, because underneath them is a haunting experience.