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Lost Ember has its heart and soul in the right place, and every time I discovered a new area I was left amazed with the gorgeous vistas and intense beauty of it all.
As it is, there's more than enough of the sniping action to see the game over the line, but at times the successes of Contracts do feel like they come despite the development team's best efforts.
There's nothing wrong with how Black Future '88 plays. It's actually quite exceptional. But there are a lot of exceptional roguelikes and hardcore 2D platformers, and Black Future '88 lacks the narrative or context that it really needed to stand out against its many competitors.
There's nothing offensively wrong with Labyrinth of the Witch. It's a cutsey Mystery Dungeon-like roguelike. There are already so many examples of that genre, though, and the Nintendo Switch didn't need another one whose only innovation was to bring a mobile gaming grind to proceedings.
There's simply no reason to play something so utterly bereft of thought as Narcos.
Overall, when Need for Speed: Heat is producing its promised fantasy, it’s a wonderful game which I’m always happy to keep coming back to.
Shenmue 3's real strength is in the way that it suggests a different way of looking at the very storytelling of videogames.
Ultimately, Planet Zoo is to zoo management games what Planet Coaster is to theme park management games—a spiritual successor to tycoon games of days gone by, with more depth and more freedom for creativity than ever. Some of the more complex elements can take a while to really click, but when they do, Planet Zoo becomes an engrossing experience.
Civilization VI is essential. Not only is it a game that's educational, informative, and inspirational (see my video above for more thoughts around that), but it's also deeply pertinent to today's world and gives players a way of seeing - and grappling - with the topic on their own terms.
There aren't enough rhythm games that make the piano the central instrument, and Deemo is an elegant example of how to take an elegant, classical instrument and spin it into an interesting rhythm game.
There's a lot to like about Fishing Star World Tour. It's a lightweight, highly accessible, and charming little arcade-like take on fishing, and while it's never going to top anyone's list of favourite games, it's the kind of mindlessly relaxing thing that's useful to have on the console for those times where you really do just want to chill.
These are fun little games, but they're hardly classics.
I didn’t think that there would be a Tactical Mind 2. I’m glad there is, because the fundamentals are there that it deserves to be played. On the other hand, there is so much unrealised potential in Tactical Mind.
The series needed that soft reset, and now Game Freak has the same outstanding basis and core to build on anew. Just as it did back when Pokemon Blue & Red so effectively captured my imagination 21 years ago.
Mad Games Tycoon is a noble attempt to do something really cool. As someone who loves tycoon simulators, and loves video games, the dream is very much there to have something more serious and deep to replace Game Dev Tycoon. Unfortunately Mad Games Tycoon also struggles to give you a genuine sense of ownership over what you're doing. A very pedestrian presentation, and a sense that you're being pushed to play in a specific way is very antithetical to how the overwhelming bulk of the real world games industry works.
There wasn't a moment of Romancing SaGa 3 that I did not love.
It’s easy to dismiss Tsum Tsum Festival as being “just” a minigame collection, but there’s value in those – especially on the Nintendo Switch, which is built around the easy sharing of experiences but has, to date, had a relatively minimal application of that potential outside of Nintendo itself.
New Super Lucky’s Tale is a competent game but not one which will excite players.
Initially I was worried that Layton sans the titular professor would be a problem. In the end that wasn't where the issues lay with Layton's Mystery Journey. I'm certainly on board with Katrielle taking over and having the kind of long career that her father did, but Level-5 does need to get some fresh new puzzle-designers in, because with this game they dropped the ball too frequently for a series of this calibre.
Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party! wasn't quite the celebration of digital celebrities that I had hoped it would be going in. What it is is an excellent rendition of one of the better rhythm games out there, and while it might be more straight-faced and less "party" than the title implies, it's still hard to go wrong with this one.