GameCloud's Reviews
Valkyria Chronicles 4 has all the workings of an excellent tactical RPG, pivoted by an interesting main cast and story, and supported by a refined version of the classic combat of the original game. With some extra benefits, like the change in thematic focus creating a refreshingly new storyline, the overall package is a powerful one. The final result is something that will appeal to the fans, but will still be able to capture a new player without confusion. I sincerely hope we'll see more from Valkyria Chronicles in the future as I believe there's still a lot to be explored here.
Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (and to be fair, the Wii U and 3DS versions before it) are a brilliant example of borrowing some toys from the big kids and still having fun even when you know you have to give them back eventually. Hyrule Warriors comes at you hard and fast with entertaining gameplay, a hefty amount of challenge and a myriad of content that would take even the most dedicated completionist a while to knock out, or more than a cross-country train trip anyway (kooloo-limpah!). If you're looking for something to scratch that Zelda itch or you want to smash some baddies and groove to some excellent tunes while you're out and about, you'd be hard-pressed to find a game that delivers so much in such a tight package. Even though it's not official Zelda, it's official that Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition is definitely the best version of this game and that alone is enough to give this legend a look.
FFXV Comrades isn't great – for now – but the development team behind the game's post-release content has a track record of improving things over time. The expansion has a mountain of technical problems, a ham-strung design in comparison to the main game, and becomes tedious and repetitive to play after only a short while. These are, however, all fixable issues, and in the immediate wake of Comrades' release, it was already receiving improvements and fixes. I have little doubt we'll see more added to it over time, likely in the form of new mission types and possibly some narrative improvements. Whatever the changes, I'm certain that this will feel and play very differently in six months time. For those interested, or burned by the initial offerings, I'd recommend keeping an eye on it and waiting.
Like many, the Star Wars franchise is dear to me, so I'm disappointed EA let their plans for monetisation and a rush to meet deadlines get the better of them with Battlefront II. While there's some fun to be had in Battlefront II's multiplayer and arcade modes, there's no denying its story and mission design is lazy and uninventive. The game is full of Star Wars charm, expressed by its well-designed maps and excellent production values, but it's ultimately let down by a lack of incentive to keep playing and the very system that's supposed to let us live out our far-fetched Star Wars fantasies. The life of this game now depends on where EA goes from here – and yes, there have been steps taken to rebalance the economy, and free DLC is a good start – but inherent mediocrity limits them when it comes to players who want something that's more than a one and done Star Wars adventure.
I know a director isn’t the be-all end-all of a development project, and the idea of videogame “auteurs” has been romanticised to a ridiculous degree in this industry. That said, given that this is the first (and last) major release for the game without Tabata on board, his absence was notable. At no point was the game ever broken, it’s execution was definitely “competent,” it just felt incredibly uninspired. Even the story, arguably the biggest draw-card given the overall mysteriousness of Ardyn in the main game, was cryptically conveyed. Maybe it could be put down to a “B-team” in the studio working on this last piece while their new IP is in the works, or a new director trying to find their groove in the wake of their predecessor. It’s certainly not a knock-out, however, and I’d only really recommend playing this for the sake of completion.
My real question is: Why? Why was this made, and for whom? If ToeJam & Earl: Back In The Groove was intended as a remake, why try to emulate the original so closely in appearance and design while making everything measurably worse? If it was intended to be a sequel that only had a passingly similar design then, again, why make it so close to the original? Especially when the original is so much better in basically every regard. I’m not exaggerating when I say that in the process of writing this review, I ended up playing the original for far longer than this new version. At first, it was just to see if I remembered the game utterly wrong, as being something fun when it wasn’t. But it is, and I kept on playing it because it was preferable to this…”alternative.” The original is a great “arcade” experience, even by the standards of today, and you should definitely go play it if you want that nostalgia hit. Back In The Groove will just bore you at best and make you uncomfortable at worst.
Jump Force doesn’t just fall awfully short of its potential, but it fails to be fun, engaging or rewarding in any way. Combat is simple and repetitive, the story is uninteresting and told in an incredibly boring way, and the visuals fail to capture the essence of their inspirations. Beyond these annoyances, the considerable fraction of the game spent just on loading screens, plus the amount of time needed to mindlessly walk from one side of a bloated map to another feels outright criminal to charge for. Jump Force is an infuriating game, forcing the player to waste as much time as they spend playing, and degrading several excellent, beloved properties to mindless monotony.
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.
I didn’t anticipate that Anthem would launch as poorly as it has. I use the word “launch” because I know a majority of the game’s current issues can and will be fixed if EA and BioWare stick with it. However, the game currently isn’t worth it in its current state. It’s a technically inconsistent mess of a looter shooter that can’t seem to nail down the fundamentals of the genre. The most diehard fans of The Division and Destiny might find something enjoyable in Anthem, but you’ll quickly discover there’s nothing to keep players from returning to those other games because they do it so much better. Anthem has a lot of potential that I hope it can tap into it, but it’ll be some time before it reaches a state that’s worth investing in.
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.
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.
Star Control: Origins fails to capture the magic from its source material. The gameplay is dull, shallow and technically flawed, and it’s not like the story is super engaging either. There’s the occasional small-scale encounter that works well, but these alone aren’t enough to warrant a recommendation. I told one of my friends this afternoon to avoid buying the game, so “not recommended” seems about right. Hell, the fact I stopped playing after only 6 hours should give you an idea of how quickly this game loses its appeal. It’s a shame because I know how good space games can be, it’s just that this one didn’t quite cut it. One day, man, we’ll have a No Man’s Sky that doesn’t suck…
The Occupation is an excellent concept for a game, and something I hope to see done more in the future, but it failed in several regards this time around. The story is perfectly functional, but the implied intrigue is nothing more than an implication, and any curiosity I had to learn more was purely in disbelief that it could be as simple as it seemed. The mechanics and systems, particularly those built around stealth, are far from refined, and further still from “fun.” Even fundamental interface components are tremendously flawed, as well as a bunch of other technical issues throughout. I love the premise of The Occupation so much, and I genuinely hope to see more in its ilk, but I simply can’t recommend this game.
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.
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.
While I’m usually a fan of the monster-catching genre and greatly enjoy anything Lovecraftian, The Lost Child fails to hit a lot of the key points that makes both of these genres fun. Add to this a standard storyline, repetitive combat and a pointless overworld, and you’ve got a game that’s ultimately very hard to recommend spending time on. With many exciting RPGs coming up in the near future, only those in desperate need of some monster catching or dungeon delving should look here.
It’s not uncommon for sequels not to live up to the hype established by their predecessors, but State of Decay 2 comes in below even those expectations. Both the design and the way it plays are so similar to the first game that it feels like an expansion to the original rather than a sequel. It even still has all the same bugs and technical problems of the first. The only major difference being that State of Decay 2 feels more aimless than its older brother because it had loftier goals that it couldn’t even begin to live up to. When the basic survival mechanics are a grind, chore, or straight up don’t work, you’re left with another stock-standard zombie survival game.
This isn’t a bad remake, per se. The game functions without crashing, and it’s a close approximation of what the original Secret of Mana had on offer. The problem is that in recreating the game, Square Enix forgot what the point of a remake is. Very little in this remake can have a serious claim to being “better” than the original, and in some cases, it’s arguably worse. Once the nostalgia wears off for returning players, your enjoyment with it will go downhill fairly quickly. It’s also hard to recommend to anyone that hasn’t played Secret of Mana before since there isn’t anything noteworthy you would get out of this version that you couldn’t experience in the original.
The Inpatient is a slow, unengaging walk through hallways with mechanical characters and irrelevant choices. It’s an incredibly disappointing execution of a nice idea that could have become so much more. When we have full games that operate successfully in VR, games that utilise the headset to inform mechanics, and games that present believable, engaging worlds, I can’t recommend The Inpatient.