Gamer Escape
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Despite some weird framerate issues during cutscenes in both games, Bayonetta and Vanquish are both well worth your time (although I’d personally lean toward Bayonetta more if I was forced to pick between the two). If you don’t mind the occasional difficulty spike, and especially if you’ve never played either title before, this dual-pack release is definitely worth picking up.
If you like the trailer, you are almost certainly going to like this game. If you like the concepts, you are almost certainly going to like this game. It knows what it wants to be and it succeeds marvelously at it. And at the end of the day, I like this game, so even with its flaws, I can’t help but feel that it deserves plenty of love for just being dang fun in exactly the way it wants.
Solar Panic: Utter Distress feels like it wants to be The Stanley Parable for the Rick and Morty generation but it comes across more as a desperate attempt to get a laugh no matter how random and ridiculous you need to get.
On the one hand, I feel like Kunai kind of missed its mark. The game is definitely trying to be something different and set itself apart, but there are just enough pain points that it’s hard to think it really works. There’s a lot of effort to keep you engaged and offer a slight twist on the formula, but most of those twists come off as broadly neutral.
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics brings back a beloved favorite in a reimagined way while also introducing a classic to a new audience. It celebrates the creative creatures we were introduced to in the Netflix series without feeling like a product-placement. If you’re looking for an introduction into tactics-style games and already love the world of The Dark Crystal this game is definitely worth checking out.
If you want to play a non-serious “simulator,” go play Goat Simulator. As crazy as that game is, you can actually get some entertainment out of it, and it somehow comes closer to simulating what being a goat might be like than this game comes to actually simulating speaking.
The problem is, everything here has been done before, and better. It does feel like Toge Productions wanted to craft a homage to Valhalla, but doing so puts them right up against a cult classic. I truly think that they should have done more to differentiate themselves, to stand out more in this burgeoning genre. I do believe that Coffee Talk is a game worth playing, but it doesn’t quite live up to the shadow cast over it.
Little nitpicks aside, I love this game. It juggles a bunch of interconnected systems well, combined with a light-hearted sense of humor and plenty of little bits of polish here and there that really show the love the developers put into the game.
At $14.99 it’s priced about right (although it’s a bit short at three hours to complete), and the game isn’t offensive, it’s just that there’s so much better available now in virtual reality, and things in Eclipse that would have been impressive at the time are fairly standard now.
M2 has proven time and again that they know what they’re doing with the games that they rework, and this port of Shinobi is no different. This is a solid version of the game that is appropriately priced and fits right in with the Switch’s library and on-the-go nature.
Its weaknesses are there, but they didn’t change the genuine joy and energy that the game oozes – and when one of my big complaints about a game is “I want freedom to play more of it,” it usually means the core game is pretty fun.
On the whole, this game is a case study for how the small details truly make the game. It hits all the broad strokes well, and it has a solid foundation. With more polish, I would genuinely call this a good game. Unfortunately, as it is, it just comes across as a jumbled mess that slingshots between unfair and trivial, without enough fluff to make up for it.
Orangeblood is a game of half measures. It feels like it’s afraid of taking its bold style all the way, and the game suffers for it. While it did catch my attention at PAX West last year, actually sitting down with the full release was a disappointing experience.
Darksiders: Genesis is every bit a Darksiders game as the ones that came before it. The addition of Strife is employed in such a way that it feels natural, rather than forced, and showcases the developer’s ability to build upon the series’ lore instead of ret-conning any of it.
Despite all of those couple-thousand-words up there, I think on some level that I kind of hit this one right when I started out. It’s a Touhou kart racer. For the people who dearly want a Touhou kart racer, this provides exactly that, and the reality is that the only really big criticism that’s actually crippling is the game’s length. Everything else winds up landing at the point that this is a game without Mario Kart money or polish trying to be Mario Kart.
Despite those issues, though, Virgo Vs The Zodiac is still a solid experience, and a great JRPG that just popped up out of nowhere at the end of the year. If you’re looking for something to play through during the holidays, this is a title definitely worth considering.
Overall, I can see why this game continues to receive updates and ports even eight years after its original release. Jamestown+ is an incredibly well-polished and engaging experience, offering up both a great entry point to the bullet hell genre and a satisfying challenge to veterans.
There’s a bit of polish it can use here and there, but it’s certainly one of the better visual novels I’ve played this year.
It may not offer the twitchest of gameplay, but getting past some antiquated aspects will yield an enjoyable time.
Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, bugs or shoddy graphics be damned. But not this time. SGWC is a mess from top to bottom, and even its moments of enjoyment are not worth the head-spinning number of missteps.