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Divide is a really good game when it's playing to its strengths. It takes a familiar, played-out sci-fi story and uses mechanics and interactivity to give it a fresh, insightful spin. It's not as nuanced a take as this sort of story needs, but you can't argue with how well Divide's approach works at its best.
This vision of Berserk loses a lot of its narrative potency because it cuts around it and provides only the most basic of skeletons for narrative context.
When I first saw this at TGS last year, I thought it was going to be a grander simulation game than it has turned out to be. In part I'm disappointed, because a hardcore simulation about exploring uncharted oceans in search of new land would be a fascinating game, but at the same time the simple, clean charm of Neo Atlas is really difficult to resist, especially when I'm in the mood to play something low-pressure while catching up on my movie or television backlog.
On a whole, Digimon World: Next Order isn't a bad experience. It does take some time in order to get used to the flow of the game, and to deal with its irritations, but once you're there, you're in for what might potentially be a very addictive grind indeed.
Horizon is a remarkably refined and technically brilliant game, but Guerrilla has yet to prove that it can take that next step and produce a genuine classic.
Halo Wars 2 managed to drag me in kicking and screaming, and left me coming out more intrigued about the Halo universe itself. I have never been an aficionado of the Haloverse, nor have I ever been interested in it before. Halo Wars 2 may just change that. The campaign tells a safe narrative that is made more impressive by the intimacy of the gameplay. The multiplayer Blitz mode may not be for everyone, but between it, and the rest of the multiplayer, there's enough there to keep people going for quite some time.
It does seem as though Arc System Works were relying entirely on the nostalgia to sell Double Dragon IV. And while it captures the essence of those original games it falls short of being a good game today simply because the original hasn't aged well. It would have been pretty rockin' back in the 80s though.
Management games are, of course, incredibly niche, but as SEGA's Football Manager series has proven, there's a lot of potential in there for these games to also be utterly life-consuming. Is Franchise Hockey Manager 3 up to that standard? No quite, but it's on the right path.
If the developers had been content to just play to the game's strengths as an adventure game, Uncanny Valley could have been something really good. Sadly, the shoehorning in of dull "survival horror" pulls the rug out from under that potential.
A Normal Lost Phone is a thoughtful, intriguing, non-game game that I cannot recommend enough.
Nioh plays well. It eschews the control setup that the Souls games popularised for something a little more like what we’re used to from Koei Tecmo - face buttons to attack and so on. Indeed, in playing it, it almost behaves more like a methodically-paced Ninja Gaiden, and as someone who never quite had the reflexes to really enjoy the Ninja Gaiden series, it really hit that sweet spot.
What makes Dragon Quest so special is that each game manages to straddle a line between nostalgia for simple, elegant combat mechanics, and the modern game design world, where it can poke fun at itself and laugh along with players. Dragon Quest VIII isn’t the perfect port in coming to the 3DS. It is, however, very close to the perfect classical JRPG.
While I appreciate the idea behind making a Power Rangers game that taps into nostalgia, I can't help but feel that the Power Rangers property can - and should - do far better with the brawler genre.
All in all, Knee Deep isn’t a terrible game, nor is it as ground-breaking as it wants to be. It definitely gives a unique spin on the interactive drama genre, and it does tell a somewhat dark, noir inspired tale. Folks who approach this as anything other than a slightly more interactive Visual Novel are going to be disappointed, though, and given that it was more pitched towards adventure game fans, I think there might be a few people that are disappointed with their purchase here.
This might mean that VR games never fit in with the current expectations of non-VR games, but when they’re stuff like Dexed, I don’t mind in the slightest. This is a game that focuses on immersion, and immersive it is. Simple gameplay loops give players a reason to keep coming back and playing more, but what will stay with you for far longer is just how beautiful it all is.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a game that really struggles to find the new voice that Resident Evil so needs as a franchise. It’s incredibly well designed and executed, and you’re not going to find a game that does VR better than this one.
A vital part of world-building ambience is the soundtrack, and I have only good things to say here, as it perfectly and persuasively captures the feel of the city and its inhabitants. I wish I could say that my journey through Neo-SF 2064 had been engrossing and gripping from start to finish. I alternated between enjoyment and stretches of indifference. I am genuinely glad, though, that we have this addition to our growing Western library of visual novel hybrids (!).
Like I said, Joe’s Diner could have been a good game. It has a lot of the pieces for a heart-attack inducing horror game, with its eerie setting and mechanics that force you to make your sense vulnerable. If it did something – anything – with its burial ground plot, it could have told a noteworthy story, or at least an interesting one. Instead, all it does is exploit stereotypes to deliver the weakest Twitch scares I’ve ever seen.
Even as a dedicated single player game, Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers is one of the best games available on the platform. It’s just so perfectly balanced, invigorating, intelligent, and rich.
Ultimately, what makes Earthlock so essential is just how earnest it is in its love for classic JRPGs. It’s worth sitting through its more cumbersome features in order to appreciate the hard work that a team of people who clearly love the genre have sweated over to refine the game to the point where it’s not only a homage to the greats of old, but it adds just a little to what makes the genre so wonderful.