USgamer's Reviews
Like Roll7's first game, Not a Hero is light on overall mechanics: It's a cover-based side-scrolling shooter stripped down to its bare minimum. That helps the game rip along, as you and the BunnyLord slide and murder your way into power. The humor may fall flat for some and there's a bit of repetition, but Not a Hero is a ton of fun.
Project CARS features an excellent roster of cars and tracks, and delivers some of the most exciting and visceral racing action money can buy. It's not for everyone, since driving the game can be quite tough, even with all the assists turned on, but for those who are up for a challenge, few other racing games are as involving and potentially rewarding as this.
Smaller in scale than last year's epic adventure, The Old Blood treads familiar, blood-soaked ground and doesn't offer much in the way of new ideas. However, it's very well produced, has some great moments of dialog, and offers a load of Nazi-slaughtering action that's somewhat relentless, but still plenty entertaining.
Record Breaker improves on the original version of Devil Survivor 2 in every respect. Anyone who passed it over the first time around, in the dying days of the DS, absolutely needs to give it a look. Veteran players should give it a thought, too, despite its premium price — the new material is substantial, and you can jump immediately into the Triangulum chapter. In all, this is a hefty and well-crafted RPG, and it puts a great spin on the time-tested rules of MegaTen.
Together, Broken Age Acts 1 and 2 make a solid game that players will look back on fondly. Unfortunately, the second act doesn't live up to the promise of the first. Themes are dropped, puzzles seem a bit more obtuse, and the environments feel like a retread of the first act.
A great concept that's well executed in terms of the way it combines music and movement. It's certainly fun, but the game is short, and its difficulty level is very steep indeed.
A good-looking, minimalist twin stick shooter that delivers intense, if somewhat repetitive action at a price that feels a little too steep.
An enjoyable, randomly generated FPS romp that's surprisingly addictive. Despite being priced perhaps a little high, and occasionally exhibiting some slowdown and minor glitches, Ziggurat offers many hours of potential entertainment for those willing to take up its considerable challenge.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China features some great stealth gameplay reminiscent of Klei Entertainment's Mark of the Ninja. Unfortunately, the mechanics lack more depth and grow tired by time you reach the end of your quest. Ubisoft also misses the opportunity to tell a bigger story. Worth playing, but Shao Jun deserves better.
Don't let its browser game roots mislead you: Westerado is a rich and creative game that opens itself up to plenty of different approaches. If you need something to pass the time in our current gaming drought, consider picking up this Old West experience told through chunky pixels.
While it doesn't do much to satisfy adult players, Mario Party 10 isn't really meant to. It aims to be a chaotic, haphazard mess targeted toward kids, and it succeeds on that front in large part because Bowser Mode rewards them for being a complete jerk to everyone else. It definitely could use some fine-tuning, however, even bearing its unrepentant commitment to insanity in mind. Amiibo integration is haphazard at best, and the board game metagame breaks down the same way real board games do. Reasonably fun, and definitely more fun the younger you are.
Titan Souls is one great idea: all the boss battles with nothing getting in the way. All you have is a bow, an arrow, and your trusty dodge roll. It takes one hit to kill your foes and one hit for them to kill you. Titan Souls is a solid game that doesn't overstay its welcome, even if it feels like your skill might not be involved in every kill.
If you want to test your FPS skills, Tower of Guns throws down a tough and engaging challenge that's best enjoyed in short bursts.
Mortal Kombat X offers everything a fan could ask from except possibly their favorite character. The graphics and animations received a huge boost thanks to the power of the new consoles, and while not perfect, the net code is vastly improved over previous NetherRealm fighting games. The story mode has been streamlined to make it shorter, but it still retains the cinematic flare fans have come to expect. Faction Wars add an additional layer of polish, even if they aren't as impactful as NetherRealm intended, and Test Your Luck will provide hours of fun for more casual players.
Xenoblade Chronicles is an above-average RPG hamstrung by a really bad port. From the muddy visuals to the barebones interface, it's hardly a visual showcase for the New 3DS. It has merit, and its best qualities still manage to shine through on the small screen, but it's definitely not the optimal way to enjoy one of the more celebrated RPGs of the last generation.
From Software once raised the bar for game design; now, they've done the same for HD remakes. Rest assured, this isn't just a lazy repackaging of old content. Even if you know the Kingdom of Drangleic like the back of your hand, you're in for many new surprises. And if you've never played Dark Souls II before, your patience has paid off: This is simply the best version of it you'll ever play.
A retro-feeling throwback to the days of arcade baseball games. It offers simple, basic fun, but the pitching and hitting just doesn't feel robust enough to appeal to anyone other than the most casual of baseball fans.
While it offers enough familiar touchstones to appeal to fans of both Etrian Odyssey and Mystery Dungeon, EMD manages to establish its own distinct style... enough so that it should appeal to players who couldn't quite get into either of those franchises on their own. With tons of content and a similarly expansive level of challenge, it quite impressively sidesteps the tendency of Mystery Dungeon spinoffs to feel slight and insubstantial. Admittedly, there's no shortage of either Etrian or Mystery Dungeon games these days, but this combination of the two deserves a look on its own merits.
If you crave a digestible and portable puzzle-based diversion, look no further than HAL's Box Boy. Its outright friendliness helps combat the patience-testing nature of most puzzle games, and those minutes-long levels allow players to make some degree of progress, even if they don't have much time to spare. Box Boy might not change the world, but even so, it's refreshing to see a big developer like HAL take a gamble on such a quirky little experiment.
MLB 15: The Show doesn't bring a lot of really impressive upgrades to the table, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a really good baseball sim. I'm consistently impressed by its strong physics engine, the attention to detail afforded the stadiums, and the tight design of Road to the Show. If you have even a passing interest in baseball, you owe it to yourself to play MLB: The Show at least once.