Gamer Escape
HomepageGamer Escape's Reviews
...this is the first to commit the most cardinal sin of gaming: I was bored to tears. The game several hours in is fundamentally the same as the game five minutes in, and there’s not even the spectacle of new discovery to entice me onward.
Every minute I played this game was just a reminder that I still need to play through the updated classic, Metroid Prime Remastered (I’ve just been too busy!). While I simply can’t recommend this game even to the most forgiving fans of the genre it so badly wants to be a part of, if you want to put “metroidvania” and “first-person” together, there really is nothing better than the Metroid Prime series. Go play those instead of this.
Lord of the Rings: Gollum struggles under its own weight from the word go. Any benefit from a grimmer, more unvarnished look at the characters of Middle-earth from an atypical perspective is immediately undercut by a bevy of technical issues, clunky controls, unexciting game design, and stilted presentation at constant odds with the player.
What else is there to say? I guess the game works, with little to no bugs, which is good, at least that aspect is polished. But there’s little else good I can say about it. At best it’s a very boring platformer with no charm or substance, and at worst it’s throw-down-your-controller frustrating. The enemies are sparse and boring, and it takes too long before you gain new abilities that would give any depth whatsoever to the game. Unfortunately, I really find myself unable to come up with a reason to recommend this to anyone.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve played a truly bad game, and unfortunately, Gungrave G.O.R.E falls into that category. The further I progressed through the game, the less I wanted to play it. That’s not something I’ve found myself feeling in years, and that’s saying something. For as much as I wanted this to succeed, every attempt at grasping for a modicum of decent gameplay was met with the most tedium I’ve met in a game this year. It feels like a game defrosted from 2005, and not in a good way.
The game is wonderful artistically, but it just has far too many problems right now to recommend. The developers, Gato Studio, seem to recognize this and are preparing updates, but once again I find myself reminding game studios how badly things can go if you release something before it is ready. It is really hard to gain back the trust of players after you lose it.
It’s difficult to recommend on a story basis thanks to its generic narrative, and even harder to recommend on a gameplay basis thanks to the slew of glitches, loose controls, and boring progression. With more time and refinement, Blackwind could very well have been an enjoyable experience, but alas, it didn’t seem to be written in the stars.
In spite of a unique aesthetic and passable puzzles, Tandem: A Tale of Shadows struggles to keep itself exciting. The almost complete lack of narrative thrust and droning gameplay progression drag it down from the moment it begins, and its failure to capitalize on its more attention-grabbing elements guarantees a disappointing experience out of a game that could have easily been more.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Foreclosed is a complete waste of effort to play. It’s clear the developers were trying to make something cool here, but whether you’re looking for a third person shooter, a cyberpunk game, or a story-heavy game, your time would almost assuredly be better spent elsewhere. Every system presented to the player works on a functional level, but their implementation simply isn’t up to par with what’s required to make an engaging video game—even one that’s only about four hours long—and this culminates in an experience that ends up being more half-baked than hard-boiled.
Overall, Clea goes for an unsettling style of horror and, at least for me, completely fails. The atmosphere never really “lands,” enemies are more frustrating than frightening, and I really just struggled to find the desire to even play this game.
Kandagawa Jet Girls completely misses the marks that this niche expects from its games. Even if the toned down fanservice is a ploy to bring in more general gamers, the weak racing mechanics aren’t going to keep them around for long. Give this one a pass.
Overall, Milky Way Prince feels like an art piece. An outlet for Redaelli to tell his story, and craft it such a way to communicate his feelings and experiences to the player. In its visual design, this work succeeds in spades. As a video game and visual novel, though, the full experience is weak. I was unable to connect to the story of Nuki and Sune, and the writing didn’t seem to want me to.
It’s clear [Super Sexy Software] tried. I love the art direction, they tried to pull off something more original towards the end, and the little optional things you can interact with are fun and whimsical. I’d love to see where they go in the future, but I cannot deny that this is a fairly flawed title.
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.
If plans to add more songs to the game pan out, and they’re released for free, Hatsune Miku VR might be worth a look in the future, if only for hardcore Vocaloid fans. As it stands right now, for both rhythm gamers and Miku aficionados, this game really isn’t worth your time or money.
[...]I cannot recommend playing the Switch port, especially if you have any vision issues that may prevent your ability to read the screen properly. Do yourself a favor and download this mysterious story on your phone instead.
I really don’t know who this game is for, aside from already devoted fans of the franchise. I’m sure there are plenty of Utawarerumono fans out there, but this game didn’t seem to make any attempt at pulling in new ones.
This game is of a genre that is very popular in Japan, with many legitimate good games that don’t come Stateside, but whether you live in Japan or not, I think you have far better options than this.
As I said before, if you have no experience with the Corpse Party franchise, there’s nothing to debate here – do not play this game. For fans of the series, though, I still don’t think I’d recommend this game. Between the weak storytelling and pointless nature of the narrative, I can’t say that it’s worth your time.
I think I’d be less chaffed by the lack of any world building if the game didn’t start off by making me feel like there would be more in that aspect. Why have a talking sword that just delivers the same 3 or 4 lines randomly? Mix this with the frustration of the dungeon design and mini-map issues and I soon wondered what reasons the game was giving me to want to get through this struggle. There wasn’t really anything.