TheSixthAxis
HomepageTheSixthAxis's Reviews
Promise Mascot Agency is an excellent game that has a great cast of characters, a chill world to explore, and fun moments sprinkled throughout. You can complete it and get all the achievements or trophies in around 20 hours, but even after the credits roll you may just want to drive around Kaso Machi and take in the vibe of a small town with a big heart.
Like Aa Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a fun spin off that has allowed RGG Studio to indulge in silliness. Majima as a pirate captain is a perfect fit, and the new characters are a good addition. But the actual piracy can quickly become a bit too repetitive and unsatisfying.
For under a fiver and with around five to six hours of content, the Mask of Darkness is practically an essential addition for fans of The Lost Crown. Offering an intense experience; as well as a surprisingly compelling story that fills in many of the blanks from the original game. Recommended.
Many contenders have tried to take the asymmetrical crown from Dead by Daylight, and while Killer Klowns from Outer Space might not necessarily be better than DBD, it's a fun alternative that can stand on its own two (Klown) feet.
Just like its forbear, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is an oppressive, powerful and haunting example of the power of video games, and one that sets its own parameters for what a digital experience can be. It is a game that must be experienced, not least because, there’s nothing else quite like it.
The combination of open-world and supernatural foes has become increasingly wearisome in the last few years, and immediately after playing through Dead Island 2 I wasn’t particularly looking forward to Redfall. However, Arkane Austin should never be underestimated for putting their own spin on a genre, with Redfall offering enough surprises and memorable moments so far to set it apart from the open-world crowd.
All in all, the Dominion Malta DLC adds a welcome batch of extras to your park building inventory, while its campaign mode adds further context to a world where dinosaurs present both a capitalist and a conservationist proposition.
If you enjoyed OlliOlli World’s revival of Roll7’s excellent side-scrolling skateboarding series, then Finding the Flowzone is an easy choice. It’s a bunch more levels, a couple new gameplay ideas, and its heightened challenge lives up to the ‘just one more go’ vibes that has always been at the heart of OlliOlli.
Disney Dreamlight Valley is already proving itself to be a feature-rich and engaging game, with a really addictive "one more quest" feel to it. Once the issues are fixed, and with some more characters added to the game, this could become the best Disney game in years. Now, if you excuse me, I'm off to continue plugging hours into the game until I get Stitch in my valley as they're teased in the loading screens and I want to befriend them.
Having spent a couple hours with the final release of Roller Champions, it’s definitely a future sports game that’s got some juice to it. It’s reductive to say it’s just Roller Derby Rocket League, but that’s also how it’s going to get people’s attention so it can showcase the kinds of skilful play and team-based gaming that could make it a success. Will it stick around for the long-run? Well, for that we’ll just have to wait and see.
Nintendo Switch Sports is a fun reminder of the Wii Sports craze, bringing back some classic sports and adding some new ones that make use of the Joy-Con and motion controls in more advanced ways. It's all just a bit shallow, though, and difficult to wholeheartedly recommend unless you expect to play online a lot or constantly break it out for local head-to-head battles.
The core game’s design is showing its age at this point. Many missions are fun activities sandwiched between needlessly lengthy driving sessions. Seriously, the number of times if makes you drive between Sandy Shores and the main city of Los Santos is ridiculous, or having to follow a plane for a full ten minutes for no real reason before getting to board it. It would feel like padding if this wasn’t already a long game without them. In spite of this, the story and characters can carry you through the rougher parts so you can enjoy the heists and the witty arguments along the way.
As you play more, I’m sure it’s a tonal difference that will fade as you get used to it, but it does slightly undercut what Nintendo are selling and makes it feel like these were intended for another game – Mario Kart Tour, if this suspicion holds true. Then again, it’s hard to complain when there is such a huge wealth of circuits coming to the game through the Booster Pass’ six waves. It’s the gameplay that matters most, and the sheer variety of circuits that Nintendo are throwing into the mix is huge. They’re doubling the amount of tracks in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and it means that I and millions of others are sure to come back to the game and enjoy what it offers all over again.
Royal Court is a pricey expansion, but it helps Crusader Kings 3 take another step toward representing that Game of Thones-ian medieval ruler fantasy. Alongside that the cultural hybridisation and divergence also mean it’s building out the foundations of the actual grand strategy in intriguing ways for the game’s future.
Looking back on the three parts of the Far Cry 6 season pass, it feels like something of a missed opportunity. While the roguelite genre really suited delving into Vaas’ mind, trotting out the exact same format for both Pagan Min and Joseph Seed feels rote, stretching the idea out as a means to an end. It would have taken much greater effort and time for Ubisoft to do so, but mixing up the genres, the structure and approach that each DLC took would have been much more impactful. Still, fans of Far Cry will likely get a kick out of the expanded exploration of each character’s tale.
Long after Nathan Drake hung up his holster for the last time a half decade ago, Uncharted’s legacy still remains. This collection crams two genre-defining prestige hits together – the kind of linear AAA action games we rarely see today.
Pagan: Control is… pretty good. It’s just a bit underwhelming as it retreads the formula from the first DLC, albeit with a different villain to play as that might be more or less to your liking. The roguelite idea seemed to make sense in Vaas’ insane mind, but just doing it again here diminishes some of that novelty. It’s like one good idea is being stretched across more than one DLC.
There’s some good ideas at play here, and it’s competently put together, but so far Rainbow Six Extraction feels fairly flat. The Archaeans simply aren’t all that interesting to fight against, their designs rather bland, and their introduction sitting at odds with what the Rainbow Six and Tom Clancy franchises have been about since the late 90s. It’s an inoffensive tactical co-op that’s good for a few short and sharp missions, but is that enough? We’ll report back soon with our full review.
Valheim’s realism is so apparent that it’s easy to recognize, but not too much so that it would turn those looking for a similar experience to, say, Minecraft, away. Survival games are what you make of them, and that’s the beauty in it.
Strap a baby to your chest, lob some grenades made of out your own urine, deliver a pizza, zipline across America, laugh, cry, die, and then take a nice dip in a hot spring that helps your bowel movements. It’s nuts and it’s still brilliant, but with 60fps and a new gun or two.