Digitally Downloaded
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The level design tends to be quite bland, too – unique mechanic aside you’re played what this kind of game is offering in some way before. But still, it’s good, clean, light-hearted fun.
This is a strong debut by developer Bacon Bandits, and while it looks quite simple, the balancing of a game that relies so heavily on the randomness of letter tiles to form its core mechanics can't have been easy. And yet, with very few exceptions, I never felt hard done by the luck of the draw.
As a missed opportunity, Shadow of the Beast is a sublime one. The powerful juxtaposition between the Beast, his enemies, and the natural world, is a worthy theme to explore, and the bloodletting that the Beast gets up to is both visceral and entirely appropriate to that theme. That the developers really struggled to explore the concept in any meaningful depth is disappointing, but nonetheless, Shadow of the Beast is ultimately worthwhile.
Despite all this, Coffin Dodgers is fun in its way, but it’s hard to recommend when there are so many other games out there that do what this one does, but far better. There are some great ideas at the core of this though, and it would have been nice to see how they shaped up with a bit more direction and some extra time in the oven.
It still lacks atmosphere. It's still remarkably competent without actually pushing the genre forwards. It's still a multiplayer experience that I'm betting will shrink to a tiny community in months.
The Park is an absolutely terrifying game, but what's continued to haunt me about it long after I've put the controller down isn't Chad the Chipmunk, or the Bogeyman, or the Witch – it's how distressing and real the game and its themes are once you peel back those monster story trappings.
I enjoyed Star Fox Zero a great deal. I found it challenging, but rewarding, vibrant and dynamic without being beyond my skillset. I don't necessarily understand – nor agree – with people criticising the game for trying to be a streamlined dogfight simulation, but at the same time I don't think this game has nearly done enough to push it forward.
If you enjoy a weighty narrative and a challenging turn-based strategy system, there is no reason not to give this Nordic themed title a chance.
I was just as head over heels after three hours as I was in the first couple of minutes. If you're into the 80's neon-filled culture and new wave music, then Neon Chrome might just very well be the perfect little game to play over the weekend!
For players who have already played through Ori before, the definitive version's new areas are a good enough reason to jump back into the forest, and for new players, there's no reason to not experience what this game has to offer.
Valkyria Chronicles is, simply, one of the best tactical games you’ll ever play. It’s serious, but doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s emotionally compelling while never losing sight of the fact it’s also a game. It’s a popular and well-regarded game that, for whatever reason, people simply don’t talk about it enough.
It’s heavily exploitative with those school uniforms, and that might put you off it, but for existing fans of the girls and their antics, this is another very worthy and thematically spot-on feather in the cap. It also represents one of the stronger efforts at storytelling in the series, aside from Idea Factory’s own work, and that's a good sign for the future development of the series.
[I]f you have any interest in the genre at all, there is no reason not to give Duelyst a try and see if its distinctive stylings suit you or not.
Blues and Bullets is without a doubt the most true, and also most effective, crime noir game we have to date, with a masterful understanding of the themes and visual motifs that comprise a noir tale, and an understanding on how to work within those without being clichéd or trite.
In terms of giving the fans what they want, I'm certain Naughty Dog has nailed every part of the brief that it was given. Uncharted 4 shows a truly masterful eye for detail and is near perfect in mechanical execution.
Overall it's hard to recommend this game as it feels unpolished and very repetitive. I went in expecting some dark humor but it turned out to take itself too seriously as a game to do that.
While most people have given up on this lovely handheld, I’m glad there are still some studios who are willing to take a chance on the Vita. Severed is a great game with a lot of depth that will have you thinking about it for a long time to come. On a console that is absolutely loaded with the dungeon crawler genre, it's no mean feat that this one manages to stand out.
If the RPG mechanics are your main attraction, you'll probably be disappointed, but as an experiment in choice-driven narratives, Stories is clever, impressive, and well worth a look.
Writing a critique of NORTH was a lot of fun, and I do feel glad that Outlands decided to take all the risks involved with developing a game like this.
t’s a good game, with some clever, creative puzzle design that takes the Lemmings-like inspiration for the series about as far as it would be possible to push it, and all those different amiibo special abilities do give a lot of variety to the puzzles, but it’s little nasty for Nintendo to hold back a full experience unless you’ve got over a hundred dollars worth of toys.