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Is this an EDF game that EDF fans will enjoy? Honestly, I ended up feeling fairly disappointed. Which is a shame because I think there are a lot of neat ideas here. Weapons feel rather underpowered across the board, and enemies just have far too much health for their own good. Couple this with incredibly annoying AI, and it’s just a very frustrating experience. Suffice to say, it’s pretty lackluster compared to the mainline EDF titles. The game took me 10 hours to beat, though I put about a total of 30 into it with harder difficulties. At a $60 price tag, I can’t really recommend it. A sale might make this a more tempting offer. Overall, if you’re looking for a good EDF game, I’d give this a pass and look into the mainline titles instead.
Sweet Sachiko’s Hysteric Birthday Bash may hold appeal to hardcore Corpse Party fans, giving the chance to see several characters from different schools meet or reunite and interact with each other. Beyond that, the story can’t figure out what it wants to be, tries to be everything, doesn’t do anything particularly well, and ends up undermining what it does right. Padded out to about 10 hours in length, it’s at least worth the $20 price tag in that regard. I’ll still play the regular Corpse Party games some time, but ultimately I took little away from this spin-off.
I just have a hard time figuring out what the ambition or goal behind this game is. Who was this game for? I honestly don’t know of anyone that would find the writing style funny or would be willing to stick it out for the full length of the game. Personally, I think comedy is better when its balanced with drama. Having a focus on comedy doesn’t mean you have to constantly have an attempt at a joke in every single line of dialogue. It doesn’t help that none of the jokes landed for me. Maybe a small chuckle here and there, but more often than not, I found it annoying. I also don’t think it means you have to forego any sort of real character development. This feels like an episode of some bad “adult” cartoon sitcom but stretched to 30 hours. If you really like that sort of humor, I suppose I can recommend it. $15 is a pretty cheap price, so you might get your money’s worth. For everyone else though, I can’t recommend it.
After all that I don’t think there’s a whole lot more I can say. After the story is finished you can replay the levels with a higher difficulty. You collect keys and then get to the end, but I never found myself wanting to go back through it. The game works, it just isn’t all that fun. As far as music there really isn’t much to talk about. It’s very painfully okay ambiance. The only issue with it, besides it not feeling inspired, is that you can’t manually adjust the volume in the options menu. Just mute it or have it on full blast. It really feels like a mobile game that was ported to home consoles and the PC just for the sake of it. Even for $5.99 I can’t really recommend it, not for two hours of fairly okay puzzles. There’s just nothing to sink your teeth into.
Which brings me to my biggest complaint – the lack of variety. Unlike Rogue Legacy, there is only one class in Bard’s Gold, and that’s the titular Bard. This wasn’t actually that bad, since I grew to enjoy the simplistic yet hardcore gameplay. What was more frustrating was realizing that the 4th World was the last one. I felt the game was starting to hit its stride towards the end, and even thought I would unlock more worlds after the boss. Unfortunately, all you get by beating the game is the Contract of Reaper, which randomizes traps more yet gives you more money. That’s it. No real incentive to keep playing, other than unlocking and maximizing all the upgrades. Which is too bad, because despite all the things holding it back, Bard’s Gold is not half bad. The problem is that for anyone except serious fans of roguelikes, it’s not going to hold any real appeal. It’s definitely a bargain to get 3-5 hours of gameplay at $8.99, but I find it hard to recommend to anyone outside that small crowd. That said, I did actually end up enjoying my time with Bard’s Gold, and hope to see a more robust game next time from Pixel Lantern. If they can build upon what they have here and add a lot more content, their next game might be a legendary quest instead of a small diversion.
I’m glad that Bomberman isn’t dead yet, I truly am. I just wish the game that brought it back to Nintendo consoles wasn’t this one. While Super Bomberman R isn’t utterly horrible, it is such a mixed bag that at best it just feels average. That’s not great, especially when you consider it costs $49.99 and only gave me around three hours of gameplay. While it’s true you can replay Story mode levels and the multiplayer isn’t bad, there’s just not a lot to recommend the game. If you’re an old fan of Bomberman like myself, then I recommend you pick Super Bomberman R up on sale. For everyone else, it’s probably best to wait for the next game in the series and hope Konami gets things right the second time around.
While not entirely disappointing for the $60, there’s simply too many problems here and there that I can give this game more than an “okay”, and a “maybe” if you’re a fan of the characters in the game. They have a lot of characters coming as DLC and that means a lot of opportunities to push even more patches out, so hopefully, one day we’ll get a game I could say is “fantastic”. I felt no desire to jump nor use force while playing.
Silver Chains is a story-driven horror game that almost immediately can’t keep its story straight. Even if it did, the aimless wandering and general lack of threat the two monsters pose make the already tired scare tactics at work even weaker. It’s competently made (which is rare nowadays for a Steam horror game) and has some clear inspiration, but badly needs a more creative take on its character design, setting and gameplay. As is, it merely blends in with the sea of Steam horror titles that use the same settings, scares and game mechanics. $25 is too much for this short, disjointed experience. Even with a price drop, there’s not enough to distinguish Silver Chains as anything other than another brick in the Steam horror wall.
As a whole, Inferno 2 was an exceptionally lackluster experience with hardly any highlights. For a twin-stick shooter RPG hybrid, I believe Radiangames perhaps should’ve made sure the level design and balance was more spot-on. For $4.99 and a roughly 4-6 hour experience, it is a fine enough purchase for fans of the genre, especially if played on co-op. However, if you are looking for something more exceptional, either wait for the game to go on sale or look elsewhere. For a sequel to a critically acclaimed title, I was woefully disappointed with the package delivered.
I really wish JackQuest: The Tale of the Sword could have lived up to my initial expectations, but sadly it just kept finding ways to frustrate me. While it’s not technically unplayable or broken, it’s also derivative and unsatisfying. It’d be one thing if this was an early concept or even a free demo, but asking $9.99 for a game this basic is ludicrous. My only hope is that the developer will learn from his mistakes with this game and future projects can benefit from a lot more polish. It’s fine for a game to be simple, but that’s not an excuse for a rushed mess. Unless you really love basic games, I can’t recommend JackQuest, unless it’s dramatically on sale. As it is now, this Tale is more of a cautionary one.
I honestly feel that Furwind had all the elements it needed to be a great game, it just put them together in the wrong configuration. Had this been a metroidvania like I thought, one with well translated text and more diversity of challenges, it would have been fantastic. Instead, we get a throwback to games of the past that felt awkward and disappointing. While it’s pretty affordable at $9.99, and I did get about 6 hours of gameplay out of it, it’s really hard to justify buying it at full price. I respect what I think JanduSoft was trying to do here, but it missed the mark. Here’s hoping they take this constructive criticism in the spirit it’s intended and make their next game a masterpiece.
And that’s my biggest problem with this game: how tedious it is. You go through level after level and stage after stage, doing the same things over and over again. It doesn’t even feel rewarding towards the end, just a relief that the level is over. I really hate saying that, because this game had a lot of promise and is very pretty looking, especially for someone like me who loves that art style. I just wish there were a little more depth to the game, because as it is right now it’s very boring to sit through a lot of the time. I didn’t even mention the story that much because it’s very simple and takes a backseat to a lot of the game. For a simple pick-up-and-play game, I suppose it’s fine and serves the purpose of an arcade game well enough. But I don’t think it’s all that worth it, especially at the $24.99 price range where it sits right now. All in all I got about five hours out of the game, but I really wouldn’t recommend it unless you really love this kind of thing, or you need something simple and fun to play with friends.
Devil’s Hunt is a game that knows the look of a high-quality video game, but stumbles on most other fronts. It has the skeleton of the game in place, but struggles to flesh things out beyond that. Clocking in at about six hours, it’s a mostly functional package that takes a grandiose story as its base and delivers something less bombastic. Hopefully Desmond can get his act together should another installment come to fruition.
While it’s functional as a game, I expected more from Habroxia. That may sound unfair, but my expectation was not to breeze through everything the game had to offer in less time than a Lord of the Rings movie and feel no urge to return to any of it. What it does right, it does with no particular finesse. It’s a shooter in which I was able to get away with not shooting anything, or mindlessly holding the fire buttons on way too many occasions. Considering what else is available, not just on consoles but on PC as well, I struggle to recommend this to anyone, barring a massive discount from its $7.99 asking price.
So yeah, I think the game’s biggest issue was scope creep. It needed more focus as there are just too many gameplay and system elements fighting for attention to really spruce things up at an individual level. If we are talking about FPS games from smaller devs, this is competing for attention from titles such as Dusk, Prodeus, Metal: Hellsinger, and Cultic. That is some heavy competition to be going against in this day and age. It doesn’t help that Nightmare Reaper is $24.99 on Steam, and $26.99 on console. It’s far from bad in the end, even if I recommend the PC version exclusively, but the competition it has is particularly high. Look into this if you are interested in a game with random layouts, events, and a lot of bonus content to be had.
It’s hard to say if Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is better or worse than Iron Rain. If you stick with tried and true EDF characters to play as, it’s probably better. If you try to use its weird gimmick characters, it’s probably worse. While some missions in an EDF game can be a bit frustrating, I definitely think they do their best to make each mission fun. Even at its worst, it still controls and plays well. In both of Yuke’s Earth Defense Force games, I feel like frustration is the status quo. Enemy placement seems less thoughtful and even when the enemy design isn’t something you have to struggle against, you’re still left with the controls not feeling very good. Between that and so few characters feeling good to use, the times in which I had fun in this game are few and far between.
Much as I wish I could rave about how amazing the game is, it’s unable to reach the heights I thought it capable of. But since the ending hints there’s gonna be a remake of the next game in the Wonder Boy series, I hope that can fully realize its vision while still being a balanced experience. A fun trip down memory lane, but hard to recommend for anyone other than expert platformers, especially for $34.99.
Ryte – The Eye of Atlantis is a perfectly okay game hampered by janky physics and technical issues. When the game leans into its Atlantean subject, it’s the best part of the experience, but unfortunately, it’s few and far between. The music is good and I liked the attention to detail in the locations, I just wanted more from them. The French voice acting is fine, but the English was stiff and amateur at best. If you like Greco-Roman architecture or are big into Atlantean lore, you could pick the game up on sale, but at $19.99 USD, it has too many technical issues to recommend over other VR puzzle games out there.
Picklock is a fun little indie puzzle game, but, unfortunately, its execution is significantly marred by the grating issues discussed above. The game just feels unpolished and also too short after its abrupt ending. For the most part, Picklock is just a series of missions to beat. You can try to get a perfect run on each one, but this won’t add much extra gameplay. I beat the game with all missions cleared with a perfect score in around 5 hours. In addition to being short, another issue is that all of the stuff you can buy is just cosmetic and has no real effect on the game. Getting a new car just changes what car you see in the cutscenes when you go to locations on the map. Redesigning the interior of your house just changes how it looks. The four exotic properties you can purchase are just static scenes showing your character relaxing, with one or two other animated characters, and maybe some animated water. All you can do when you go to one of these places is listen to a relaxing, tropical themed music track until you decide to open the pause menu and leave. They are accessed via the real estate agency in town. Some players may also be annoyed that once you’ve gotten all the money you can in the game, it’s not enough to get everything. As a result, you’ll have to forego at least one thing in the shops. If you’re interested in the game, it’s one that you may want to wait for a sale on. Picklock is available on the Nintendo eShop for $7.99, as well as on Steam.
I don’t think I can recommend this adaptation of Fairy Tail. For people that aren’t fans of Fairy Tail, there’s not much here other than a mostly competent RPG. For people that are fans, there’s just heavily truncated and compromised versions of the things they like. There’s some fun character interactions in the side quests, but I don’t think it justifies a $60 price tag. It’s a fairly lengthy game at around 40 hours, but most of this time is spent just being disappointed. If you’re a real diehard fan, and you just have to play this, then I’d at least recommend waiting for the price to drop.