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Earthion is a pretty good horizontal shooter.. but that’s basically it. You’ve played dozens, maybe hundreds of similar games released since the early 90s. What might make it stand out a bit is the fact it’s got a TRULY FANTASTIC score by Yuzo Koshiro, and was developed by his own studio, but this is just another shooter in a genre where there’s little room for innovation or improvements, especially when you consider the fact it was developed with the limitations of the Mega Drive in mind.
Overall, with that one odd exception, Fiz and the Rainbow Planet is a great example of a snack video game that’ll be a fun jaunt for fans of pixel art and platformers. The cohesion is solid, I enjoyed how the characters interacted, and nothing particularly crazy happened with play or controls.
Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is a great new adventure that ambitiously combines the genre’s traditional elements with a bit of action, a healthy dose of puzzles, and a great presentation, reminiscent of my other favourite stealth franchises. Without a doubt, its cinematics and sound design stole the show. Even though not all of its elements stuck to the landing, with it occasionally feeling like it could have achieved more with such potential, it felt like an incredible start to a brand new world to explore, and I hope this isn’t the last we see from the town of Eriksholm.
The concept is tepid at best, the graphics are generically cute and the delivery is just a mess of a golden goose situation. The day to day on the free version is hatefully slow, and, once you drop the ten bucks, you’re just turned loose with no sense of accomplishment to help you along. There’s no middle ground between “drip feed content” and “whatever, here’s a bucket.” This is the biggest brand in the world, and Pokémon Friends lashes out at each and every fan to say “you’ll pay us because we expect you to, so pony up.” Don’t be surprised for the Pokémon Center to start selling these yarn versions in the next two months, and for them to be thirty dollars a pop. I knew you were in it for the money, Pokémon Company, but this is disgusting, even for you.
If you want to ask me if this is the first true reason to own a Switch 2, then my answer is a resounding yes. This is the first game that made me cherish the brand new system as more than just a phone-esque upgrade. It’s the kind of game that showcases a system’s capabilities, and a company’s creative prowess still going strong after all these years. Not everything sticks the landing, but the pros overwhelmingly outweigh the cons, and that’s what really matters.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is everything I would have wanted from a sequel. An emotionally charged story that fully leverages the franchise’s potential, whilst iterating and fixing some gameplay issues that make it a much more digestible and thrilling experience. In many ways, it finally feels like the true successor to Metal Gear Solid.
The Alters is a one-of-kind game that immediately hooked me and didn’t let go. Despite some learning curves and occasional difficulty spikes, the game is ridiculously enthralling and addictive the whole way through. The blending of genres, from survival to base management, to branching narrative paths, shouldn’t work as well as it does, but here we are. The Alters is a remarkable, truly unique game that I can’t recommend highly enough.
The long story short is that, sure, it might have some issues, and the emphasis on battling might put some people off, but the sum of its parts is what really matters, and it’s great, very much worth your attention. There are small segments in between that do take away from the experience, but they’re simply not long enough segments, or often enough to take a massive amount away from the enjoyment of the game.
At first, I wasn’t expecting a lot from Luto. I had (wrongfully) assumed it would have been just yet another P.T. clone doing nothing more than satiating our thirst for anything vaguely resembling what Silent Hills “could have been”. Thankfully, my expectations were subverted. This is a wholly unique experience that managed to pull me intro its (very weird) world. It’s not the most terrifying or challenging of horror games, but it was a great slow burn, one I can easily recommend to horror fans out there.
If all you’re looking for is a quick arcadey game based on Hunter x Hunter, then sure, I guess Hunter × Hunter: Nen × Impact is exactly what you’ve been waiting for. Technically speaking, it’s a sound game. It looks great, runs smoothly, it’s got some decent voice acting, and the controls are decent. What hurts is that the game is way too expensive for what little it offers in terms of modes and its current fighting roster.
Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson features an adorable premise, great presentation, and most importantly, an amazing combat system. The latter is a godsend, as the game will somewhat force you to grind a bit on goons and menial enemies before you’re actually able to defeat its bosses, which act like borderline unfair roadblocks. Still, there’s no way I cannot recommend this game. It’s fun, it’s original, and it’s about defeating evil record label executives with your instrument-shaped weapons. How would I even be able to not like it?
It’s not that Tron: Catalyst is a disastrous game plagued by bugs, poor design choices, and technical hindrances. Nah. Technically-speaking, it’s all sorted out, and the presentation is, at least, quite good. The cycle rewind system is also a fantastic idea, reverting me back to the good old Majora’s Mask days. But it’s just a painfully boring game, as PLAYING it isn’t very interesting. You can put the blame on the crappy combat system, and the fact this is probably the least exciting Light Cycle implementation in any Tron game – nay, product in general, period.
Even if you’ve never touched AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES in any capacity previously, this is a solid entrypoint that might even be better thanks to pacing and plenty of extra reading to catch up on previous events. It’s captivating, it’s complex, and it’s riddled with intrigue and mystery. The moments you live are the moments you remember, and, though he is exhausted from lack of sleep, Kaname Date very much feels alive.
If you are all in on Bustafellows already, if you adored CollarXMalice or Code:Realize and can pick up the general information, then you’re in good company. Bustafellows: season2 has plenty of excellent voice acting, quirky romance beats and a couple of great developments that made me appreciate Shu so much more than the first title. But if you’re coming into otome games or visual novels in general, this is not a great place to start.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 is more of the same in a way, but is that exactly a bad thing? The previous remake collection showcased how to revive these games with a brand new presentation, and this sequel follows the same premise, whilst also trying to adapt Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 into a gameplay loop it wasn’t originally designed for. The results are still good, don’t get me wrong, but you’ll need some time getting used to its new format. Nevertheless, there’s no way I can or should complain about this lovely nostalgia nuke.
Overall there’s quite a lot of fun to be had with Survival Kids whether it’s solo or with friends. It’s a lot less frustrating than something like Overcooked to play with your significant other, but it’s a bit more of a “game” so it might take them longer to comprehend exactly what to do and how to play, but still a better option for these kinds of relationships than something like Split Fiction.
Rematch can either be one of the most entertaining experiences of the year, or one of its biggest disappointments, depending on your skill level. If you master its mechanics, get used to its camera, and be lucky enough to end up in a synergetic team, then boy oh boy, this thing works like a beauty. If not, this will easily become an exercise in frustration.
In theory, I should have liked this. Music Drive: Chase the Beat has some really good ideas in terms of setting and theming, and I even liked how it constantly reminded me of games like old-school Driver, but its execution ended up being a massive disappointment. Its gameplay loop was way too simplistic and uninteresting to justify having to play levels over and over again in order to unlock more content. I had fun with it for about twenty minutes or so before becoming bored and fed up with what little it had to offer.
Overall, Irem Collection Volume 3 is charming and fun, but it really doesn’t bring anything groundbreaking to the table. These aren’t the classics you would recognize, nor would I call them undiscovered gems that never got localized. It’s a good preservation, but, after your curiosity is slaked, you may never find yourself opening them up to play again. But at least you have the option, and that, more than anything, is the purpose of keeping these titles alive.
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour‘s biggest problem isn’t even the fact you gotta shell out some cash in order to experience it. The problem is that, sadly, it is an incredibly lame title, with just a few memorable minigames which aren’t enough to make me forget about the sheer amount of befuddling quiz sections, annoying collectathon mechanics, and the overall sensation that you are not playing a game per se, you feel like you’re witnessing the company patting itself on the back with this brand new system.