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The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story brings a commendable effort, but the whole thing feels like being at a twelve hour murder mystery dinner with intermissions of the most boring game of dominoes you’ve ever played.
I could keep going about how much this doesn’t work, but that would be putting in more work than the developers did for SpellForce III Reforced. It’s a rare case of a game that I just enjoy from the start, and it only got worse the more I played. There are games I would consider to be bad, but this is a whole different beast. It just fundamentally doesn’t work. I would struggle to order one group to attack an enemy during battles, and by the time I did, the rest of my army had been massacred by everyone else. I’ve never been so frustrated with a game before.
Deadcraft is an amalgamation of inspirations coming together to create something distinct. And you know what, the various fascinating ideas and mechanics are enough to assure there’s fun. What ends up bogging down the session are odd decisions.
In short, Remote Life is an interesting shoot ’em up with a strong art style, neat implementation of twin-stick shooting mechanics in an R-Type-esque setting, and the occasionally impressive boss battle. It is your standard “one and done” game, though.
Postal 4: No Regerts is a game that just couldn’t catch my attention even as someone who like dumb dirty humor and outlandish gameplay ideas. Its biggest failure is simply not being interesting and having decent jokes or at least more gameplay sections like the cat part. I know it tries to have some political commentary in here, but honestly it always falls flat.
Playing Card Shark feels like peeking behind the curtain of a magic show. The gameplay might involve following button prompts, but the lessons are genuine. After playing it I feel like I could use some of the skills I learned on my friends the next time we have a poker night. Uh… not that I would, of course!
There’s just enough story to have your actions make sense and have purpose, while still being open to interpretation. The lifeforms within the seascape are well varied and creepy. The possession gameplay mechanic is refreshingly different and well-utilized. Silt ventures seamlessly into feelings of tension and awe in equal measure. It’s a relatively short experience, but it’s a gem of a game that sticks with you long after you’ve finished playing.
It’s a great rhythm title with a shocking amount of content, both in terms of cosmetics and songs of all genres. I also did not expect for it to be that challenging. Sure, a bit of its difficulty stemmed from the sheer amount of visual noise onscreen, but its gameplay did not pull any punches.
Even though Cricket 22 is an excellent cricket video game, the sport of cricket just doesn’t translate well into video game form. You can’t just play a quick arcadey match when the sport is so slow, everyone around you (players and commentators) look and sound unenthusiastic, and matches take forever to complete. It’s just like chess: sure, it can be fun in real life (I guess), but not everything was meant to be turned into a game.
This War of Mine: Final Cut makes players think about aspects beyond simply winning or fighting for “glory”. It asks us to think about the real cost of war. When battles are fought, it is the civilians who suffer most; innocent casualties caught in the crossfire. The main point of This War of Mine: Final Cut is when the horrors of war are upon them, even good people can turn into monsters out of desperation.
Sniper Elite 5 is definitely the best of a series that continues to grow with each installment. I’m happy to say that this one has some of the most meaningful updates to its formula to date. The heavy focus on more involved maps, and gameplay freedom within them is a breath of fresh air and exactly what this series needs.
All in all, Wonder Boy Collection, as a compilation of older titles, is pretty good. It suffers from the fact that, while influential, these games are very flawed, with poor controls and collision detection being an issue shared among all of them. There’s also the fact that the best game in the series, The Dragon’s Trap, is the sole title not featured in the package.
Kao the Kangaroo is very flawed, but also very enjoyable. It feels like I’m playing the 2022 equivalent to Gex, Chameleon Twist, or Toy Story 2: a game that smells like jank, but has enough charm and redeemable qualities (namely its excellent level design) to be worth a shot if you’re a fan of the genre. It will probably not going to wow you in any way, or leave a lasting impression, but it is proof that B-tier mascot platformers are alive and well in 2022.
Souldiers is an all-around joyful experience; its three classes being unique enough from each other, warranting different playthroughs. The use of different elemental types to fight enemies and gain an advantage, plus using them to traverse the world, is a great implementation. Characters feel unique, enemies are distinguished and not just reskins throughout, and the ambient sounds are all great. A genuinely memorable game all metroidvania fans should check out.
Will hook you and keep you for a couple hours, but then you gradually lose steam without some variation to the approach. It becomes a once-a-day game.
Touken Ranbu Warriors may not be the hardcore love letter fans crave. What it is, however, is an impeccable entry point for anyone looking to dive into the world of 1 vs 1000.
The horribly named Apotheorasis: Lab of the Blind Gods is a truly unique experience that almost certainly won’t be to everyone’s tastes. Uniquely driving an entire FPS entirely through sound is something that hasn’t really been done before. If you want something that dares to be different and breaks away from standard video game conventions then Apotheorasis is well worth checking out.
With a forgettable soundtrack and decent, if somewhat generic, graphics, Soda Crisis feels as middle of the road as you can get without it being inherently bad. I can see what they were going for, and I get glimpses of success, but that’s all it is: just glimpses. The input lag from controllers, the fidelity going to hell, and the pretty mundane nature of it all just left me very nonplussed about the entire game.
Rogue Legacy 2 is a masterwork in taking something already great and elevating it without getting lost in ambition and abandoning the core interest. It’s Mega Man 2. It’s LeChuck’s Revenge. It’s freaking Super Smash Bros. Melee. This is the way all sequels should be, and I’m ecstatic to finish my review so I can go back and play it again.
More than just a really bad soulslike, Dolmen is a major disappointment. After more than half a decade waiting for this game, as well as constantly losing faith in it ever being released, I was expecting for these constant delays to result in it feeling more polished, more akin to more modern soulslikes. What we ended up getting was the complete opposite: a clunky, shockingly behind-the-times husk of an action RPG which would have been considered dated back in 2016, let alone today.