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Blasphemous 2 is a brilliant follow-up to its iconic predecessor. The combat has been improved from the original, and features new weapons and skills to better customize the gameplay to different playstyles.
I found Verne: The Shape of Fantasy to be a somewhat bland experience. This is especially disheartening because the premise was so creative. To me, it just didn’t live up to its potential. The story was too slow and predictable, and the gameplay was either too easy or too frustrating. To give credit where credit is due, it is a beautiful game, and I enjoyed learning more about Jules Verne, even if it didn’t necessarily add to the story.
I Expect You To Die 3: Cog in the Machine really hammers home just how great this series is and that there is still so much they can do with the formula. It’s the third game in and not a single aspect feels repetitive, stale, or tedious. Schell Games continues to push themselves and the series forward with great new ideas, more demanding puzzles, and better visuals.
It is quite punitive with its harsh sanity setbacks, tough enemies and slow-paced gameplay. Nevertheless, it covers a particular niche, and after waiting for it for what felt like an eternity, I’m pleased to see that the folks at Covenant.dev have successfully managed to come up with one of the most interesting strategy games in recent memory, even if it’s not one of the more entertaining ones.
Remnant II is exactly what I was looking for. A straightforward soulslike shooter, that takes everything that made the predecessor work and fixed the few things that didn’t. The plot may still be a bit thin, but exploring the interesting worlds and fighting the bosses to get some great loot has been one of this year’s best experiences.
This is possibly the best remastering effort by Nightdive I have ever seen. This isn’t just “a means to play Quake II on modern platforms”. Just like how a remaster should be, it is the ultimate way to play Quake II, the one version to rule above any other, the port that makes every single previously released iteration feel like unplayable garbage as a comparison.
Gravity Circuit is one of the best Mega Man-esque retro platformers released in recent memory, even if we aren’t so desperate for new games stemming from Capcom or lookalikes as we were back in 2016. This is everything Mighty No. 9 wanted to be, but failed to deliver: it looks the part, it sounds great, controls like a dream, it’s brutally challenging, and most importantly, it still manages to stand out on its own, all thanks to some excellent art direction and a handful of unique elements.
Overall, Bright Lights of Svetlov was an interesting, albeit short experience, taking only a little over an hour or so to complete. It wasn’t exactly a “fun” pasttime, but more of a simple but impactful story worth unveiling, all backed by some serene visuals and atmosphere. Despite its limited runtime, I would still recommend picking this game up, but maybe wait for a small discount further down the line.
The looks, the sounds, the modern control use, the light touches of humor, Legend Bowl really does deliver on the past. It just doesn’t do enough to make the past match my nostalgia for it.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Venba, even more than I was anticipating. I expected a laid-back cooking sim, but what I got was a deeply moving narrative about generational struggles with immigration and creating a home for yourself in an unfamiliar land. Solving the puzzles of the missing steps in each recipe is surprisingly fun as well. Even though it’s a short experience, taking only about two hours to complete, it still a journey worth taking.
There’s little else that needs to be said, or can be said, given how simplistic Astro Flame: Starfighter is. Just like its predecessor, it’s a simple, somewhat generic, but surprisingly fun bullet hell shooter. Even if it’s not particularly interesting to look at, much less innovative (if anything, it only slightly manages to stand out from I, AI), it got the job done with its level of polish, great controls, and addictive upgrade system.
There being now waypoints in the sidequests brought the score down considerably. If I’m relegated to just stomping around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to find whoever I’m looking for, it’s boring. I have to wonder why more effort wasn’t put towards modernizing Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed, and making it the true definitive edition.
It is a game with an amazing foundation, an excellent usage of the PSVR2’s features, and really fun gameplay, and it leave me wanting more. It was all too brief. I am definitely looking forward to whatever nDreams decides to do in the feature, and I absolutely recommend grabbing Synapse up as one of the must-have titles on the PSVR2’s evergrowing and ever impressive library.
Watching demons’ guts fly through the air is fun at first, but the repetitive encounters, poor presentation, bad framerate and minuscule scope all make Demonic Supremacy feel underwhelming. It’s the poster child of the saturation of the retro-styled first person shooter genre, being lackluster in terms of vision, presentation, polish, and gameplay.
I get that Flutter Away was made with the best of intentions, but I can’t, for the life of me, even begin to question who is this for. This feels less like a game and more like a competent student project, lasting for about an hour, meant to showcase some mechanics and some cute visuals. As a game, however, I just don’t see its appeal. There is no catharsis, no semblance of a challenge, no rewarding for complete its mundane objectives.
I liked the concept behind Ninja or Die, and even though I just ended up feeling lukewarm towards it, some of its biggest issues can be mitigated with some patches and some extra content. As of now, dealing with glitchy controls and unfair level design makes this game a hard sell, but there is potential in this idea. It’s a really innovative roguelike, one that looks decent and makes you feel really cool once everything clicks.
It’s been ten years since Pikmin 3 and twenty-two years since the original game. While it might not be a household name, Pikmin is one of Nintendo’s most consistent titles. Each game gets better and better, but might be overlooked simply because of the look or design of the characters. Given all four games are now available on Nintendo Switch, if you have any interest in the series, what’s a better time since it all culminates in the best game in the series, Pikmin 4.
Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara is, sadly, just another bog standard 3D platformer that does very little to stand out from the deluge of platformers available on the Switch. Not featuring the same gameplay loop as its predecessor makes it a hard sell for fans of Summer in Mara, and being so canonically tied to a farming simulator also makes it a hard sell for platformer enthusiasts looking for another hidden gem on the Nintendo Switch. Add in average-at-best visuals, music and level design, and what you get as a result is just a very middle-of-the-road game that fails to appeal to anyone.
I personally wouldn’t return to this game in the future, even if they do manage to bring over the Japanese audio so it doesn’t sound like a 70s martial arts dub. The amount of detail is intense, the campaigns are especially long, and the exceptional animated sequences are few and far between from simply staring at a small map and even smaller menus to do a multitude of tasks. This game is definitely for someone, and, if you’re even remotely interested in Japanese history, this is an incredible feat of a title. But it’s too big of an ask for too little of a reward.
Would I have preferred a brand new iteration of Advance Wars or a collection that didn’t cost sixty bucks? Of course. I have my qualms regarding the pricing and the visuals, but one thing’s for certain: this is still Advance Wars, and it’s still addictive. The return of the map creator and online matches ensure this collection’s lasting appeal goes beyond the duration of its two already entertaining campaigns.