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This is easily one of the most pleasant VR surprises of the year. Considering its minuscule price tag, I thought Shock Troops was going to be one of those really short, “one and done” VR experiences that come out every other week on the Quest or PSVR. How wrong I was! Thanks to some pretty solid controls, an excellent premise, and a surprisingly lengthy campaign, this is one of the best VR shooters you can find on the Quest 2 right now.
As a whole, I wouldn’t say Strange Horticulture is a bad game, just somewhat disappointing. I can see the appeal, but it’s honestly often boring. There are some truly great ideas in here, but nowhere near enough to combat the game’s tediously repetitive main gameplay loop. Having more puzzles, riddles, and even a few more visible environments I feel could have made Strange Horticulture a true gem of an indie game.
At the end of the day, XEL is a game that is competent, has some good ideas, and enough gameplay elements to keep you playing. The sound design is well done and I do enjoy the simplistic art direction and its bright, popping color pallet. Unfortunately, it’s a game that just needed more time in the oven to hammer out the bugs and glitches that really hold this back. There are some good ideas here, but the annoyances almost outweighed what it does do well.
DreadOut 2 isn’t necessarily a good game, but it’s got its charms. The combat is clunky and slow, explorations can be needlessly vague, and it’s not graphically impressive to say the least. That being said, it does still have some good ideas that make it somewhat entertaining. If you want to play a low budget horror title, I would highly recommend checking out the original DreadOut first and if you like that give the second one a shot. Otherwise DreadOut 2 doesn’t offer anything terribly interesting.
Krut: The Mythic Wings is not a downright awful game. Out of so many games released in 2022, it’s nowhere near as infuriating as crap like Postal 4 and Destroy All Humans! – Clone Carnage. It has some interesting ideas and I like its premise, but this is a textbook example of a game completely devoid of redeeming factors when it comes to its execution. Average-at-best visuals, a weak framerate, no interesting sound capabilities to speak of, and a really poor combat system all result in a very harmless yet underwhelming experience.
Cloud Gardens is a casual, laid-back, puzzle-solving experience. That being said, it’s not the type of game that you will want to play for hours on end, but it’s entertaining in short spurts. It offers over one hundred levels, which sounds impressive, but bear in mind that many of the assets are constantly reused, making levels feel tedious after a while. This makes it ideal for a system like the Switch, where you can pick it up and play here and there on-the-go.
This is the kind of game I wish was more common. I got hooked on Lord Winklebottom Investigates for its utterly nonsensical premise, impressive plot, and barrage of chuckle-worthy jokes and puns, the kind of British humor not often seen in today’s gaming scene. Even though it’s your typical “one and done” kind of adventure game, and its gameplay could have received a handful of improvements, I had a great time with it. I got way more involved in a game featuring a giraffe wearing a god damn monocle than I could have ever imagined.
The final question: does Elden Ring hold up after nearly half a year? Yes. Is it still the best game of 2022, after the barrage of titles we’ve seen from March to July? Absolutely. That initial buzz may have died out a bit, but I’d have to be insane not to call it one of the most impressive games I’ve played in years, and most importantly, FromSoftware’s greatest title of all time. It’s as special now as it was back when it dropped onto the world like a nuke.
The Origin: Blind Maid is further proof that having great ideas for a game is just 50% of what makes it a banger. If you can’t deliver on your vision, all you’ll have to offer is a disappoint game that will reek of “what could have been”. The ideas are there, the ambition is laudable, but the execution left much to be desired.
If you are a fan of musou games then you probably already have this one on the myriad of consoles it had been ported over the years. However if this is your first time, or you’re looking for some titles for your brand new Steam Deck (where it ended up fitting surprisingly well, glitches aside), then Warriors Orochi 3 provides a solid entry point for the genre. It provides players with dozens upon dozens of hours of content to dig into the button mashing genre of musou.
Coromon is a quaint journey full of fun, smiles, and kick-ass evolutionary forms. Nothing is offensive. The issues I noted can swiftly be addressed with a patch. In other words, it’s at the cusp of being a superb monster collector. The foundation is hard as a rock, with no signs of chipping – it’s time to build on it.
It’s hard to talk a lot about Redout 2. It’s much better than its 2017 predecessor in almost every single aspect, but it’s just serviceable. Decent at best. It’s a good antigrav racing game, but I can’t point out a single thing about it that makes it stand out against other titles like Fast RMX, Pacer, or even the Wipeout remasters for PS4.
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series is a collection of good, but not outstanding platformer remasters. They are charming as all hell and quite relaxing to play, but they feel dated in terms of its mechanics. Tying the reach of your attacks to the difficulty level of choosing was a totally unnecessary call, and its hit detection could have received some extra tinkering in order to feel less clunky.
Battle League features a HUGE gap in content that Nintendo is promising to patch in with post-launch updates, but that really doesn’t help anyone who decided to buy the game at launch. Online play is just as you would expect from the Switch, replaying cups just isn’t enjoyable, and quickplay just kind of exists. If I wanted to turn on a game to play for 5 minutes, plus the time the game is paused for each goal (something that doesn’t happen in football), I would be much more likely to turn on something even like Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine, where you can knock out early levels that quickly. Yet another disappointing Mario sports outing on the Switch.
Glitchy and low-budgeted as it might be, DC League of Super-Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace has a great foundation for one of the best Star Fox clones released in years. It nails everything it needed in order to offer a younger demographic an entry-level version of a rail shooter, with a great gameplay loop, some educational value, and a fair, but ever-increasing difficulty curve that’s perfectly suited for them.
Even if it’s unfair and beyond cheap at times (it’s a Contra clone, after all), I loved Spidersaurs. It’s not just because of its utterly bonkers premise; its gameplay is tight, its level and enemy designs are superb, and it’s really replayable. One of the best Contra-inspired games I’ve ever played, and one of my favorite WayForward games of all time. It’s just a shame this game had to remain an Apple Arcade exclusive for so many years. I’m just glad it will finally be embraced in a way that does its gameplay justice.
This might be a piece that’s worth picking up immediately, or it might be worth waiting to see if LCB Game Studio decides to do an anthology release later on down the line. Mothmen 1966 is a brilliantly bold stab at artistic game design, and I think that it wildly succeeds. It’s by no means a perfect game, but it is entertainment, and there’s nothing wrong with being entertained for a while. If you really want to, dive in, unlock all the achievements and do your thing, or just do what the rest of us do: forget about the world around us for a while, travel back to 1966, and see what happens when the stars dance and the demons come out.
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak is exactly what you would expect; more of the same sweet sweet gameplay loop. There’s a bunch of new monsters to fight in new and old locations. The only things letting down Sunbreak are the early game pacing issues, and depending on your tastes, not the finest roster of new monsters. Saying that, there is more than enough to keep you busy for many hours to come as you progress through the brutally tough Master Rank and endgame content. If this is the end of Rise, then Capcom sure have done it justice.
I wholly believe in turn-based combat in general, and certainly for any game with Intelligent Systems’ name on it. They are very good at what they do, and their style has always flourished with Fire Emblem. Still I would love to see more of this, maybe a whole series of re-imagined classic Fire Emblem games in this style. Or hell, even a proper original one. The traditional fun Musou combat properly combined with the tactical and RPG elements of Fire Emblem creates a Musou game with genuine depth and difficulty, which has always been a Warriors‘ game Achilles heel.
Dadish 3 genuinely is just more Dadish. And let me be clear, that is not a bad thing. On the contrary: it’s excellent. If you were a fan of the first two games, this one just continues to expand on their solid foundations, adding more challenging levels and puzzles to the mix. I’m willing to bet I’ve had more deaths in Dadish 3 than Dadish and Dadish 2 combined.