Digitally Downloaded
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Anyhow, I digress. To come back to where I talk about the grift. The grift here is that each of these titles offer platinum trophies that can be "earned" with no effort required whatsoever. You'll sit through a laboured and completely ineffective 10-20 minute sermon on nonsense, play it through a couple of times to meet all its conditions, and then you'll get your trophy. I don't know if anyone still actually cares about those things, but as pathetic as it is as selling point for a pathetic series of games, it actually works. If these games didn't annoy me so much I'd be making a joke about how Sony's allowing hardcore Christian content onto the same platform where they've turned into puritans over anime boobs.
I was genuinely excited to play Lily of the Hollow - Resurrection. It seems like such a beautiful little visual novel and while I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece of localisation based on its low price, I was expecting to be able to read it. But that just cannot be done. Developers from Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and every other emerging game development centre through Asia-Pacific, listen to me carefully: You can have the most beautiful aesthetics and a heartwarming concept for your game. If the localisation isn’t going to be good, though, do not bother with an English release, because it is going to get reviews like this one. Make “invest in proper translation” your big resolution for 2021. I do not want to play any other games like Lily in the Hollow - Resurrection ever again.
The game has an intriguing premise and I want to believe the developers had some intelligent ideas behind what they're doing, but between the painfully shallow strategy, the laboured (via translation) writing, the mundane, uninspired presentation and the shonky interface and UX, there was nowhere left for me to go to find something I admired about this game.
That is your "reward" for "playing" the perfect game, and if you don't find some deep philosophical implications in that - enough to make you miserable to the point that you just give up completely - then you're not thinking hard enough. On the plus side, that's the point where you'll realise you'll never play the cruelty that is Snakes & Ladders again.
In the end, the started and overt point of Archlion Saga is that it was developed to introduce people who are less familiar with JRPGs to the genre. The developers failed in doing that, since anyone who plays this as their first JRPG won't touch another one for a very, very long time. No one likes having their intelligence insulted, even if they are completely new to something.
Blade II is a great example of what happens when you let a content-driven business make a content-driven game. There's plenty in there to do, but doing any of it is a complete waste of time.
In an odd way the game gets the benefit of the doubt because the translation is that bad that we have to assume that it's something great in its native language (and indeed there is an option to play in Japanese if you'd like to). But that doesn't help the people who have been suckered into buying a visual novel they thought would be playable in English.
Bloons TD 5 is representative of a once-great studio at rock bottom. Let's hope that the good folks at NinjaKiwi haven't completely forgotten how to make a game fun, and either find a way to revitalise Bloons, or find a new game entirely, if the plan is to ever release another Nintendo Switch game again.
There's nothing that actually redeems Hollow. It's a B-grade Dead Space clone that follows the "rules" of horror without actually understanding any of them.
I would love for nothing more than Kemco to give its development teams a little longer to actually refine these games, because I do genuinely believe that they could be turned into something worthy, but until that development time is there, these things are a plague.
The Legend of Dark Witch franchise is far too limited and nowhere near of the standard where its music is ready stand alone, and Rudymical is just not worth playing on any level.
I don't think I've ever played a more pointless game than R.B.I. Baseball 17. Yeah, sure, you can argue that it's cheaper than the MLB The Show games, but surely if you're enough of a fan of baseball to want to buy a video game take on the sport at all, you'd be willing to spend that extra money for a game that you will actually want to play, and a game that will actually do your favourite sport justice. I just don't see how anyone, anywhere, could possibly want what this one is offering.
Why a small team thought it could make a grand open-world RPG is beyond me, but Skylight Freerange 2 demonstrates the horrible consequences of vastly overreaching what your resources and skill level allow. Full props to the developers for trying - the game is oddly fascinating in just how badly it has failed -, but make no bones about this, if the screenshots and video haven’t proven it to you: this game is an utter travesty.
Top that all off with vehicles that control like flies trapped in syrup, a gross lack of interesting weapons, and only a couple of different vehicle types. Once you’ve had your fill of laughing at Planet 2000’s low-budget oddities, you’re left with a mess of a game that’s just tedious to play.
I appreciate everything that the developers were trying to achieve with Rollercoaster Dreams, but this game should be a real lesson in working within your means. The best, most well-resourced developers in the world would struggle to make a quality simulation game with online sharing, VR support, and the ability to fully explore and interact with your creations. This is the work of a small indie developer that should have focused on getting a few things right, than throwing in everything and failing at it all.
[T]here’s not a single picture in the dozens and dozens of puzzles the game boasts that you’ll actually want to put together.
The solution is always obvious, and never elaborate enough to be truly entertaining. In other words it’s pointless busywork.
It’s irredeemable.
Nothing redeems this game. It's ugly as sin, it fails to understand what made the original classic compelling and though it includes the original classic, it is a neutered version of it. I love Q*Bert. I downloaded this thing without a second thought. I am angry at the injustice that has been inflicted on the cute lil guy.
I realise that Asterix & Obelix isn’t as commercially valuable as, say, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or the Fate anime property. It’s never going to attract a major project from a top-flight developer. Nonetheless, there are small developers who have taken the iconic French comic and done something that shows respect; at least they have done their best. There is nothing like that in Asterix & Obelix: Heroes. It’s a cheap and tacky cash-in, and everyone involved in the comic over the years (the 40th book in the series comes out this year!) deserves better than this.