Entertainium's Reviews
River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is yet another quality entry in the franchise, taking the Kunio Kun crew on a fun romp across ancient China.
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series is a decent way to enjoy these classic platformers. For as close to the landing as the collection sticks when it comes to content, the fact that there are more accessible options is something to be lauded. While I was never a particularly huge fan of Klonoa, it would be silly to dismiss this for what it is: a new, fresher, and extremely colorful way for an entirely new group of players to enjoy the dreamy antics of Klonoa and co.
There are plenty of games that approach the subject of the upcoming apocalypse by the hand of humans and their constant influence on Earth’s decay, and although Endling: Extinction is Forever shows but a slice of the effects of our actions upon the planet, it does so in a way that’s sure to leave a mark on you. It isn’t the most action-intensive game you’ll ever play, but it’s fantastic in a way that very few games manage to be with the limited scope that it’s given.
Double-dip on some of the best Capcom arcade games ever and enjoy some good surprises along the way with Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium.
A hunter’s work is never done and there’s certainly plenty to be done in Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak.
If you’ve enjoyed Cuphead, The Delicious Last Course is a must buy as it not only provides a handful of new and exciting bosses to fight, and a host of different challenges in the way of the King of Games levels, but also an entirely new way to play both the expansion and the main game with the inclusion Ms. Chalice. Hope you’re not too full as this is one hell of a dessert!
It’s hard to know what DNF Duel will look like in a year’s time, let alone a few months. Fighting games get huge updates so frequently these days it’s impossible to know what form they’ll take in the long term, whether due to the developers deciding to make massive changes or the meta shifting in such a way that pigeon-holes the greater play dynamics. Right now, though, it’s a ton of fun and relatively easy to hop in and just start pressing buttons. Hopefully it can stay that way for a while because it’s nice to have something to just turn on and get some quick sets in without feeling like I need to actually put in actual work to do anything.
Puzzle games are good because you can take just about any premise and turn it into something fun. Building snowmen in A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, guiding water to create waterfalls in Spring Falls, splicing microbes in Splice… just about anything can be turned into a puzzle. In the case of Freshly Frosted, that’s building donut factories.
Capcom could go on for years and years just surviving via collections such as this. Their catalog is immense and there’s plenty of hits which players are hungry for in the current gen systems. The games included in Capcom Fighting Collection were among some of the most requested by fans and they should be pleased with how it turned out. If this is any indication to how they are willing to treat older games and update them to modern standards, more power to Capcom to keep releasing these!
The world of Veles is a grim one, indeed. Beneath its multi-hued, rain slicked surface lies a world run by the corporate and served by the desperate. The small settlements that fill in for towns are filled with light, as if to hold back the encroaching darkness, the murky landscape that threatens to swallow them whole at any moment. It is Blade Runner without the soul. It is Shadowrun without the depth. In the end, perhaps a more fitting name for the game would have been “The Descent.”
For as much of a scaredy cat in regards to horror as I generally am, I have to say I’ve enjoyed my time with The Quarry a whole lot. As the game progressed and the story started to unfold, I found myself wanting to see more of it and stopped worrying about how uncontrollable some aspects of playing it are, something I was dreading when just starting out. If you’re anything like me, I urge you to give this game a chance, you might be surprised with just how surprisingly engaging it can be.
As a compilation on its own, Sonic Origins is still a neat albeit slightly overpriced package that sums up most of the very best Sonic games you could ever play in new and improved forms, maintaining their original incarnations for preservation’s sake. While the historical documentation could’ve been better, the unlockables contained within are neat in their own way and provide plenty of reason to keep playing. On the other hand, it’s sad to see the path that Sega took in trying to make certain that this is the only reasonable and legit way to play old Sonic games, an approach that might serve as a preview to how future compilations might be handled – a scary proposition to be sure to any retro fan who doesn’t wish to resort to less savory means of playing some bonafide 16-bit classics such as these.
With that in mind, I would recommend Souldiers with caveats to those looking for a familiar challenge that won’t mind the repetition that comes with games that borrow from the Soulslike formula with the added detractions that this particular one throws into the mix. Souldiers is an enjoyable take on combining popular genres and mostly succeeds at keeping it together, and should provide plenty of replay value in a way of experimenting around with its classes and character builds, and of course, forging a path ahead.
Honestly, I couldn’t be happier with how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge turned out. Tribute Games hit it out of the park with this one, a game that is reverent to its source material in a way that will surely please die-hard fans of TMNT and is sure to garner an entirely new audience not just to that property, but to the beat ‘em up genre as a whole. It’s games like this, developed these days by those who enjoyed them in the past and know what they are doing that will keep brawlers alive in the future, and I simply cannot wait to see what’s in store. So if you have yet to give this a go, what are you waiting for? Calling dibs on Donatello!
All in all, Cotton Fantasy keeps the series tradition of providing plenty of eye candy and a pushover level of challenge that should please newcomers to the genre even though veterans might find themselves somewhat bored by the straight ahead approach that the franchise is known for and it kept intact in this new entry. Regardless of where you stand, there’s no denying Cotton Fantasy is one heck of a charming little game any way you look at it.
If you’re into building a collection of historical pieces, the Switch is amounting to be quite the little museum. Between the many Sega Ages releases of the last few years, the bevvy of Switch Online older console games, and SNK’s effort at porting every single game they’ve ever released back in their golden days, we’re just spoiled as all hell here. Hopefully Biomotor Unitron isn’t the last of these releases. Even if it’s not the most exciting game you’ll ever get your hands on, the fact that it is readily available on Nintendo’s digital marketplace when it would otherwise be relegated to purely illegal means otherwise is worthy of praise.
Mini Motorways is in many, well, ways, a terrific, truly addictive pick-up-and-play game for the Switch. Its fast-paced level structure and simplicity are incredibly well conceived and feel great to come back to time and time again. I’ve always been a big fan of management games in this style like Air Control, so having a spin like this to the formula is definitely up my wheelhouse and you’d be remiss not to at least give it a look.
With that in mind, it’s a little difficult to recommend Wonder Boy Collection to anyone other than those who’ve grown up playing these games and have enough nostalgia to play through them again on never systems. It’s hard to imagine a newer audience getting any play out of these – well, maybe Monster World IV since it’s easily the best playing out of these, and even that one is already available elsewhere on its own – when there are already much superior reworks of them like Dragon’s Trap to begin with and at a probably much lower price point.
The end result is a package that surely carries quantity, with quality coming in at a close second. The good games included within are amazing, but in order to enjoy them you’ll have to delve into some very questionable ones first, which in the case of Pac-Man are some of the most questionable arcade games ever. Then again, having an easy pick-up for Pac-Man Championship Edition is awesome to have, and even then it’s a shame it’s presented the way it is.
It’s easy to imagine another version of Card Shark where every trick becomes far more involved on the input side of things to try creating a more one-to-one imitation of the movements, thereby making every step a more delicate process. And that version might be good too, but that they can feel satisfying to pull off with such simple inputs while still seeming complex is a definite achievement; not only for the way it makes them more easily accessible but the ways it still feels like you’re shuffling the deck or pulling sleight of hand maneuvers.