VGChartz's Reviews
Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn takes what was effective and inventive about the original — weapon upgrades, vertical level design, and local multiplayer — and enhances it significantly with new moves, additional weapons, more complex level designs, and lavish sprite work. Only a few small faults keep it from greatness.
The well-weathered gamer can easily spot its debt to Counter-Strike and Overwatch, but that shouldn't dismiss how those mechanical & aesthetic philosophies succinctly fuse together through Riot's own due diligence. As the saying almost goes: it's more than the sum of its plagiarized parts.
Mika and the Witch's Mountain is a cozy, comforting little adventure. It benefits from an interesting premise, breezy mechanics, some fanciful tunes, and a rewarding gameplay loop that pushes you forward. Its biggest problem is that it feels unfinished; the story and character relationships don't have enough time to mature, and the mechanics don't have sufficient room to evolve.
Natsu-Mon might not be the best game of the year, but it's destined to be one of the most memorable and affecting. Its emergent storytelling helps you feel like the author of your own adventure. Its seamless open world provides an exciting sense of discovery. And its many quests and quest-givers will keep you engaged for over two dozen hours.
Jordan Mochi's singular vision can occasionally get ensnared by questionable design choices, but it's still a ride easily worth volunteering your time and money to experience.
While a satisfying audio-visual experience, SCHiM's design is but a shadow of its true potential.
While CLeM falls short of wowing you in wild narrative complexity or visual fidelity, Mango Protocol nevertheless succeeds through exact pacing and creative puzzle design.
It starts off rocky, but improving the baseline stats of your characters really aids Fallen Leaf in becoming much more enjoyable - to such an extent that, in spite of some quirks and irritations, it will remain in my retro-title rotation for quite some time.
Occasional missteps aside, Richard Hogg & Hollow Ponds' latest experience succeeds by treating you like its plethora of colorful creatures: warmly coaxing you to stay as long as you wish.
Stale, repetitive, and unengaging would be the first adjectives that come to mind for Aerial_Knight's latest, were it not also buggy and unfinished.
Volgarr the Viking II is a throwback title, for better or worse. On the positive side, it deploys its simple control scheme to maximum effect, leverages several interesting platforming ideas, and provides hours of challenging gameplay that will test your reflexes and resolve. On the negative side, its punishing nature, overlong levels, and general opacity can prove more frustrating than rewarding.
Even after tempering expectations for a modest indie title, Lifeless Moon runs dangerously low on oxygen while playing and no useful reserves are found while watching.
Even with a few underdeveloped components, Arranger is very much like its heroine Jemma: charming and hard to ignore.
While I can't shake off the feeling that Zenless Zone Zero suffers from a certain lack of investment, I can't see myself dropping the game either, if this initial version is representative of what awaits in future updates.
While the social component of the game is strong, the micro challenges that underpin it are ultimately too insignificant to stand the test of time.
While this current-gen version's polishes don't remove design annoyances endemic to most TellTale-esque adventures, Under the Skin is nevertheless an enthralling noir yarn worth unspooling.
Earth Defense Force 6 is more of the same, in the best way possible. It can get tedious at times, and it looks more like a PS3 game than a PS5 game, but it delivers all the chills, thrills, and spills you'd expect from the franchise.
The team's reputation in visual design and soundtrack are supplemented by a tautened horror thriller that's oftentimes engaging to watch; however, it's degraded by shallow mechanics that are typically unrewarding to play. Like oil and water, there's an incongruous mixture of creativity within its setting (both spoken and unspoken) and utter predictability within its foundation. Genre fans can treat it like oil spill remediation, mentally separating the two enough to at least appreciate its better qualities.
Parasol Stars is a hidden gem in both the Bubble Bobble franchise and the PC Engine library. It boasts lovely graphics, high replay value, and a surprisingly deep scoring system. Its only drawbacks: a short running time, two-player multiplayer that can feel clumsy at times, and a nasty bug unique to this modern port. Once the patch is live, definitely consider picking this one up.
The good news: Ingame Studios is giving out Cagnali's Order for free (for a limited time). The bad news: neither this expansion nor the main game are worth your time.