Doublejump's Reviews
It’s not as bad as people are making it out to be, but pacing issues, a lack of innovation in combat and storytelling well below Naughty Dog’s usual standard ensure that The Last of Us Part II doesn’t come close to its predecessor’s greatness.
A short and sickly sweet adventure puzzler that drips with originality and creative passion for perfect game design, Neversong is a fantastical nightmare journey that’ll surely leave you wanting more.
There is very little in this world that’s better than a good story that’s told well, and Necrobarista is a beautiful story told perfectly. Its cast of charming characters, great audio and visual design and the very Melbourne aesthetic all weave together to make something you shouldn’t miss.
Carrion is the opposite of its titular character: slickly presented, polished to a shine and great fun to hang out with. The flashes of tedium and repetition are there, but some decent pacing and consistent progression – along with just how satisfying the carrion beast is to fling around a room – really drown out the minor complaints. It’s definitely worth a spin for a gory good time.
Ghost of Tsushima is a strong farewell for the PlayStation 4. It does fall victim to some of the traps we’ve seen in other open-world games of its ilk, but its engrossing combat, strong sense of progression and well-crafted narrative make it an experience that open-world fans — or those interested in what it has to offer — are sure to enjoy.
Fight Crab is rough and ugly, but it’s charming nonetheless. It embraces the sheer fun of fighting games in a way that I hope we see more of in future.
UnderMine is exceedingly well done for an early access title and deserves just as much fanfare as other big established roguelikes now that it’s a full release. Impressively, it has a complete feature set and seems to be ready for a bright future, quite unlike the mines it’s set in.
SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE is a fun action-FPS that feels limited in its execution; it makes some fantastic additions to the core SUPERHOT experience, but a poorly-executed step away from the original’s intentionally, meticulously crafted level design ultimately hurts the game’s replayability.
In its current state, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is funny, thrilling and a joy to play, but as with many games like it, future content will be key in deciding whether it’s a long-term success like Fortnite and Rocket League. For now, though, anyone with a PlayStation Plus subscription would be doing themselves a disservice to not at least check it out — and those on other platforms are sure to get a fair bit of fun out of it as well.
Boomerang Fu delivers a deliciously smooth combat experience that begs to be shared with friends and family, serving fun and chaos in heaping amounts that will definitely bring you back for seconds and thirds.
As a retelling of three of Franz Kafka’s best-known works, Metamorphosis has a lot to live up to and it does so quite well. It will leave you wanting a little more after your playthrough, but the gameplay, visuals and genuine attention to detail are extremely impressive nonetheless.
Mortal Shell takes the best elements of the “Souls-like” genre and refines them into a compact game that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Although A Short Hike is — as the name suggests — a rather short game, its combination of humour and emotion captures the player in a way that many AAA games fail to. If you’ve got a spare $10 and a couple of hours to kill, definitely pick up A Short Hike for the Nintendo Switch!
An excellent, original game experience that you should be furious that you didn’t know about, MO:Astray offers a blend of intrigue, fun and complexity that is few and far between in games of any genre.
If you’re looking for a short distraction from life, you could do worse than this bright and colourful dating sim that, while it falls short of its potential, delivers a pleasingly diverse cast of characters and cute dogs.
While the prospect of a multiplayer Avengers game is ripe with potential, Marvel’s Avengers is an experience stuck between two worlds. While its campaign is worth experiencing if you’re a fan, it’s hard to deny that the combat, gearing system, and presentation values are underbaked, leaving the core experience uninteresting and flat.
Adventures of Pip basks in its unoriginality. A love letter to old-school platformers, it manages to be a delightful romp with charming music and tight controls. Developer Tic Toc Games could have done more with its resolution-swapping hero, but it’s a fun time regardless — and definitely worth experiencing for the first time on the Switch.
Kingdoms of Amalur’s remaster did little to change the game: the combat and character progression are as timeless as ever, but everything else is still eight years old.
Vaporum: Lockdown offers a well-made, compact dungeon crawling experience with enough content to keep any RPG fan interested — it’s just a shame that it does so little to stand out amidst its peers.
Super Mario 3D All-Stars doesn’t exactly go overboard on making its selection of games seem overly new, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that three of the greatest 3D platformers of all time have come together in one star-studded collection.