Inverse's Reviews
Midnight Suns is easy to recommend for fans of comics, strategy, and roleplaying games. While Firaxis does go overboard with the base-building and crafting side of the game, I did enjoy getting to know my heroes better. This game truly shines thanks to its unique and memorable combat system. Thanks to the mission structure and DLC on the way, it feels like a game I’ll revisit again and again.
Despite its flaws, I found myself always craving one more race; I could drive faster, customize my car better, and drift in even cooler ways than before. While not perfect, Need for Speed Unbound is the best the franchise has been and years — and hopefully a sign of even better things to come.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet give you more choices than ever before. In exchange, it expects you to adapt to its half-baked open world and mostly optional new features. These latest games aren’t the great leap forward from Pokémon Legends: Arceus that fans were hoping for, but it is a small step.
For all its murky mechanics and slow pace, Tactics Ogre: Reborn still blends satisfying combat with a top-tier story in a way that few games can match. If you’re a fan of the tactical RPG genre and want a serious challenge, there’s simply no reason not to play this game. But newcomers may want to start with something more approachable, or at least keep waiting for that Final Fantasy Tactics remake we’re all hoping for.
Sonic Frontiers is a fascinating game, mostly because of how little it actually feels like the rest of the series. The game’s marketing has called it an “evolution” of the Sonic formula, and that’s certainly accurate, but it’s still hampered by some growing pains. Sublime exploration and intuitive mechanics constantly clash with Sonic Frontiers’ insistence on introducing mandatory mini-games and one-off gimmicks, many of which simply aren’t engaging.
So will Victoria 3 end up like Stellaris, which released to middling reviews but received years of updates that transformed it into a sublime experience? Or will it suffer the fate of Imperator: Rome, which launched in 2019 but had its support cut last year, leaving the game functional but tantalizingly unfinished? There are no shortage of directions for Victoria 3 to go in, but whether it fulfills its own economic goals remains unknown. I wasn’t always satisfied with it, but I am rooting for it.
The market for a shorter Persona experience is there; Not everyone has the time to sink so much time into a single game. Even for fans of the franchise, the idea of experiencing everything Persona offers in the span of a couple of weekends sounds like heaven in a world where an array of games demand our attention. But Soul Hackers 2’s attempt to deliver a palatable streamlined experience for anyone and everyone should have taken more time to do some soul searching.
As Dusk Falls isn’t quite the arty thinkpiece it aspires to be. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun nonetheless. This is a perfect Game Pass experience for a mellow weekend, and probably best enjoyed with an adult beverage in hand — and the company of your favorite like-minded sickos.
Though the game primarily looks to a mobile audience, the clunky UI can’t get in the way of the colorful sprites and inventive puzzles Dreadrock offers, leaving a short and sweet experience I would happily come back to for 100 more floors.
"Like every other Mario sports game, realism is thrown out the window in favor of ridiculous gameplay. The final product is mostly fun, but overcomplicated systems feel destined to frustrate casual players."
I wouldn’t place Chrono Cross in the rare tier of games I’d recommend to positively anyone, but if you’re someone with a deep affinity for the RPG genre, it’s a risk-taking riff on a classic that’s still got surprises to spare.
'Ghostwire: Tokyo’s vision of Shibuya is eccentric and captivating. Exploring every nook and cranny to learn more about the Japanese myths and legends that inspired the game makes for a compelling gameplay hook. It’s a shame that despite some interesting ideas, parts of the story campaign feel like they were left on the cutting room floor.
Chocobo GP feels like a game that wants to be Mario Kart with Final Fantasy, but it simply doesn’t have the creativity or mechanical chops to back it up. There are certainly worse racers out there, but unless you’re the type of Final Fantasy fan who’s really into games like Theatrhythm or Dissidia that celebrate the franchise at the expense of quality gaming, you’re not going to get a whole lot out of Chocobo GP.
"When the platforming actually works, Dying Light 2 is an absolute blast. Chaining together a high-flying hang glider maneuver, then grappling off the edge of a building before executing a perfectly timed series of jumps makes you feel like a superhero. It’s just too bad that more often than not, something will go wrong and you’ll fall to your death instead."
No More Heroes 3 is a good game. But what affords the game personality is perhaps the same thing that keeps it from becoming something better than just good.
If you’re willing to overlook the bloated combat, you’ll find a lot to love in this macabre adventure about the bond between sisters.
Resident Evil Village is a good — but not exceptional — middle ground between the action-oriented RE4 and the horror thrills of RE7.
While its romantic sob story feels a bit boilerplate and it doesn’t fully commit to some of its most intriguing gameplay ideas, Maquette is a short, sincere game that captures the puzzling road to closure in the wake of a messy break-up.
Watch Dogs: Legion pushes current-gen hardware to the limit, and suffers for it.
Anyone charmed by the original’s rough edges will enjoy this thorough and faithful reimagining of the cherished platformer, though it may have benefitted from a bit more time in the oven to polish out technical problems and make the multiplayer mode bearable.