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Those complaints aside, I enjoyed my time with The Mummy Demastered from near beginning to end. (My initial playthrough took four hours but I still have half of the 50 optional "relics" to suss out.) This game doesn't do anything meaningfully new or original for metroidvania fans, but everything here is solid and WayForward got the fundamentals right... in a licensed Mummy adaptation, of all things.
When I am unwinding after a long day and commute, Campfire Cooking is the exact type of game I want to play. A quaint and clever puzzler that is able to get a myriad of miles out of its simple concept, it's nearly perfect on my iPad and well worth the tiny asking price.
As it is currently, Chaos;Child did not make me feel under either a positive nor a negative delusion.
High Hell is a challenging, cathartic, and unique shooter. There is beauty in its obnoxious aesthetics, and satisfaction in its fast-moving, mouse-mashing violence. It is a very short game, but one I expect to see become a darling of speedrun weekends and Twitch streams. High Hell is an anarchic injection of neon-pink adrenaline, made with a dirty needle. At only ten bucks, it's a dang cheap way to stick it to The Man.
Death shouldn't be something we don't talk about and the death business isn't something that should exist in the shadows. A Mortician's Tale provides an excellent way to join that conversation while shedding some light on a mysterious business that would prefer to stay cloaked in darkness. It's a short game, only an hour or so long, but it leaves an impact far beyond its runtime. Give it a chance, and it might just change the way you think about death.
In a way, it's refreshing to get a game that knows exactly what it wants to do, executes on that idea, but doesn't overstay its welcome. The central mechanic of precision projectile motion is unique, and Lichtspeer plays with the formula enough to keep the experience fresh right up until the end.
With the power to pick up the Switch tablet and storm through History on the go, Fire Emblem Warriors is still going to get some play in my house despite its issues. It follows a set formula with very little in the way of risk-taking, but so long as you can stomach the idea of warring kingdoms with very little at stake other than your level-up bar, it'll probably delight you too. With some DLC meat on these bones it'll likely be a long, wild ride.
That said, here's hoping Overgrowth may still yet become something special in the long run. But, as of right now, after all these years, the game was only interesting for me for a few hours and felt like more of a fun novelty, or a tech demo, than an actual video game. While the gameplay and mechanics here are solid and the physics engine is impressive, the campaign on the other hand is extremely disjointed, short, and uninteresting in terms of presentation. By the time I had completed both campaigns, twice over, it just left me wishing they made better use of it all.
All in all, though, the game remains an impressive, if flawed, effort. Toting an interesting setting and some standout design choices, ELEX goes farther than any previous Piranha Bytes game in making the case for sticking with it in pursuit of a certain old-school ideal of RPG gaming, even if it can come at a cost in polish and presentation.
Much like being a fan of the real thing, WWE 2K18 is often more of a chore than it is fun. Hilariously, yet tragically, I still find myself hoping it'll be better next time.
Hob tries to do a lot of things within its beautiful world but never does any of them very well. The platforming feels janky and slow, combat is basic and meaningless, and the puzzles will make you wish you were back in 10th grade listening to your Geometry teacher explain proofs for the millionth time. A great game was not too far away from what eventually was delivered, but outside of the stunning visuals and world design, Hob falls frustratingly short.
It's heart-breaking to see this happen to good people, but it's also tough to get too invested in anything that's tangential to Chloe and Rachel's plight. We're barreling toward a conclusion and we already know it's more tragedy than comedy. Brave New World cements Before the Storm as Chloe and Rachel's story. They're the lead roles and everyone else is just set dressing.
I have never played another game quite like Echo before. Folks are always rallying for innovation in the industry, and I can't think of too many better examples of that in recent years. It's not all perfect, but what's there is extremely refreshing. This is not an easy game. You will die a lot. You will get angry. However, when you finally defeat your opponents, it's like sex. A huge release where, for a few small minutes, you genuinely feel like you just accomplished something. It's glorious.
While my group and I enjoyed trying out this year's Party Pack, it's fair to say it didn't live up to my expectations. It's still a lot of fun, and there were frequent outbursts of laughter in my living room. But there really wasn't a standout title here, nothing to recommend this year's pack over previous entries in the series. It felt like all the games here would've benefited from a little more playtesting, a little more polish. I think it's telling that at the end of the night, we ended by loading up The Jackbox Party Pack 3 and playing a couple rounds of last year's Trivia Murder Party. You'll get your money's worth out of The Jackbox Party Pack 4, but you might have a better time with one of its predecessors.
Despite its sometimes uneven writing, The Fractured but Whole is worthy of the highest compliment a game like this could get: It feels like a long, quality episode of South Park. It's an improvement over The Stick of Truth in terms of combat mechanics, ridiculous plot escalation, and amount of content. It's really all that a South Park lover could ask for.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a perfect example of how to create a sequel. It took what the first game did well and ramped it up while fixing many of the original's annoyances. The freedom here is unlike anything I have come across in a long time, and the game is better for it. There are certainly some things that still don't feel quite right, in addition to various bugs, but this is easily one of the best RPGs of modern times.
I really hope that Turn 10 takes an honest look at what these prize crates have done to Forza, since the game is otherwise solid. I would have an easier time accepting some flaws if I could make honest progress in the career mode or have a chance in hell of acquiring the cars in a reasonable amount of time. Instead, Forza 7 just makes me think of how much time I'll be wasting and what else I could be doing instead of racing on Spa for the 90th time.
The Evil Within 2 often feels uneven, but that's probably the point. Even if it isn't, there's enough blood, guts, and horror to keep your heart racing.
I'm torn on Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth. I sincerely believe it could be the best entry in the series, that it has refined the formula to near perfection. But in perfecting what is already there, it makes no strides to further advance the series.
Even though Golf Story isn't quite what I expected it would be, it is an absolute delight. It's more than just a golf game with RPG mechanics, but it's not quite a full RPG with golf mechanics either. It lies in a sweet spot in the middle, where people who care about one but not the other can still get into it.