WayTooManyGames
HomepageWayTooManyGames's Reviews
If you love Digimon and want to play some great Digimon games, don’t worry: between Cyber Sleuth and Survive, you have more than enough content to satiate your needs on the Switch. Digimon World: Next Order is nowhere near as good, fun, engaging or memorable as these other titles. Sure, it might be a love letter to a PS1 classic (?), but there’s a reason as to why not a single other Digimon World besides that first game had Tamagotchi-based gameplay, it just wasn’t fun.
Peak Blinders: The King’s Ransom gave me a few brief moments that made me smile with happiness, being within that world and its characters. Although, much of that is only because of the things that are ripped right from the show. Unfortunately, it’s every where else that it fails. The boring general gameplay and the one note gunplay wasn’t fun, and it left me with a sour taste, even during the ceremony joining the Peaky Blinders and getting my hat.
For many far of the franchise Fatal Frame Mask of the Lunar Eclipse has been an incredibly long time coming with the first time it’s launched officially outside of Japan. Providing one of the series’ most compelling stories; ambitiously weaving the adventures of four protagonists. Unfortunately, some gameplay issues hold it back from being a true classic. With Fatal Frame finally back in the spotlight there is hope for more.
This is a straightforward recreation of a simple, but addictive Atari game very few people have even heard of. That’s probably why Caverns of Mars: Recharged feels oddly fresh. It feels like the kind of indie roguelike any small team would develop as its first title. It’s also a game that manages to overcome some of its flaws, namely an average presentation and questionable collision detection, by simply being way too addictive, the perfect kind of game to own on a portable.
Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is an absorbing romp that leaves you dumbfounded. You could say there’s not nearly enough banter, and indeed a character or two that are forgettable, but those that get attention surely shine. If you’re someone that thinks reading in video games is lame, the Visual Novel genre isn’t for you. I won’t sugarcoat it; that’s the bread of butter and why these titles enamour me and so many.
Once you get used to the controls in the Story mode, skip towards the game’s sandbox mode. With little to no stakes or objectives, Hotel Renovator quickly becomes a relaxing game to be enjoyed while listening to music or a podcast, as the game itself barely has any music to begin with. That’s the bizarre magic behind games like this one and House Flipper. They are beyond flawed, buggy, messy, not very intuitive, but there’s an inexplicably relaxing gameplay loop in the middle of all this mess.
Personally, I might revisit Pronty at some point in the future, but it simply won’t bubble to the front of 2023 as the forerunner for what game I would want to play. It’s classy, it’s structurally sound, but I feel like I’ve been down this road several times and it doesn’t have anything that sticks out as a “one more time” moment. Perhaps others will enjoy their voyage under the sea, but I had to surface, pronto.
Return to Dream Land Deluxe has a lot baked in, but I would have rather that Magolor’s quest launch as a separate game, and then had Dream Land Deluxe be a forty dollar standalone with the option to DLC Magolor in if it meant that much to people. We’ve seen what Kirby can be, and yes, the next “new” Kirby game probably will be. But this is what we’ve gotten this year, and I have to call it like it is. It’s cute, it’s fun, and it makes my family happy. It’s just slightly overvaluing its own worth to make it a solid purchase at the time, and that, like Kirby, sucks.
The cover system is absolutely fantastic and just works as described. The level of destruction and interactability with the environment is something every RTS should have. It launched with two full campaigns as well, even if I much prefer the mission based one to the Total War knockoff. The biggest issue I have with the game is how unbalanced and limited the Multiplayer feels in its current state. There’s also a total lack of Multiplayer progression, which feels like a weird omission for an RTS title. Still, there’s nothing broken here that can’t be fixed, and while I’m really getting tired of playing unfinished games, at least the foundation here is incredibly solid and fun.
This game is unbelievably silly, almost to a surrealistic degree, but man, it works. Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star is a fun mixture between a workout session you can take with you on-the-go and a fun homage to one of Japan’s most famous franchises ever. It looks the part, sounds the part, and its controls are way more reliable than I was expecting.
Even if I didn’t care at all about its plot, and there were a handful of issues with its gameplay, namely feature creep, I played it for hours and hours. The brilliant mixture of Nioh, Sekiro, Bloodborne, and even a bit of Battlefield resulted in a game that feels familiar and fresh at the same time, and one of the most exciting action RPGs released in recent memory.
It is an ungodly flawed game in need of some patches, without a doubt. Some of its design choices are questionable, to say the least. Yet, somehow, I still liked Clive ‘N’ Wrench way more than expected. By no means was this up to par with some of the other love letters to the collectathon genre released over the past decade, but its charm and creativity somewhat outweighed its cons.
Scars Above impressed me and it left me satisfied in the end. I’m glad it didn’t just try to be Returnal or a straight roguelite, and instead had its own unique ideas on how to take on bosses and puzzles. There are some flaws here, but I think that is due mostly to a smaller team and it being an AA game.
It might have a compelling concept, but a good premise just isn’t enough to carry an adventure by itself. The game suffers from really lacklustre visuals and a gameplay loop that just left a lot to be desired by the end of its runtime. A bit disappointing, considering how solid its predecessor was.
So this basically ends up being the typical licensed game that feels like a godsend to fans of the franchise in question, but is a cautionary purchase for everyone else. Gigantosaurus: Dino Kart is easily 3DClouds’ best attempt at a kid-friendly racing game, and it has enough mechanics to make it feel like the perfect introductory racing title for your kids before you teach them about the horrific tale of the Blue Shell, but it’s a bit too brief in terms of content.
I get that this review, when taking the pure scoreboard statistics out of context, sounds overly harsh. Please allow me, then, to add the context. When you take simple toy avatars, drop them in a child’s playset, introduce catchy music and a theme song that gets stuck in your head, and you deliver simple and repetitive gameplay, all in two minute long levels that keep you moving along, then something wacky happens. You end up with something extremely fun. You end up with What the Bat?.
The classic case of a jack of all trades, master of none. I also have to commend the developers for a truly gorgeous presentation, decent tutorial and a user interface that isn’t half-bad, despite being made with a largely forgettable gameplay loop in mind. We have enough city builders and strategy games out there right now. Just get one of each and enjoy their vastly different purposes. You don’t need a game trying to be both at the same time.
With that being said, this is not bad DLC. Far from it. This is the perfect kind of content I’d want from a PowerWash Simulator crossover expansion. The Midgar Special Pack uses the base game’s inexplicably appealing gameplay loop as a foundation for players to immerse themselves into some extra Final Fantasy VII content. It’s lengthy enough, giving fans of both franchises more of what they love, be it some healthy doses of fan service or just more horrendously dirty machinery to clean up.
Sure, a full-fledged remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin! would have been the better deal, but finally being able to play a localized version of this ludicrous Yakuza spinoff is still great. Even though it’s a bit dated for those used to the Dragon Engine, the controls are still excellent, the sheer amount of content is staggering, and the combat styles at your disposal are some of the best the franchise has ever seen. This is what we’ve been asking for years, and Sega delivered. I can’t complain that much.
Backbone was already a compelling game, but after gaining some insight into some of its main characters, it has been elevated to a new level because of the existence of Tails: The Backbone Preludes. Now if we could get a proper sequel to finally wrap up some of the loose ends in Backbone, fans will be elated. I am ready to have my heart ripped out yet again.