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Snooker 19 brings a fully licensed simulator back to players and does so in some style.
Katana Zero is simply a very easy recommendation. From the utterly perfect mechanics tweaked to an inch of their life to the visuals, the overarching story and inner conflict of your highly skilled protagonist and his external relationships with the world around him, counteracting with the hyper-violence he calls his work, the game finds a delicate balance between ridiculously stylish action and the more subtle downbeat moments that really bring out some wonderful character development.
Blood Waves would have been an adequate mode tacked onto another full game, a tiny side dish to a main meal elsewhere that could kill 2 hours. Unfortunately, as a standalone experience, it’s lacking in depth, excitement and personality. The trap building, the most interesting aspect of the game, is not enough to make this anything more than an also-ran in a genre that’s seen genuine quality over the years.
God’s Trigger is a smorgasbord of twin stick goodness. It takes the challenge of Hotline Miami, the genre innovations of Mr Shifty, blends it with a fun, pulpy if shallow narrative and then blends it with as much blood splatter as humanly possible. It doesn’t do anything particularly new but it does provide a twitchy, immensely gratifying 9 hours of action with the occasional satisfying set piece.
It’s not meant to be for hardcore football gamers. There isn’t going to be a Legendary Eleven esports tournament anytime soon but the game is fully aware of this. It’s not really trying to be anything other than what it is and that’s hugely important when considering picking this one up. It’s local multiplayer is fun and frantic, so long as you don’t play with a person who was comparing it to FIFA every five seconds like I did.
Outward is billed as a survival RPG and that it is. The survival elements do make it an interesting adventure to an extent but sometimes it goes overboard and frustrates. The fighting is awful, the spells are too confusing and convoluted and as mentioned it’s really hard to give a crap about your character. Massive kudos to Nine Dots for embarking on a game of this magnitude and there is some great ideas here to make it stand out from the glut of other fantasy RPGs.
It’s the repetition that truly hampers The Princess Guide however. Aside from new traps to use and increasingly larger and more dangerous foes to fight, very little changes throughout the game. Beat up monsters. Move on to next area. Beat up Monsters. Repeat Ad infinitum. Because the mechanics are either poorly explained or shallowly implemented, the sheen of this game wears thin very quickly and without the unique aspects of its predecessor Penny-Punching Princess, it becomes a slog very quickly.
Despite its issues, The Occupation is thrilling, even with its lack of traditional life threatening situations. Hiding behind chairs to wait for Steve the Security guard to leave after you’ve accidentally set off an alarm, nervously awaiting the full 2 minutes for a safe to open while desperately hoping someone doesn’t walk in on you, hiding under a desk while a file slowly transfers to a disk, waiting just out of view until someone opens a door than attempting to follow them in unseen – The Occupation is full of moment to moment nail biting situations where time is your enemy and your most precious resource.
It’s pretty to look at, but is such a jumbled mess and we couldn’t get our heads around it…a bit like their furniture, then.
The SNK 40th Anniversary Collection is by no means a bad bevy of retro delights. It’s just such a niche collection from a company that’s always going to play second fiddle to the likes of Capcom and Konami, that unless you’re a hipster of classic gaming, and is unlikely to attract your attention.
The most frustrating part of the game is the ‘game’ itself, and when absolutely every other aspect of The Red Strings Club is so strong, it’s really frustrating. Thankfully, the terrific characters, the strong narrative, the gorgeous visuals and the moral questions the game poses at you tip the game into the ‘must-play’ review score. The brilliant story drags you in and doesn’t let go.
After several hours of dying and dying again the game gives you reason to think it’s all over before it just isn’t, and this could throw some people off. It certainly did me, whilst it’s no bother at all to keep playing The Messenger the pacing felt a little strange in the closing moments, and there’s a fair amount of backtracking to be getting on with. Fortunately this allows you to head back to old levels that have a 16-bit remix that you wouldn’t have seen before, which makes it worthwhile all the more.
I and Me is a game with some truly intelligently designed, short and sweet puzzles levels that are unfortunately surrounded by a number that aren’t. When this game is at it’s best, it’s challenging and deeply satisfying. When it’s at its worst, it’s repetitive and frustrating. If you liked Binaries, or platform based puzzle games that require a lot of focus but come with a chilled soundtrack and a pleasant art style, I and Me is certainly worth a look. And maybe a second look too.
As Twin-Stick shooters go, The Walking Vegetables: Radical Edition is a competent entry. If you’re a fan of the genre and play a lot of them, as this critic does, this game might feel a little too familiar though. It makes no attempt to break new ground or innovate on any of its mechanics, meaning that despite fighting off a unique enemy in the form of fruit and vegetables, you might as well be playing any number of other titles in the genre.
I feel like this is the kind of game I should have picked up for the PC after all and just powered through, or even for the Switch. It feels like a game I want to chip away at over time rather than sit in front of my sofa and devote hours of my attention to it in one go. The story is good though the gameplay can feel a little flat at times and given the fact you can fail so easily just by taking the orders of the game, it can feel somewhat disjointed.
Wizards is an entertaining game when it works with plenty to keep you occupied. I just wish you didn’t have to fight with the controls so much then this would be up there with the best.
Crimson Keep has very few redeeming qualities. The reflective light effects on the monsters look great, the procedural generation means that each new run is different and the music is pleasant enough. That’s about it. Roguelike purists that can dedicate enough time and effort to overcome this game’s hefty challenge might get a kick out of dying repeatedly here – but in a genre that’s becoming ever more accommodating and innovative, the luck dependent progress, sluggish combat and deeply punitive nature of the game feels archaic compared to its modern day peers.
It’s a very solid and responsive racer, reminiscent of its earlier iterations that kept the racing tight and less over-the-top lunacy. It’s got its hooks back in to me, pushing me to keep getting those top times and not bogging us down with eight minute long spectacle tracks. That being said, it’s hard to ignore the incessant use of microtransactions and what it brings with it, the in your face constant reminders about loot crates and such. It taints the experience that it’s saving grace is really in the gameplay, that all the bumf just spoils it somewhat.
When you’re powering through mansions like Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, blasting your way through bad guys and smashing up the place all for the greater good, RICO really comes into its own. It’s by far the most fun we’ve had playing an online co-op game this year. It isn’t even close.
If you’re really into your XCOM’s and Space Hulk, but find the steep curve of the former and the seriousness of the latter too much, then this is a welcome change. It brings the brightness and colour back to mass-murdering aliens, alongside the wacky, irreverant humour and self-deprecation that the British are so delightful wonderful at.