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I enjoyed Gravity Heroes, but felt it lacked a really great multiplayer experience to flesh out the enjoyable, but short, campaign. The beautifully crafted pixel art and the groovy soundtrack admirably elevates some simple action into a really fun time, but it’s sadly over almost as soon as it’s begun and doesn’t offer nearly enough replay value. One for fans of quirky shooters and pixel art aficionados, Gravity Heroes offers a good time for a couple of hours but isn’t one you’re likely to return to again and again.
Like a plump pixel-art phoenix rising from the ashes of modern Battle Royales, Mighty Goose offers an incredible throwback experience where the gameplay is an absolute blast – in every sense of the word. With a loveable honking hero, chaotic but never frustrating gameplay, and artwork and sound that offer flawless examples of the genre, Mighty Goose is the dictionary definition of a good time.
All-in-all, Resident Evil Village is a fantastic shooter that’s overflowing with grim and grisly visuals that add a flourish of horror to a wonderful repertoire of action. While the move towards a supernatural theme meets with mixed results, it’s impossible to argue with how enjoyable gameplay is, or the effort taken to merge the distant and recent pasts of the franchise into a new monster for the new age.
It is a shame that Rift Racoon’s levels weren’t a tad longer and the controller issues prevented a more balanced outcome. Just tweaking the control scheme slightly and spending a few more seconds clearing one extra obstacle, or even having something more to unlock with the gems would’ve elevated the game from “OK” to “Pretty Great”.
My time with Hentai vs. Evil was thankfully very short and produced more head shaking and fewer smiles than the average episode of Dragon’s Den. Designed to appeal to an incredibly niche demographic, there’s a feeling that the lack of content or enjoyable gameplay will be quite simply ignored if you allow the players to ‘hur-hur-hur’ at animated breasts.
The House In Fata Morgana is a non-stop, balls to the wall game. It is relentless, unflinching and much like the characters in the game, every time I walked away, I was left thinking about Morgana’s world.
0 Degrees is more half baked rather than Baked Alaska, a standard left to right platform game that is not only easy, but woefully short. There is so much promise; the art style is rather joyful and later levels add a little challenge but the game needs fleshing out.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time exploring the broken landscapes of Glyph and resurrecting the ancient civilisation in the sand, and I’d definitely recommend it to players looking for something they can pick up and put down in small sittings. While it might be a little bit samey, I found it a charming experience that makes for a lovely change of pace in a genre often requiring pixel-perfect precision and outlandish reaction speeds.
More like a firework than an inferno, Fire is pretty and will certainly make you smile, but is sadly over all too soon.
If you’re looking for a tough as nails arcade shooter, R-Type Final 2 is the game of choice. The controls are tight and although not perfect, the environments are pretty enough to keep you entertained. R-Type Final 2 treads a fine line between too tough to enjoy and just hard enough to keep you coming back for more, and even on the easiest difficulty there is a steep challenge where casual players will struggle.
The Falconeer does what similar games wish they could; presenting a huge open world that is full of wonders to discover with a story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It has an easy going air about the proceedings and doesn’t pressure players to progress to the end of the game. In fact, taking the time to explore the world and discover the various storylines offered more value than the journey to the credits. It helps that getting sidetracked offers lovely unlockables so that when it comes time to take part in the main story, the giant bird is equipped to do so.
My time with Umurangi Generation Special Edition was a little like discovering an old photo album in the loft and opening it to find pictures that remind you of a painful break up. There’s the spark of excitement at finding something out of the ordinary, and wonderment at what you might stumble upon next, but flicking through the pages of blurry images only leaves you pining for what could have been had things been just a little bit different.
Worms Rumble is a fun time for anyone familiar with fast paced action shooters. It’s a shallow experience but it’s aiming to be fun, not to tell a story and it does a pretty good job with it. Although not a first person shooter or a true battle royale game, there are plenty of notes here for fans of those genres to enjoy, and it might scratch a part of your brain that’s been missing the flow state of a simple arena shooter. Worth a try if nothing else.
Trigger Witch feels like it’s trying to blend too many styles together at once and doesn’t blend them well enough. The game can feel challenging due to overly strong enemies but the lack of good puzzles is disappointing. That said, Trigger Witch feels like the start to a solid franchise and at the price point it is an enjoyable game, but it has some flaws that just can't be ignored.
Of Bird And Cage is a great concept for a videogame; real care and attention has been taken to produce a quality metal album that tells a story that provokes an emotional response. With a two hour run time and multiple endings, there is scope for replayability, but as the focus has been squarely put against the soundtrack, other areas suffer. Visually Of Bird And Cage does the job, but the gameplay elements felt rushed, and the lack of direction severely hampered my enjoyment.
Cris Tales is a game with a lot of charm and good ideas that doesn’t quite deliver on its ambition. Some mechanics seem a little undercooked and the nostalgia for older RPGs will likely be lost on the younger players who seem, from the story and presentation, to be the game’s target audience.
Ayo the Clown is definitely going to be one that will split peoples opinions based on personal preference on a couple of different gaming aspects. Do you like challenging (sometimes through bad controls rather than good level design) platforming and exploration for collectables? Do you like cutesy-wootsey characters and visuals? Are you a dog person? If you answered ‘yes’ to all of the above then this is a game for you, and one that you should enjoy. If you answered ‘no’ then avoid at all costs.
Just Die Already sounds amazing on paper; old people foregoing common sense and wanting to end their lives in the most over the top way imaginable. The overall look of the game is hilarious and there is some fun to be found in short bursts. It’s just a shame that the controls, as deliberately janky as they appeared to be, are so unforgiving to the point that they spoil the experience and sapped all of the energy from the game.
All-in-all, I was thoroughly impressed by everything Axiom Verge 2 offered and would probably have devoured the entire thing in one sitting had adult life not gotten in the way. Yes, the combat could have used more variety and the story was a little head scratching at times, but that’s entirely worth it for the masterclass in retro graphics and sound that you get in return, along with some thoroughly enjoyable world building and exploration too.
More than anything else I think the real issue with this game I have is the asking price. At time of writing it is going for around £30. You can get all four games in the series on mobile for just over a third of that, almost half of which is for the fourth (and newest) game. WitchSpring 3 on Google’s Playstore is priced at £3.87, a far more compelling price point for the title. Given how well it played in handheld compared to docked mode, and the implementation of the touchscreen controls, if you are at all curious about this game I would certainly recommend the mobile version over the Switch for price alone.