Readers Gambit
HomepageReaders Gambit's Reviews
When the Hobbit films hit cinemas at 48fps instead of the standard 28fps people complained that it ruined the immersion. They could suddenly tell that characters were wearing makeup, the illusion was gone. That’s sort of the feeling I get from Syndrome.
It's clunky, it's ugly and it's held together with cellotape and spit. At least it's playable, although it's anything but Shiny.
It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that this game is utter garbage of the hottest variety.
Never has a game retroactively ruined so many fond childhood memories. If it weren't for the absolutely out of this world soundtrack, THPS 5 would have literally no redeeming features.
It's an uphill battle to recommend the game to anyone but the most committed fan of adventure games, and Gothic horror, and even then, there's a scant 5 hours of gameplay there.
Frustrating is definitely the word that describes Dead Alliance the most. Great ideas that just weren't implemented correctly, with the core game itself being dull and uninspired. It screams of the developers just having little experience and wanted too many features at once. There is potential here, but it would require a lot of work to overhaul the game and turn it into something truly unique in terms of zombie games and multiplayer shooters.
Need for Speed Payback is a travesty of a game. Between 9 minute cycles of waiting at a vendor refreshing so I could buy better parts for my car, flying about a map populated with enough meaningless activities acting as filler, and the atrocious ending, it’s hard to pick out a point where I could say genuinely say the experience was fun.
Unfortunately, none of this is enough. HoPiKo is a great idea, badly let down by being suited to one very specific control scheme. In a wider sense, it's another release in a long line of mobile ports that just don't need to exist.
It may have worked fairly well as a mobile game that you play for 3 minutes at a time, but brought to the home console scene its issues become glaringly obvious. It’s even missing fairly standard quality of life inclusions.
In Space We Brawl attempts to give players a reason to meet up and play together again, but risks causing a divide in friendships if anyone has to play it for more than 5 minutes. In Space We Brawl lacks variety, presents horribly cluttered arenas, and doesn't feel rewarding in the slightest.
I was so desperate for Hello Neighbor to end that I regularly sought out ways to try and bypass the intended game. There could be something buried deep down, but the general execution of this steal-horror blend holds it back drastically. Even the quaint colourful world is hampered by the general sluggish feel and poor controls.
It's not that Carmageddon is a bad game, in fact I am fairly sure that there was a brief moment that I actually enjoyed it(possible onset Stockholm syndrome), but there isn't a single point I could pick out as being good either. The fact that the biggest accomplishment of Carmageddon: Max Damage is that the developers have managed to make seeking out revenge on pedestrians and smashing other characters up in a fit of road rage incredibly dull.
Krinkle Krusher is a bad game, in fact it's probably best to avoid it entirely. From the outside it wields the cartoonishly charming aesthetic of Cut the Rope, but a combination of painstaking difficulty spikes and poor upgrade system ensure that fire was there is quickly snuffed out.
Outcast: Second Contact looks like a completely new game. And that’s its problem. Outcast: Second Contact only has re-texturing to its advantage, with mechanics and audio left untouched. Its glossy coat promising more than it had. A few tweaks to the audio presentation and how Slade handles could’ve gone a long way to bettering the experience. Those who have dabbled with Outcast in the past may find naught but nostalgic memories to power them through, other than that, there's nothing to be had here. This is re-texturing at its finest, but it’s not a remaster.
It's a terrible pity, as Raiders of the Broken Planet could have been a really interesting little shooter experience, and even now on the rare occasions when it works it is still some fun to play. But one does wonder if MercurySteam should just take the property, chuck in the game side and publish the cheesy action comic book they so clearly wanted to make.
As much as I wanted to love Warriors All-Stars, I couldn’t. There was something missing, even though the graphics were marvellously polished. With a massive lack of variety and a rather taxing effort required to fully appreciate the story in its entirety, I ultimately felt that it wasn’t worth the effort, which is a horrible thing to say about a once beloved franchise. Deep down I wanted Warriors All-Stars to be a game-changer, but it wound up as a game changer.
Elex has extremely limited appeal thanks to the horrendous combat and seemingly mindless balancing issues. Even habitual RPG players will be put off by these problems, and that spells doom for almost anyone outside that little niché.
If there was a little more time spent with developing the overall story and much more time spent creating visually desirable environments, I would heartily recommend Sylvio. However as it stands, I’d steer clear. You’d have a better time recording your own ghostly sounds in your basement than playing Sylvio.
I struggle to find much positive about Zenith, it's like a movie with a great script acted out by children on the worst stage possible.
Overall, Mystery Castle an OK puzzler and if you're really into puzzle games, and I mean really into them, I think you'd get a kick out of it as it will keep you busy for a decent amount of time. If you've only got anything less than an invested interest in puzzlers I can't see you enjoying it much.