DualShockers
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An action-packed and emotionally-charged adventure through a breathtaking period in Japanese history.
Despite a few missed opportunities to really build on the great games it’s inspired by, Atomic Heart surprised me, with a remarkably inventive world that brings to life (the tears apart) the weirdest, wildest visions of Soviet propaganda. This is a game that’s been through over half a decade of development hell, and come out the other side as one of the best first-person shooters this generation.
Persona 4 Golden is a radiant experience that not only builds upon, but perfects the best elements in the series.
An immersive Wizarding World experience that's a bit too light on RPG innovation. Dualshockers was provided a copy by the publisher for review purposes.
Jung’s theory aside, Persona 3 is all about the time we have, how we choose to spend it and who we choose to spend it with. In this light, the game’s true mechanics shine. The relationships that we forge can—and this is probably true in life—affect our ultimate outcome. And time? Well, it’s hard to think of a better way to spend 50+ hours than getting points for scarfing down takoyaki and fighting bad guys.
SpongeBob SquarePants nails the feeling of the source material and it does a great job of replicating the free and fancy fun of those old-school platformers. That being said, it's not a great game, at least if you're over the age of 12. It's lacking in challenge, it's rather short, and there's very little replay value. For the younger players who haven't been jaded by this wonderful and wicked industry, it's a serviceable platformer with authentic voice acting that gives players a chance to be part of their favorite show. For everybody else, it's a short distraction that had the potential to be so much more.
Forspoken is packed with flaws — be they outright missteps or simply middling executions — but there are definitely qualities to this game that can deliver an entertaining and sometimes thrilling experience. I did ultimately enjoy my time with it, all told and considered. There’s interesting lore here, and at times the story approaches compelling, but it was held back so much by odd design choices, an often bland world, and uneven pacing in both the story and moment-to-moment dialogue. On paper, it could and should be great, but nothing quite fits together to make a stronger whole. It’s crammed with so much, and beyond the combat and traversal, the whole experience just winds up feeling like something of a relatively enjoyable mess.
After a dozen or so hours in Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, I can safely say that it's the real McCoy. This is not a watered-down port to give Microsoft an easy first-party Xbox Game Pass release. It's the real deal and as feature complete as the PC edition, which is quite an accomplishment. A myriad of quality-of-life improvements makes the original game, while still a classic, very much redundant. The only reason to keep hold of the original is to preserve those big beautiful boxes PC games used to ship in. We're in a new age now, and Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition is the perfect example of taking an ancient game and giving it just enough love to make it feel almost new, something that many other remasters and re-releases so often miss the mark on.
Dead Space Remake is damn good fun, with interesting ideas and appreciation of the greater franchise that most remakes lack. This isn’t some studio trying to massively reinvent an IP, but working to fit the best pieces together so it can grow anew. It's a fitting tribute to Visceral's best days - maybe not a perfect rendition, but few cover songs ever are.
Fire Emblem Engage is mostly a streamlined experience that gives you a taste of what the series has to offer, but doesn’t showcase its true potential as a strategy game. It lacks genuine innovation, and doesn’t quite meet the standards set by previous entries or establish a challenging and balanced system that reflects Fire Emblem's core identity.
GRID Legends is a great game. GRID Legends for Meta Quest is not. I'm impressed that Codemasters managed to cram a full console racing game into a VR headset, but the compromises required to do so are too many. For racing fans waiting for a decent native Quest racer, this unfortunately isn't it.
Toy Soldiers HD is a fantastic tower defense game that fans of the genre should definitely play. It's easy to learn, hard to master, and there's a ton of replayability with the lengthy campaign, the extra levels, collectibles, achievements, and survival modes, which I've spent a lot of time playing. The controls for vehicles can be a bit stiff and the lack of co-op multiplayer is a big disappointment, but given how few decent tower-defense games there are on console, it's easy to overlook the very few shortcomings Toy Soldiers HD brings to the table. Now, when are we getting Toy Soldiers Cold War?
Overall, this DLC takes everything that made the base game of Vampire Survivors such a surprise success story and gives you more of the same, but with a more involved map and a theme to bring the whole thing together. If you're one of the many who has been enthralled with the allure of Vampire Survivors, you're going to appreciate the additional content that poncle has thrown in here, and with a price point set at less than $2.00, there's very little reason for any fan to stay away.
If you're a PS Plus Premium subscriber, there's no question that you should download and play Ridge Racer 2. It's simple, fast, and fun, and in the current climate of live services and stupid dancing emotes, there's no racing game quite like it anymore. For a quick nostalgia fix it's highly recommended, and who knows, maybe it's just a toe in the water for Bandai Namco to gauge interest for a potential Ridge Racer revival? Heck, there's the next game's title right there: Ridge Racer Revival. Fingers crossed...
As far as simulators go, it's not the worst. To the game's credit, it does offer the dull, mundane day-to-day routine that a lot of actual police officers call a career. If you want to spend hours writing tickets and slowly progressing in a meaningless career in law enforcement, you can do it here without the risk of being vilified on social media. But it could have been so much more had the systems in play been deeper and more robust, not to mention, fun. Instead, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers is a bit of a buggy mess that feels half-baked and not ready for patrol just yet. Back to the academy with this one.
It’s a little disappointing, and really quite surprising, that River City Girls 2 shows very little impetus to improve on its promising predecessor. The girls have still definitely ‘got it,’ and still make this colourful and characterful journey worth it through some rough patches, but there’s a little too much reliance on the assets of the original to make it feel worth the rather steep asking price. The original game made a fan of me, while the sequel just about manages to sustain my loyalty, though that will definitely be affected by how WayForward deal with its woeful frame rate issue in the coming weeks.
In a world filled to the brim with terrible Warhammer 40K games, the last thing we need is terrible DLC that diminishes the handful of decent titles set in this marvelous universe. Normally, I wouldn’t mind it too much, but the game already had a bad – and frankly, predatory – DLC in the form of the Castellan Champion Upgrade Pack. Duty Eternal certainly brings a lot more to the table, which only serves to highlight how egregiously overpriced the first DLC is, but it’s only a small step in the right direction. If Complex Games really wants players to keep coming back to Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters, they need to do a lot better than Duty Eternal. This one feels more like Doody Eternal.
Beyond that though, the only thing Blacktail has against it is that it calls for patient, curious players. If you’re the sort who insists on only following a dotted line and ignoring everything off to the sides, you’ll miss out on some of the best moments in Blacktail, like saving a mushroom spymaster’s best agent, or spelunking through gorgeously lit caverns. Blacktail is a game to be savored, peeling away its world a little more at a time. If you meet it halfway, you’ll be left with a breath of fresh air rarely seen in the industry these days: a well paced game that only tries to be what it wants to be and never compromises that vision. A beautiful, touching piece of work that’s bound to stick with you long after you finish it, Blacktail is a world worth getting lost in.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Midnight Suns. It's Marvel meets XCOM meets Fire Emblem, which isn't something I knew I wanted, but now I have it, I want the hell out of it. Firaxis deserve a lot of respect for taking risks and trying something new, especially with such a high-profile property. The dialogue and a few technical hiccups mean Midnight Suns doesn't quite stick the landing, but the rock-solid core gameplay and fun character moments more than makeup for it.
A bland sad protagonist with all the charisma of a rock with a frowny face, a mystery box-style narrative that only ends with more mystery boxes, a combat system that wants to be multiple entirely different games. The Callisto Protocol might function, and it’ll certainly have its launch issues patched out in due time, but in no way can I recommend it to anyone but the most morbidly curious. Everything was stacked in this game’s favor, and it still wasn’t enough. We didn’t need Dead Space 2.0 - we just needed a cohesive, focused game. Instead, it's an oddly soulless concoction of unfocused ambitions, poor planning, and inconceivably amateurish design. Whether you're winning or losing, Callisto Protocol never feels right.