Killa Penguin
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TSIOQUE does a laudable job of creating a suitably magical atmosphere for the 2-3 hours it takes to reach the end, mostly because of how much personality the visuals and sound effects have. It's just difficult to recommend a game with such awkward puzzle design and annoying minigames.
Newbies with no real attachment to the Soulcalibur franchise will find that reversal edges only go so far and quickly become frustrated by the underlying complexity, while old-timers will quickly get sick of CPUs (and trolls online, no doubt) spamming reversal edges to slow down and drag out matches. At first glance, Soulcalibur VI looks to take the balance of Soulcalibur V and marry it with the better characters and story of the early games by returning to the events of the Dreamcast original and Soulcalibur II, but it falls all over itself in too many ways to recommend to fans or newcomers.
There are undeniably some issues that need to be ironed out, most entertainingly highlighted by NPCs gleefully ignoring murders in one stage so long as they’re performed with a forklift, but the underlying promise here really shines through when everything is working as expected. The biggest issue is that things don’t always work as expected; during one stage that begins by forcing you to kill four bikers with your “ultimate” attack, a randomly-wandering NPC was placed close enough that the police were chasing me seconds in through no fault of my own. You can forget about evading police in Party Hard 2, as well, with the pairs of officers that show up having a preternatural talent for knowing where you are and boxing you in.
There are little things that I adore such as the way your ship crew sings as you sail around (with the songs even changing to reflect the gender makeup of your crew), not to mention a small handful of quests that eschew the rigid, game-y formula plaguing most of Odyssey‘s content in favor of something more organic. The problem is that all of this accounts for between 5-10 hours of content of the 60 that’s pretty much a minimum because of the backwards leveling system and abundance of filler content. The weakest parts of the Assassin’s Creed series have also been retained, while the things that were unique have inexplicably been de-emphasized and complicated to make way for a mashup of features shamelessly borrowed from other series in the hopes of lightning striking twice. The end result of all of this is that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is an overlong, uninspired mess that feels watered down to the point of meaninglessness.
As you’d expect, there’s a general sense of welcome levity to everything that happens, though I honestly can’t remember Warren uttering a single word, and that hints at an underlying truth here: while the more playful tone of this DLC is infinitely preferable to the crushing darkness of the base game, The Good, the Bad, and the Augmented exists mostly as a series of maps designed primarily for hardcore players to grind on for tech scrap and new equipment.
There's a lot to love about Depth of Extinction, and that'll be doubly true once the bugs end up being patched out, but a game needs more than excellent combat to stand out.
There’s a point in the Punch Line anime where main character Yuta Iridatsu says something about how the spirit world functions similarly to a video game, and there’s really no denying that time travel and abilities that become better as they’re used are the types of things that lend themselves perfectly to gaming. That makes it all the more surprising that the Punch Line game adaptation is a visual novel first and foremost, then, forgoing its gameplay in favor of its story.
I’m very much on the fence about this one, admittedly, as buying new equipment that allows you to effortlessly carve through waves upon waves of enemies can be incredibly rewarding, and a lot of the underlying ideas here are solid. The execution just trips up often enough that Ninjin: Clash of Carrots‘ attempts at variance start to feel like unfair gimmicks.
Shadows: Awakening inherits Vikings‘ repetitive and gimmicky boss fights, while its shifting rules and general inability to explain how certain things work can turn its frequent puzzles into a slog. Add a slow movement speed and too few teleport points on top of that, and you have a game that, while enjoyable overall, fails to live up to its potential.
Something I've come to realize over the past year or so is that I have a strange fascination with confusing narrative games. There's a crucial difference between confusing and nonsensical, obviously, but games that have you questioning the sanity of their playable character and constantly wondering if they're an unreliable narrator or simply lucky/unlucky enough to be wading through uniquely bizarre circumstances are a real treat, and Elea – Episode 1 falls neatly into that category. Taking place in a future with space travel, sentient AI helpers, and a pocket full of reasons to leave Earth behind in search of greener pastures, it begins the story of River Elea Catherine Jones as she looks into the fate of her husband after his expedition to colonize a new planet goes silent.
While this may not be what many players originally envisioned the launch version of We Happy Few being like, it’s hard to deny that it’s one of the more consistently interesting open-world games I’ve played, sporting deeply enjoyable lore and writing that make up for some gameplay shortcomings.
Honestly, I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to finish this one, with numerous bugs and missing English-language lines (there are entire conversations that play out as a series of empty text boxes) making doing so impossible. According to Steam, I’ve played Noahmund for 8 hours, while the in-game timer of my most recent save reads 4 hours and 52 minutes, with the difference between the two being progress that was lost because of bugs.
Developed by Brazilian developer SpaceGiraff3 and possessing many of the dialogue quirks that tend to pop up when Brazilian Portuguese is translated into English, TRAGO is a flawed gem that has one foot firmly planted in reality while the rest of the body is drunk in some parallel reality lacking any of the same rules of causality and chronology. It’s a magically psychotic game with a tone unlike anything I’ve ever played, and while it’s relatively short (even with a ton of experimentation, it lasted me a little over three hours), it’s an inexpensive slice of madness perfect for when you’re burned out on more “normal” games.
Even the areas that can be bent in significant ways have serious and sometimes baffling limits that force you into one or two envisioned solutions by entirely sabotaging other approaches. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, of course, as many excellent puzzle games have specific solutions, but where Semblance fails (and does so big time) is that it gives you the impression that you’re being afforded the freedom to come up with your own approach, only to consistently snatch it away from you while the controls undermine you and the simplistic two-tone visuals give you a migraine.
The Nightmare Princess feels like it was made by people who were forced to work on a Deception game that they wanted nothing to do with, and, harboring nothing but contempt for it, worked to undermine its development at every juncture. They succeeded at doing so, creating something so abysmally contrary to the spirit of the Deception series and painfully un-fun in general that we'll likely never see a true Deception game again.
Focusing on its strengths makes a huge difference, as it turns out, and there are a handful of miscellaneous elements that only serve to elevate it further despite one or two minor issues that take a little getting used to. Overall, The Mooseman is a great experience that’s artsy without coming across as pretentious, unfamiliar without becoming overcomplicated and confusing the player, and easy to pick up without sacrificing a number of optional challenges for those looking to obsess over hidden collectibles.
Insane Robots is a wonderful example of how complicated situations arising from simple mechanics can be fun, but it’s also an amazing example of how a good thing can be ruined by cramming it down your throat for too long. That’s to say that Insane Robots suffers from some of the worst pacing issues I can recall in a game, allowing you to glide along for 4-5 hours before stopping you in your tracks with a player-hostile final map that’s filled with cheating AI, sentient weather effects that act solely to inconvenience you, and randomized characters that ensure that you have to go back and engage in 20-30 hours of grinding in order to stand a chance.
The story might as well not exist, the mechanics are clumsy and prone to screwing you over through no fault of your own, enemies come at you in endless numbers to make destroying things a deeply annoying and repetitive experience, and the slightly upgraded textures—which are the only real difference between this version and the original apart from some newfound performance issues—are virtually imperceptible because of the uninspired art design that's still trapped in the Guerrilla-era war against colorfulness.
If you’ve never played an artsy mobile puzzle game before, Starman makes for a great crash course in what they’re like, as it shares all of the same intrinsic qualities you’ll find repeated in other such games.
If you’d have told me that one of my favorite games of 2018 would be a rhythm game originally released as a freemium mobile title in 2016 and only now receiving a paid version on the PC and Nintendo Switch, I’d have laughed in your face. Lost in Harmony is that game, though, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that this game is playable art (for the most part, at least) now that there are no freemium currencies and ads trying to worm their way into the experience.