TheSixthAxis
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I'm really surprised just how much I enjoyed Sky Force Reloaded, the first time I loaded it up I was playing it for five hours non-stop and at no point was I bored. Adding grind to a shoot 'em up sounds terrible but it's a genius idea to counter the shoot 'em up's traditionally short playtime. By adding the challenges, the act of replaying a level twenty or more times never gets boring. I am now going to bestow on Sky Force the highest honour I can give it: It reminds me of SWIV.
League of War: VR Arena isn't a badly made game – it's well presented and looks pleasing enough in VR – but it's very, very, limited. Play the game for twenty minutes and you will have seen almost everything. There is almost no strategy and half the time you can win by picking units up as fast as they are produced and throwing them onto the battlefield. Porting the simple mechanics of a mobile game to consoles rarely works, even if you add a nice shiny VR element. A missed opportunity.
I'm still very much enjoying Batman: The Enemy Within, and the way Telltale are forcing Bruce Wayne out of his punchy vigilante comfort zone
Outcast: Second Contact is an eighteen year old game that's been given a makeover. This is absolutely fine if you're a fan of the original and want to play it again on modern hardware, but if you don't have the nostalgia quality there's absolutely nothing that you won't find here that's done far better elsewhere. For a steep price tag of £39.99 on PS4, that's just not good enough.
Deep into yet another playthrough, I'm eager to explore Skyrim now than I have ever been before. Bethesda has proven yet again that there's still more life in its fantasy flagship. More importantly, it's proven that traditional games, no matter how big, can work in VR.
Knowledge is Power makes good use of PlayLink to open the door to those more familiar with tapping on phones and browsing the internet than knowing where that Square button is meant to be, and that's its real strength. Outside of that, it has a few other ideas, but ends up as a fairly middle of the road quiz game that's easy enough to put on the telly and your phones for a quick test of knowledge.
There's some good ideas in how PlayLink can be used to let a group of players (and non-gamers in particular) join together and shape a filmic story, but the actual interface feels clumsy, and the story and scripting leaves plenty to be desired. It's safe to say that Hidden Agenda is an obvious disappointment.
If you like charming platformers then Wuppo may just be for you. The game offers a fun, though at times frustrating experience with a number of challenges to overcome. The world of Wuppo is quite unlike any other and filled with a lot of neat little touches, and though the story may be predictable it is well-told, likeable and easy to pick up.
The easily outrun and overly simplistic combat is a major blow that Road Rage never manages to recover from. The basic open world design, ugly visuals, and various bugs become harder to tolerate knowing just how deeply unfulfilling the core gameplay is, even when you factor in the budget price tag.
If the combat were just a touch more dynamic, Hand of Fate 2 would be essential. As it stands, it's still a great sequel and perfect for anyone wanting the thrills of an RPG without feeling loss. Defiant constantly prod players into the unknown and the results are always fun and rewarding.
A Hat in Time has certainly been well worth the wait, and is easily recommended to platformer fans across all formats. It sits nicely alongside Yooka-Laylee and offers a different take on the N64 nostalgia that both titles share. It's unlikely to knock Mario off his perch as king of the 3D platformers, but it is a more than acceptable pretender to the crown. It also has a central antagonist called Moustache Girl who is a girl with a bushy moustache. A Hat in Time opens up to be a real standout in the recent renaissance of the 3D platform game.
Being able to take this huge adventure with you everywhere you go is fantastic, and, if you thought that Skyrim took over your life before, now it actually can.
The most important thing about Rocket League on Nintendo Switch is that it feels like Rocket League.
While a fun distraction, there's little to recommend wholeheartedly when it comes to Kirby: Battle Royale. Its mini-games are well designed, but with a short Story Mode and limited replay value for its other modes, it becomes clear that this is not a stellar addition to an already bulging line-up. Kirby fans are probably better off saving for a Switch as the pink puffball is heading there next year.
Despite it's flaws, I still found Need for Speed: Payback quite a likeable arcade racer. Just having a narrative sets it apart from the other, more serious offerings this year, even if it's not delivered with much panache. Sadly it's attractive visuals, and alternate take on the genre, can't disguise a gamut of poor design decisions, some of which serve to make the enjoyable racing less than enjoyable.
If you can look past the steep difficulty curves, unimpressive visuals and unwieldy controls, then you will find a deep and compelling historical strategy experience that will keep you engaged for many weeks.
Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 is a fantastic Lego game. A fun narrative, a list of well-known characters a mile long, and further refinement on the series' classic gameplay mark this out as the best Lego game yet. Admittedly, it's still another game in a well-trodden franchise, and one which doesn't reinvent the (plastic) wheel, but few brands can claim the consistent quality on show here.
Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon surpassed my expectations. There were things overly familiar in more ways than one, but it's not fully covering old ground. Plenty of new features and details will make fans of the franchise very happy and while I still mourn for the DexNav to this day, the new content is well worth becoming Alolan Champion once more.
Having flirted with the dark side in the run up to launch, Star Wars Battlefront II has had its reputation sullied by its underlying business model and how that is tied to character progression. That distracts from how much it improves on the first game though, with much better variety in Galactic and Starfighter Assault, character classes and team play being gently encouraged, and a broader and deeper player progression.
I was so ready for an action RPG entry in the Neptunia series to come along and scratch my itch, but instead it puked on my lap and barely touched the itch. I had so much fun with the story and characters, but with better combat and more consistent performance, this game could've been something special.