Niche Gamer
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Ultimately, Valhalla Hills fails to be an engaging city builder, and at best is a mediocre casual game better suited for mobile devices. Players who want a fast-paced and casual city builder might be this game’s niche audience and will enjoy it; but I doubt a majority of players will find anything in Valhalla Hills that isn’t done better somewhere else.
It is one of the great lies of our times that the shoddy quality added “charm” to Deadly Premonition. If Swery could choose to release Deadly Premonition 2 flawlessly optimized, he would. It is extremely remote that anyone would purposefully intend to release a broken product.
At that stage it was looking at around a 7/10 from me. Certainly room for improvement, but there is the core foundation of a decent enough digital adaptation of an awesome board game.
If Element Space worked as intended, it would be a fairly bland but otherwise playable tactical RPG. You know, one of those games that you might pick up because its 75% off on Steam. A game that you wouldn’t quite call “good,” but it isn’t so bad that you’d go through the trouble of asking Father Gaben for a refund. Unfortunately, “doesn’t work as intended” is the definition of “normal” for Element Space.
Stygian ultimately makes for an unfinished, buggy, disjointed, and confusing game. The madness suffered playing isn’t worth the time. Life was better before The Reign of the Old Ones.
Wolf Brew Games have acknowledged the glaring flaws and bugs reported in the forums, and they've promised to release an update fixing them. However, my review and judgment cannot be based on promises, and until a fix is released, my score will stand.
Anyway, if you are a horror junkie you will probably find something to enjoy here and I would recommend it for the thrill of the initial level alone if you are a fan of the genre. Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing yourself a disservice by skipping this one. I'm not going to outright not recommend it, by all means, try it out yourself if you want.
Hopefully Extremely Powerful Capybaras serves as a cautionary tale for developers who want to hit that 1.0 release as soon as possible. There’s no shame in publishing an Early Access game, in fact, it gives you a lot more leniency that a full release wouldn’t have otherwise.
This could have been like a Sonic Mania, but for Alex Kidd; instead of a celebration of what made Alex so great, this feels like a eulogy of why he died. The original game is borderline a blank canvas for potential, almost anything could have been done. But other than the beautiful pixel art, it is the same.
Considering the fact that Book of Heroes doesn’t even feature a real story or coherent character progression, then I don’t think that even die-hard fans of The Dark Eye will really enjoy it. I don’t know who this game is supposed to be aimed at, but for me it was one of the most boring RPG experiences I’ve had in a long time, and that’s before even getting into all the bugs and genuinely awful design decisions.
Highwater is not much of a strategy RPG and its story is boring. The adventure game elements are hopelessly bare and the battles are too basic to get any stimuli. It won’t interest children due to the lethargic gameplay and bleak premise, and older gamers will be desperately scraping for substance. It is a slow-moving and short game that looks and sounds kind of neat but is utterly lacking in every way imaginable.
Combat within the game feels unsatisfying with a limit to the abilities. The jokes within are dated and feels like an AI wrote them after being fed information about South Park. Arguably, the only fight we enjoyed with the game was the final fight and that was because it broke the mold the game had established in the prior chapters.
There’s undeniably an intriguing concept at the heart of War Hospital. The potential for a gripping and stressful experience set amidst the chaos of a World War I field hospital is undeniable. Unfortunately, the execution veers into frustrating territory, where the stress stems from technical hiccups and clunky mechanics, rather than the game’s intended thematic weight.
Outside of length, poorly executed jokes, and a morality virtue signaling campaign, the game’s DLC fails to reacquaint players with the game’s mechanics. In the first few minutes, you will have to figure out how to play again or die trying.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is probably the most appropriately named game in the series because you thought you were getting a full story, but really all you’re getting is another standalone Assassin’s Creed Valhalla DLC pack with a $50 price tag.
Each year, I want to give Madden a chance and the benefit of the doubt. Each year since 2014 it has continued to disappoint me and feels like it is only getting worse. The game has become stagnant and outside of updated rosters and minor improvements to the graphics, Madden has done the bare minimum to stay relevant. Madden 24 tries to revitalize the franchise with a new precision throwing system, new celebrations, cross-platform gameplay, and the return of the training camp minigames, but at the end of the day, it is EA Sports putting a fresh coat of paint on something and calling it new.
At the end of the day, the game’s poor gameplay and dragging dialog outweigh the game’s narrative. If you are looking for a vampire tale or want to revisit the game, it would be better to watch a YouTube playthrough than spend your time or money on this game. For the game itself, we give it a 4; if we were to doc points for censorship, we’d drop it to a 3 maybe a 2.
This is not a game that comes recommended for the faint of heart or for anyone who desires a polished or thoughtfully designed JRPG. At the very least, Mugen Souls is interesting and has a lot of weird ideas that are worth experiencing. The ramshackle build of the game is almost impressive that it is a product from an established industry developer.
Mato: Anomalies is a very flawed RPG that tried. It had big ideas in its story but god bless anyone who is fat-brained enough to understand it. The gameplay has small sparks of creativity, but it is lost under the woefully low-budget presentation.
Volition tried so hard to move away from its edgy past and create a “smart” game with “biting” social commentary and humor but ended up creating a high-school-tier world that is doomed to fail. While I do not feel like this game is soulless per se, I do feel like anyone who worked on this game who has a soul should feel guilt over driving that final nail into the coffin of the Saints Row franchise. The funniest joke about Saints Row is that Epic was actually willing to pay money to make it an Epic Game Store exclusive.