Marooners' Rock
HomepageMarooners' Rock's Reviews
Overall, I recommend Castlevania Requiem if for no other reason than to play Symphony of the Night so you can understand how the Metroidvania genre truly came to light. Rondo is trash, but the platinum wasn’t all that hard so if you’re a completionist, this is an enjoyable collection to platinum.
This is one of the most realized open worlds ever created in a game and Origins is easily a Game of the Year contender. If someone told me that at the beginning of 2017, I would’ve laughed in their faces and gone to play Black Flag again. Oh yeah…and players can pet cats.
At the end of the day, Way Forward took a fairly boring contract deal and put their golden seal on it. This proves that when it comes to using a franchise in bold new ways, Way Forward is ahead of the game.
Players preferring heavier realism in their simulated helicopters may want to give this game a pass, and stick to combat helicopter offerings in the DCS family instead.
Earth Atlantis has some potential to be a unique shooter, but unfortunately there just isn’t enough there to keep players engaged.
If you were a fan of The Evil Within, you will enjoy The Evil Within 2. Scares are scarier, disturbing imagery is more disturbing, and, overall, the game builds on what was already established in the first one. It’s not a perfect game, but for being the Halloween season it’s the perfect game to help set a spooky mood.
Playing through A Hat in Time was time spent with a broad smile and a belly full of chuckles. It was one of the most wholesome gaming experiences I’ve had in years, recapturing that childhood wonder and pure enjoyment of playing games.
FIFA 18 is a great follow-up to last year’s game, adding and changing just enough to feel worth the purchase with the blemishes being slight enough to be mostly overlooked.
As a fan of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online was worth playing. It is always enjoyable to see some of your favorite characters and this time around you get to pair the four CPUs up with their sisters as well as alternate versions of their goddess forms.
Axiom Verge is a great game and an even greater accomplishment by a very talented developer. While some of the world design and backtracking issues caused some frustrations, I loved my time in this bio-mechanical world.
Thimbleweed Park is a great game from one of the masters of the genre and it deserves a place in your library if you have any fondness of those older titles or love stories and puzzle solving. While the faithful recreation of a point-and-click-style game may have been a brought forward some of the baggage of the past, the good shines through and through.
A lot of these more subtle elements were lost in Samus Returns, making the experience feel less weighted than that early Game Boy title. Aside from that though, Samus Returns is a must have on the 3DS, one that’s filled with challenge and truly epic moments.
At only $20, this game is an absolute gem. We have seen some new platformers come out that attempt to capture the retro feel using 8-bit graphics, but StudioMDHR take it to a whole new level with Cuphead.
In all, Planet of the Eyes is by all accounts a carefully crafted game. It’s clear that the developers put a lot of time and thought into everything from the art, to the narration, to the gameplay. But its greatest shortcoming is that it’s not a longer game. The game provides a satisfying experience overall, but not the emotional resonance. At the same time, however, there is beauty in its subtle narrative. How you feel about the game will come down to this: if you are a novel-person or a short story-person.
Chloe is me. She’s you. She’s so many other teens of today and throughout time. She is one of the most fully-realized characters in modern video games, and I can’t wait to see what the next episode has in store for her and Rachel.
Auto Age: Standoff does an excellent job of fusing retro art and music with a modern take on the vehicle brawler game. While a lacking single-player element limits its appeal, the inclusion of bots and local split-screen help ensure that the game has legs beyond the risk of empty online servers.
Unfortunately, in its current state, I cannot recommend Forma.8 to anyone, even the most hungry fans of the Metroidvania genre. There are better games in that genre that explore similar feelings of isolation and there are better games on Switch that evoke that nostalgic feeling of older systems.
This series may not fully lived up to it’s potential yet, and that’s completely fine. I am happy with what we have been given. I’m still having fun, I’m still addicted, and I’m ready to see what this series can achieve in this 10 Year Plan that Bungie has let us know about.
Not only does it feel better, personally, but with the new features added I can say that The Metronomicon: Slay the Dance Floor has a bright, rave-colored future ahead of it. If you like rhythm games but don’t want clunky instruments or pads, this is the game for you.
I can only hope this relationship with Nintendo and Ubisoft continues, because aside from Breath of the Wild, Mario + Rabbids is the best game on the Switch.