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LocoRoco can be confusing, wearisome and infuriating at times, but it's still impossible to stay mad at it for long. It's a happy game without gratuitous conflict or drama, and its sheer optimism alone prevents its shortcomings from ruining the grand vision. It's a game which just works, and without a doubt, the PS4 remaster is the best way to experience it.
It's a game for the here-and-now, made to give the 3DS one of its last hoorahs with a major franchise before all of Nintendo's developers move fully to the Switch.
On a technical level Caligula isn't perfect; characters can run right through doors, and enemies have a habit of getting stuck in scenery as they chase after your characters, but the art direction itself with its soft pastel colours and clean elegance is a massage for the eyes.
This is one of the best tactics JRPGs you can play. It'll last you a long time, become more rewarding the more time that you put into it, and runs just perfectly on the Switch's hardware. You could not ask for a better portable game than this.
While the game might not be better than its peers, it would fare better if it were judged separately.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd is a love letter for fans, a final send-off for some beloved characters and fitting conclusions to endearing storylines.
Normally, I wouldn't find much charm in the somewhat simple, blocky graphics. The retro look has been done past the point of a trend, to say the least. But having the elements resemble being made from teeny tiny building blocks is so apt for Block'hood: our world is built with piece by piece, block by block, just as the 'Hood is.
For all its mechanical competency, The Surge feels as mechanical as its enemies through most of the experience. No where near enough was done with the science fiction theme, and after catching my attention with an intriguing set up, the game then lost me with a generally dull plot that it was never quite able to claw back.
The end result is a mixed offering, but one that could serve as a fantastic foundation for Coffee Addict Studio to build on in future games.
Outstanding production values, smooth technical features and entertaining romantic entanglements go a long way towards making this Otomate title a pleasure to play; but the lack of overriding originality, and falling back on some of the stock filler props of the VN genre, hold it back from being a truly innovative iteration in the crowded field of stories of players imprisoned in a virtual world. Not every game needs to be innovative, however, to provide thoughtful entertainment, and Period: Cube most certainly provided me with that in good measure.
I'm sure the developers went into NBA Playgrounds with the most noble of intentions, but this game is not the NBA I remembered. This game is one that young me would never have considered to be worth my allowance.
It's not a classic by any means, but it's different, interesting, and often quite clever. This is a developer with a bright future.
I appreciate that the game's also attempting to throw in some bullet hell elements and so on, but it's only middling at that kind of action too. There might be some limited interest in Deathstate for people who like to overcome difficulty spikes, but to be honest, you're better off dusting off that copy of the Gauntlet remake instead.
All in all, it's a generally smooth game let down by its idea of scale.
What Flinthook does do well is keep the variety of enemies, rooms, and environments strong from start to finish, and, generally speaking, the difficulty curve is reasonable. There's always the risk that random elements means a game will take massive momentary spikes in difficulty when you get unlucky and the algorithms work against you. Flinthook avoids that, and progress through the game does feel good, but it struggles to be compelling.
As a spiritual successor to NBA Jam, NBA Playgrounds really does a great job of recreating that zany arcade feeling of streetball two versus two action. As a huge fan of the genre who recalls dropping a lot of quarters into the NBA Jam arcade cabinet when I was younger, I am the target audience for this title. The slick visuals and over-the-top action are a lot of fun, but some inconsistencies in the gameplay and a lack of depth limit this to title to a status of fun filler of must-play hoops action.
In a nutshell, Plasma Puncher is a gorgeous, difficult and sometimes frustrating game. The excellent production values are overshadowed by some minor technical inconsistencies, but while I could spend all day complaining about the small stuff, the real weakness is a lack of gameplay depth.
There's a lot to love about Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War III, especially if you consider yourself an RTS veteran and a fan of the franchise. If you're neither of those things, then you're probably going to find yourself very overwhelmed.
Suffice to say that 3C3C1D119440927 is a lot, lot more than just an arena mode with some costumes attached. It's an insightful look at the very nature of arena modes and games' general obsession with violence, and the perfect epilogue to the greatest game ever made.
Unfortunately, Operation Babel: New Tokyo Legacy just asks too much of its players. An overwhelmingly pointless narrative, coupled with archaic systems and a user interface that tries to fight with the player at every turn make for a game that really drags at times.