Digitally Downloaded
HomepageDigitally Downloaded's Reviews
Not once has SEGA let me down, and Yakuza Kiwami 2 is no different. It's a bloody brilliant game.
Even if puzzle games aren't your thing, it's worth fighting through its obstacles and frustrations—or using a guide to carry you through, which I ended up resorting to—in order to experience Flood of Light's beautiful, melancholic yet hopeful vision of a post-climate change world.
Guacamelee! 2 takes everything from the original game and makes it even more enjoyable.
If nothing else, the simple reality that Shenmue is again a living franchise is, all by itself, something truly amazing.
It's a rare example of where the randomisation of the roguelike structure doesn't feel like a lazy excuse to ignore level design. Rather, it provides a canvas to allow some of the cleanest and engaging tactical action that we've seen in quite some time play out.
God Wars is too Japanese in tone, aesthetic and design to ever have much of a hope of reaching a mainstream audience, but as a culturally relevant artifact, anyone who is interested in seeing how a game can explore ancient folk tales and spirituality in an interesting and engaging manner should not pass up this opportunity
If only the rest of the game could live up to those visuals. Crossing Souls works just fine as a vessel for rose-tinted '80s nostalgia, but shallow storytelling and gameplay that shifts from uninteresting to outright frustrating ensures that it never gets to be anything more than that.
There's not much wrong with We Happy Few that can't be fixed with some patches, and regardless of what happens there, the game has a narrative that is brave, intelligently crafted, and so incredibly poignant.
Phantom Doctrine did come out of nowhere to become a truly enjoyable and memorable experience.
It's a great fit for Switch, where you can idly grind while watching TV or riding the train, or set the console up in tabletop mode for some co-op action wherever you may be (so long as you have another controller handy). Just be ready to fight through a lot of bugs to get to the enjoyment underneath.
We might not have any of the real classics just yet, but The Amazing Shinsengumi is a perfectly good stand-in while we wait.
Ōkami is to video games what something like Spirited Away is to film; it's not only beautiful and powerful, but it speaks to the very core of the Japanese soul, and because of that it's hugely educational to anyone that has an interest in the country and its culture.
For those who decry the annual release cycle as nothing but a roster update, they are not giving enough credit to the locomotion improvements and continuing Longshot story.
I'm glad to say I can actually recommend Tetra's Escape. It's by no means essential, but it's enjoyable enough to be a bit of time-killing fun.
Just two things hold SubaraCity back from being genuinely memorable
All in all Monster Hunter World for the PC is an amazingly done port.
Salt and Sanctuary is a solid homage to its blatant source of inspiration. It doesn't supplant its predecessors, but it does an admirable job nonetheless, and offers players a moody, intricate, and fundamentally enjoyable dark fantasy experience. [OpenCritic note: Matt Sainsbury separately reviewed the PS4 (4.5 stars) and Switch (3.5 stars) versions. The scores have been averaged.]
For both masters of Overcooked and complete newcomers to video games, Ghost Town Games' newest offering will be sure to delight.
There's nothing inherently wrong with Crush Your Enemies. It's presented nicely, has some nice, clean mechanics and is cleverly designed to be playable in short bursts of time. But it's also a strategy game that struggles to encourage players to be strategic, and its best feature, the multiplayer, is dead on release.
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.