AusGamers's Reviews
Enemies spawn in unpredictable ways, and for what it thinks it's worth, Returnal tries to keep you guessing, on your toes, and Eveready -- like the battery.
In many ways it's like an overblown action movie from the 1980s or early part of the 1990s, but even here it doles out the cheese without its own identity.
But looking past those things, and into the vale reveals a game bucking trends and showcasing what's truly capable in our medium. A bigger budget, more player-agency and a more expansive world are all that's holding this back from being groundbreaking. And a lot of learnings will be taken from this latest outing.
In that the look and feel isn't merely an exercise in style, but instead a vibrant emissive display of sights and sounds that leads to a world full of detail, silicon, and soul.
And so it was with gusto I took on the opportunity to crank up my big-person points by reviewing <b>Monster Truck Championship</b> from developer <b>Teyon</b> and publishers <b>BIGBEN INTERACTIVE</b> and <b>Nacon</b>.
The co-op action here is memorable, ambitious, and quite unlike anything we’ve played in a while.
com/games/monster-hunter-generations-ultimate/review/" target="_blank">Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate</a>, that felt like a great send off to the tried and true formula of old -- a tribute worthy of a salute, neatly wrapped flag, and solitary tear.
As you level up and progress, new jobs open up, but it's not a tacked-on system, choosing jobs changes the game's makeup and that of your party, so simply unlocking a new job doesn't necessarily mean you assign someone to it.
Being placed in a world akin to a setting kids might be whisked away to if they were transported to a nightmarish version of their own imagination -- by that interdimensional beast that lives underneath their floorbirds -- it's, yeah, terrifying.
It's also as strange as Mario's team-up with a sentient hat that for some reason lets him Being John Malkovich a dinosaur.
As Faraday, the setup is simple, you're a lone shipwreck survivor left to pick up the pieces, rescue those lost or trapped, and lead them through a fantastical world. Rebuild.
Sometimes that focus is nudged in one direction via shifting screen real-estate.
After 60-hours of walking the streets, driving through the Badlands, and diving through the wreckage of a now underwater part of Pacifica, that sense of awe, scale, and detail never really went away. That said there were more than a few momentary stutters, Relic Malfunctions, whenever a character did something glitchy or the AI behaved in such a way as to remove all pretense of that title. Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Nope.
And an adventure starring a mortal out of their depth in the land of gods and monsters and thick Greek accents.
That said, Spidey fans will dig it. Sony fanpeeps will sing its praises from Manhattan rooftops and it fills a gap. There’s just a question of “is it enough?” and even as a massive comic book geek and lover of all things wall-crawling, I’d have waited another six months for a more fleshed-out experience, and one that doesn’t overly mimic the foundation of its origins. Miles might learn from Peter, and Peter might be the ‘A’ Spider-Man, but that doesn’t need to mean Miles lives exclusively in his design shadow.
In the end Age of Calamity is more Breath of the Wild than Dynasty Warriors, and I’ve been purposely vague when it comes to the storyline and specific quests for good reason. Although they were far and few-between in Breath of the Wild, when you did get the ol’ cinematic it was pretty special. In Age of Calamity you have more of these, both in quantity and in terms of high quality production values. To the point where you can’t wait to see what happens next.
And the best Kaizo creators also deepen their own understanding as they then attempt to skewer their own established patterns.
Despite that less than acceptable end game experience, I can still recognise the glimmer of potential in Godfall. For a first outing, Counterplay has achieved something that's undeniably striking in the visuals department, though that's marred by sameiness and the odd, isolated framerate hitch. We also have an addictive loot game and a surprisingly deep RPG upgrade system here, though it's hamstrung by fisticuffs that don't nail down those all important fundamentals.
Spoiler alert - it gets better.
Talk about ushering in a next-generation