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Still, though, there are plenty of opportunities where you'll enjoy this game. With friends it's a blast, probably even better while drunk. That sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise. I'm not. It's the perfect little party game for you to crack open when you've got 15 minutes to kill pre-gaming or just fancy an LSD-inspired palette-cleanser. What it isn't is a game that you'll sink hours and hours into, or one that will build up a hugely popular competitive scene that breaks the bank all around the world. This isn't that game, which is fine. Not every game can be a Rocket League-style success. This is Disco Dodgeball Remix, a slice of silly fun – even if there isn't much of it to go around.
If only that last "generally" weren't needed, it would be right up there with the best of them.
Megadimension Neptunia VIIR is recommended for fans of the original. But tacked-on VR scenes won't do much for those looking for new and exciting experiences. The new tweaks to some systems help to give players more tactical options, but this is essentially the same game that launched in 2016, in a prettier package. For the diehard Neptunia fanatics, that'll be all they need to buy in. However, for $20 less, the original release is available sans VR play and without slight graphics upgrades.
Trailblazers certainly paints its own trail in the arcade racing genre, something we don't really see very often. Splitscreen support for up to four players is ambitious as well. An actual story mode with an interesting cast of characters provides a bit of extra, unexpected entertainment, as well. Online may be a ghost town, as with many smaller releases, but couch co-op/competition is where the most fun is sure to be had. A lack of arcade racing features, such as powerups, means that it leans heavily on its paint theme, which may bore some after a bit. But for a quick splitscreen showdown, Trailblazers is easy to get into and not too heavy on the wallet at around $30 USD.
Taken as a complete content drop, Destiny 2: Warmind, Season 3 content, and update 1.2.0 have been enough to get me playing Destiny 2 actively again and loving every moment. The new Mars patrol space is bigger and more varied than I anticipated, with plenty of secrets to keep me busy. While the brief campaign didn't do much to impress, Bungie managed to give plenty of reasons for players to log back in and continue playing. Warmind is the next step in the right direction on an ever-evolving journey.With the flight path corrected, I'm confident in Bungie's ability to really shake things up with the September expansion/update, in order to make Destiny 2 a game that players can really love again.
After the strong start with The Mad Ones, I can't help but feel disappointed with Hide and Seek.
Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is probably a safe pick up for diehard fans, a gamble for those with a little bit of familiarity like myself, and a dangerous choice for anyone outside of those two categories. For a title based on a world filled with magic, the game itself has very little of it to be found.
Most otome visual novels are a dime a dozen, and they're usually a guilty pleasure. Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly stands above the rest with its unpredictable, deep mystery and its pathways to the various endings. If you're looking for an atypical otome, especially one where the romantic endings aren't always the happiest, then you owe it to yourself curl up into your couch with this one.
I really like the story that Omensight sets out to tell, but I really wish that it was more fun to actually play. The characters and learning about their motivations made it worth seeing the game to its conclusion, but a finicky fixed camera and somewhat lacking gameplay made my playthrough less satisfying than it should have been.
Engaging puzzles and colorful personalities set to a negative landscape make Forgotton Anne a delightful tale that is accessible to anyone vaguely interested in the genre.
On the surface, Super Mega Baseball 2 looks like a pretty face that lacks the substance necessary to have any sort of staying power. On closer examination, however, the depth of the mechanics provide a far more gratifying gameplay than would be expected. Slap an amusing layer of over-the-top animations on top of a roster of cartoonishly disarming characters, and the result is glorious throwback to the yesteryear of sports gaming. Being a filthy casual has never been so appealing.
Killing Floor: Incursion is perhaps everything you might expect from a first-person zombie shooter in VR. It checks all of the boxes, sometimes to its own detriment. While billed as a shooter, the guns are unwieldy in the most frantic of situations, which will see players bringing a knife to a Zed fight. Incursion isn't the kind of VR experience that's a must-play showcase of the best of virtual reality. It sits firmly in the realm of expected fare, armed with a few gimmicks that keep it entertaining. Longevity is maintained through cooperative play with friends and the ability to slap mutant zombies in the face with their friend's dismembered arm. Despite its problems, that's not really the type of experience I can say no to.
Tacoma‘s simple premise expands into something much larger, and it invites each of us to examine what it means to be human, and how we might pretend to be if we can't actually achieve that. There's a game there, underneath the questions it's asking, and it's a wonderful, technologically sound port. I'm not sure what else needs to be said about the achievement of Tacoma, because so many smart people have already discussed it at length when it was released on PC in 2017. All I can say is that is has aged well, attacks concepts like human will and capitalism on angles that seem fresh in 2018, and remains a must play for those willing to set aside a few hours of their time to experience some very fine, challenging work within the video game medium.
I had a lot of fun with Death Road to Canada. The title can really sink its zombie teeth into you, inviting you to do just one more playthrough before calling it quits. Everything about the package comes together well. Even though the developers could have taken shortcuts and brushed issues aside as nostalgia for The Oregon Trail, they instead gave us a game that invokes that nostalgia while improving upon the old formula.
The ideas on show in AO International Tennis do suggest that with the bugs ironed out and a little more development time put into livening things up a bit in career mode, it could be a contender. The stamina and timing systems are enough to differentiate the game from the slew of tennis titles that have come before it and are undoubtedly good ideas. Ultimately though, the poor execution and the cracks in the gameplay cause this wildcard entry to fall well short of being a grand slam effort.
Dragon's Crown Pro is that same Dragon's Crown we all loved and remember from 2013, it's just shinier, prettier, and on the latest console. If you've already played it to completion (or simply to death) on other platforms, there's very little reason to come back for a second purchase.
Guns of Icarus Alliance will appeal to those who love working on teams. A good selection of ammunition and ability modifiers can help to craft a personalized loadout, even if the class selection of players feels limited. While the presentation is a bit generic, it will please steampunk fans. A metagame that runs constantly helps to make even a small match feel like part of something bigger. Still, a small selection of character classes makes one wonder what else could be done with the fantastic idea of battleships in the air, and an already small player population might mean there won't be many battles in just a few months' time. At just $14.99 USD, however, Guns of Icarus Alliance is recommended for those who want a different kind of co-op experience.
All that said, there's a fun and entertaining game here. Despite its problems, I walked the scorching sands again and again until I reached the center of the city and completed the game (yes, I did end up using some blessings and portals to do it). City of Brass is a really fun first-person roguelike, but the die-rinse-repeat formula wears thin far more quickly than it should. There's simply not much more to do or see once you've played for a few hours or reached the end. Combat remains largely the same simple fare throughout, apart from intense boss encounters that account for a comparatively small portion of the game. Upgrades earned over time and different ability setups through the genies offer the promise of varied gameplay, but City of Brass does little to entice the repetitive play that the genie's curse asks of you.
From an accessibility standpoint, however, HIVE: Altenum Wars does little to make the player feel welcome, and even less still to reward their perseverance in staying. It feels very much like an alpha gameplay demo for a game years down the pipeline. HIVE is a shooter that misses the mark almost entirely, but does, at the very least, provide a very solid foundation upon which Catness Games could build something truly special with more time spent iterating and refining the process.
Dead Secret works as a mobile VR game, but its simplistic roots are painfully obvious on the PlayStation. The ability to play the game on a TV without a headset feels like a tacked on addition that wasn't optimized. Using PSVR, Dead Secret certainly has its frightful moments, and the story is intriguing enough to drive a player through to the end, but with all the great PSVR games out now, Dead Secret feels like a dud on the platform. It takes more than an intriguing story to make a great VR experience. While I had a fun rifling through Dead Secret's mysteries and more than once found myself spooked, it's not an experience I have a desire to play again or showcase on my headset.