GameCloud's Reviews
There’s one thing that permeates throughout my multiple playthroughs of Resident Evil 2 from the start right up until this very moment, and that’s how much love and care has been poured into this game. There’s an undeniable fervour present across Capcom’s recent titles that have come to an all-new climax with RE2. It single-handedly captures the essence of survival horror and what makes it great in a seemingly effortless fashion. The game is packed with content and modes that are all worth experiencing in their fullest, and Capcom should be commended for outdoing themselves yet again. RE2 is without a doubt the best remake I’ve ever had the privilege of playing, and I’m teeming with excitement now more than ever to see what’s in store next for the series that started it all.
I don’t know why Travis Strikes Again exists, but it does, and that’s what I’d call “unfortunate” within the broader context of the series. No More Heroes was a great-but-crude product of its time, and with clever writing, its style of humour can be brought into the modern era. There’s so much to draw from for a new game in the series, and Grasshopper just didn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact. Many series staples were removed in favour of bland gameplay, frustrating and boring design, and some visual and thematic hints that this game might have actually been good had the vision been there. As it exists now, however, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, not even longtime fans. You lose nothing from not playing this… Well, except perhaps the hope of another title in the series.
If you were a fan of the first game, Armada 2 is a no-brainer. For the rest of us, it’s the same as before with more stuff in there. The new factions add some much-needed variety into the mix, but the campaigns are static and uninteresting – at least for the first few hours. The unchanged combat is still off-putting to me, but it’s still good for a quick bit of dumb fun. Most importantly, it’s not a bad 40K game. It’s not amazing, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not heresy incarnate.
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is a game that’s good enough for those who already enjoy flight sims, but it’s not likely to convert anyone who isn’t already a fan. The central mechanics are hardly innovative, the checkpoint system is a satanic artifice conceived only to dismay and affront, and the story is a meandering, butchered mess. However, it does have enough merit outside of these issues to warrant consideration. Interesting mission design and cool boss fights can be enough to make a game a worthwhile purchase, just make sure you’re actually convinced you could be Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
Despite Onimusha: Warlords’ individual elements looking good in isolation, the game amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Its systems aren’t inherently poorly designed, but they fail because they’re given no time to develop and are rendered arbitrary because the game lasts only a few brief hours. If, however, you can brush these concerns aside, as I imagine long-term fans of the series will do, there’s certainly some nostalgic value to be had here. The world and inhabitants of Onimusha: Warlords are as charming as they were on the PS2, and those who grew up on the game will surely enjoy revisiting Inabayama Castle after so many years. The one hope to hold on to is that this sells well enough to warrant a remaster of the significantly improved (and longer) Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny.
Tales of Vesperia is an unusual beast: beloved by fans for its unique cast and mature story, but whose combat system is only distinct from other games in the series by its slower speed. While I didn’t enjoy the bulk of the combat sections, especially when working through a long dungeon or wide field, the story of Yuri and his companions has built itself a place in my memory and is an adventure I will recommend to others for a while to come. You’ll need to love the battle system the series is known for or have a lot of patience to do it, but Tales of Vesperia is worth experiencing, and the Definitive Edition is absolutely the most sensible way to do it.
Trying to bring the feel of a different era into the modern limelight is quite the task, and YIIK almost pulls it off. While it sports great old-school visuals, it just can’t overcome its other flaws. The shallow combat gets old quickly, the characters aren’t all that endearing, and the pacing doesn’t do the game any favours. You’d be better off playing one of the games that YIIK imitates. Those who want to go back in time may very well find a game they love, but I didn’t.
Just Cause 4 has everything you’d expect from a Just Cause title, but it also suffers from a major case of one step forward, two steps back across many key areas of the game. The new grapple features and extreme weather conditions are well executed and are a perfect fit for the franchise, but poor design choices with the visuals, lighting and animation, and issues with object rendering combine to deliver an unpleasant and sometimes unplayable experience. This was a highly anticipated game for me so, so it pains me to say that players looking to jump into the Just Cause franchise should look to and would have more fun with Just Cause 3.
Reroll reaffirms that 14 years after its debut, Katamari Damacy remains a bright streak of design vision and an iconic waft of imagination. It’s the kind of no-fuss game that’s fantastic in short bursts, which makes it well suited to the handheld console (I played through a lot of this in bed while interstate and visiting my folks, for example). It’s a fun world to flitter in and out of, and it has one of the best soundtracks imaginable. I do wonder if Bandai Namco could have done more than just plonking the original game out here, but I guess at the end of the day they knew what they had held up, in all its grand simplicity, pretty well.
Insurgency: Sandstorm aims for the hardcore in a way that’s hard not to appreciate. The frighteningly realistic weaponry, excellent sound design and mechanical reinforcement of communication and strategy make it a winner for those who may be tired of the more whimsical and approachable shooter staples available today. While it may currently be a bit thin on the ground in the way of actual maps to play on, there’s plenty of meat on Sandstorm’s PTSD-addled bones, with tight, tactical combat that’ll have your nerves shot but your mind sharp by the end of each match.
My time with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has led me to believe there couldn’t be a more fitting subtitle for this entry in the series. It successfully combines multiple elements from past entries, adds a new level of polish, and presents the biggest roster in the series’ history. Nintendo have not only created another hallmark title for the Switch, but an entry into the series that’ll be unrivalled in size and scale for some time to come. Ultimate has the potential to live far longer than recent entries in the series, and with new characters, stages, and music on the way, the game will receive no shortage of new content. It’s an exciting prospect considering how much content is already packed into the game, and I’m sure it’ll only improve what I believe is the best Smash Bros. yet.
For someone who had never played any of the Spyro games before, these three titles were a thoroughly enjoyable experience I’d recommend to anyone. For the diehard nostalgics, there is a lot to love, and for all the newbies, the Spyro Reignited Trilogy is an excellent jumping off point for experiencing one of the series that made early 3D gaming so great. Aside from a few minor gripes, these are solid games and show that these old titles can hold their own today in a radically different era. Now, all we need is to see is the same love given to other classics. Until then, I’m delighted that after getting sidelined (and mutilated) in Skylanders, Spyro the Dragon is back, blazing his trail better than ever and flying high in his original series, the way he was always meant to be.
The most important takeaway from all this is that I had a good time with Mutant Year Zero. Me. I once disowned a kebab because it had a subpar mouthfeel. A kebab. Thanks to the deep combat and some delightful moments in the writing, I enjoyed my time with the game. Looting is a chore, and you can’t walk off the main path like the tabletop game, but it’s still a satisfying experience. I just pushed those parts out of my brain like the useless information it was, because after all, what use are memories after the apocalypse?
And that’s the thing about 11-11 Memories Retold – should I expect to be surprised? Should I rightfully hope to learn something? Should I expect the medium to be used in a new way to make me think about things differently? Is this video game just not for me? Who then, is it for? I’m upset that 11-11 can be both so serious and so inane, so against-the-grain yet so grimly uninventive. I’m bothered by the feeling of myself being bored by this game when its earnestness and thematic content tells me that my entertainment here shouldn’t necessarily be the point. Where is my empathy? Why can’t I think of the poor soldiers, civilians, etc., the people who lived through this? I like that it tries to work against the video game paradigm of glorifying violence; I hate how it gave me the longest five hours of my life in the process. Press “F” for feelings and so on.
Take caution before letting Artifact consume you. The monetisation is an egregious disaster, the RNG practically runs the game sometimes, and casual players will have no reason to keep coming back. There’s some fun in there; it’s just locked behind statistically improbable gauntlets and marketplace auctions. Worth the asking price? I’d lean towards no. Worth the investment required? Absolutely not. The buy-in isn’t enough to sustain your time with the game, and it’s almost insulting that there’s no way to earn cards when Valve already takes a cut from marketplace sales. The cards must flow, and thy wallet is tribute.
Darksiders III is a fundamentally flawed title that does away with numerous systems and mechanics that the past two titles had iterated and built upon in meaningful ways, but it also allows for a new type of entry in the series as a result. I had way more fun with it than I expected to, but I also can’t recommend it to fans of the series who were looking for more of the same, because they simply won’t get it here. Darksiders III fails to translate the scale of the events transpiring within the franchise’s universe in favour of a more contained narrative that falls flat alongside its boring protagonist. However, if you enjoy Dark Souls, I’d urge you to at least give this title a shot. There’s plenty of fun to be had here if you can accept the game for the fun but flawed experience that it is.
P-Studio have managed to put together an excellent package that will appeal to both Persona fans and rhythm game enthusiasts for different reasons. For one group, it’s our beloved Persona characters enjoying themselves in a silly context that’s a delight to experience. For the other, an earnest rhythm challenge in a well-presented package. As a result, this may well bridge a path between the two groups, hopefully spreading the fun of the series and genre on display to more people.
Fallout 76 is broken, not just on a technical level but by its very nature. It doesn’t challenge its players as they work towards their goals, it actively hinders them with bad design. It took the worst elements of Fallout 4 and even a few of the good ones that it diluted into their most basic forms and made an entire game around them. It wanted to have its cake and eat it too, being built like one of the single-player RPGs but with a veneer of multiplayer design and ended up being atrocious in either capacity. And then yes, it’s technically broken in the literal sense, boasting not just the “classic” Bethesda bugs, but an entire swathe of new issues that make the game borderline unplayable. This wouldn’t just take a bunch of patching to fix, it would take a Final Fantasy XIV style rebuild to salvage this game. It is, without a doubt, the worst Fallout game to date – and I say that having played Brotherhood of Steel.
Farming Simulator might not be the most exciting game, but it's not without virtue. Vehicles can be impeccably modelled, the gameplay frees up space in your mind, and harvesting large swathes of grain can be satisfying. Those moments of joy are few and far between, though, and only the most dedicated farmer could take FS19 as a standalone experience without being consumed by Kantian levels of apathy. Perhaps I'm too cynical to appreciate the simple act of creating food in a virtual sense, calloused by the constant stimulation that the internet and games provide me. On the other hand, it could just be that farming is super dull.
Diablo III is a beautiful marriage of excellent content, timeless gameplay and the Switch’s plug and play design. Despite its age, it still manages to be a fun hack and slash adventure that is best experienced with friends. The Switch’s library has dramatically matured since it launched in 2017, and I do hope more developers emulate Blizzard’s lead and bring the appropriate franchises to this unique console. If you own a Switch and are looking for a fun, casual multiplayer game, you’ll enjoy Diablo III.