Qualbert.com's Reviews
Anyone who’s cut their teeth on the combat of a roguelite will have a headstart in Dreamscaper. With the ever-present threat of losing your life in just a few hits, your moves are calculated and careful – you’re put to the test with scaling baddies between each level and you’re bound to die. This is where my favorite part of roguelite comes in – you can manage some upgrades to make subsequent runs a bit more do-able.
Alongside an attractive aesthetic and a perfectly-matched soundtrack, this proves to be a visual novel that is likely to impress most fans of the genre. Those who enjoy engaging narratives will be left satisfied upon leaving the Terminal, especially thanks to the uniquely Australian writing and humour of each of its patrons. This hidden gem nestled in a Melbourne alleyway will certainly have players dying to come back for another drink.
Life is Strange: True Colors gets everything right that the previous games got wrong. The voice acting is superior, the motion-capture is finally spot-on, the length of the title maintains a fast pace from start to finish, and the few bugs are getting squashed with post-launch support. This is indeed the best Life is Strange game to come, and an easy GOTY candidate.
Through its clever use of brilliant puzzles and simple explorative gameplay, fans of classic games like early Resident Evil and Silent Hill will no doubt get some serious thrills from exploring the sprawling hospital over the ~10 hour journey. While elements like clunky combat and awkward dialogue feel rough and unpolished, there is still plenty to keep horror veterans satisfied whilst introducing newcomers to this slower and more methodical gameplay format. Survival horror was never even dead to begin with, and Tormented Souls certainly proves that this genre is alive and well today.
With fresh, detailed graphics, easily approachable gameplay, and a stellar arranged soundtrack, this is certainly a good place to start for players wanting to experience a historic piece of the genre. Although extra content is lacking, the game remains true to the original and offers an updated experience that will please both series veterans and newcomers alike.
Getting straight into the action after starting the game, it took no time at all to find my bearings and comprehend the power of each new weapon and when to utilize it. Even after all these years, the creative weaponry, including the Nailgun, the Rocket Launcher, and the Thunderbolt, make for some gory gibs and ample variation between fights. With secrets strewn about, replayability is also high for gamers looking to search every nook and cranny of each level.
With a vibrant and delightful city to explore, intriguing story with a colossal cast of characters both new and old, heavily-stylised visual aesthetic, and a soundtrack like none other, NEO: TWEWY is an essential JRPG that has certainly been worth the wait.
Cris Tales is a game that is wonderfully presented. It also brings some new and unique gameplay ideas to the table, but then makes poor decisions in how to flesh these out over a 30+ hour adventure. This is a game that definitely looks and sounds great, but the cracks in the gameplay and functional stability of the game itself create drawbacks that may cause some people to give it up before seeing it through to an exciting, if not somewhat predictable conclusion.
World for Two is a killer visual experience. Always adorned with a picture-perfect reflection on the bottom of the screen and painstakingly-crafted environments, any moment of the gameplay could be screenshot and used as a wallpaper. Meshed with a silky-smooth 60fps and a day-night shift, this game gets high marks for mastering the hook of pixel-based shots.
Despite being a new game in a pre-established series, newcomers will not at all feel out of place in the courtroom as this is an entirely standalone experience and can be enjoyed without any need to play previous games. Over the course of this 30+ hour journey, players will piece together a fascinating story, meet many memorable characters, and put their wit to the test in the name of justice. So TAKE THAT Nintendo Switch, HOLD IT, and get The Great Ace Attorney downloading post-haste. The game is afoot!
The visuals of Samurai Warriors 5 are a mixed bag. While the gameplay/combat is as smooth as silk, the graphics were sacrificed to make that happen. Cel-shaded/muddy characters aren’t anything to write home about, but I did enjoy seeing a wealth of expression and emotion in their faces during cutscenes. All things considered, I’d prefer the game not experiencing any slowdowns or stutters like it does now than it being too graphically-intensive to run well.
Despite being so dissimilar to the series on which it is based, Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin achieves a unique blend of gameplay and manages to deliver a relaxed, charming, and engaging plot-centric JRPG experience over a ~40 hour adventure. What may seem like a Pokémon game with a Monster Hunter skin on the surface is actually a standout spin-off with more than enough to set itself apart in the monster-battling genre.
Opting for a cross between pixel and realistic aesthetic, Orbital Bullet boasts pretty colors and makes great use of them with compelling terrains. There’s a vast difference between biomes as you progress through levels, not just being the same thing nonstop. Bright colors accompany your shots and enemy clears, all moving along quickly with the refresh rate of your monitor (in my case, with 0 slowdowns at 144fps.)
Mini Motorways is a simple concept designed for a touch screen but elegantly adapted for PC, and retains every element of its captivating procedurally-generated gameplay with little to no compromise. What may seem simple on the surface has significant depth and will appeal to those who relish in high scores, trying their hardest to make it to the top of a leaderboard.
For a game concept as ridiculous and light-hearted as stripping your enemies, AKIBA’S TRIP somehow manages to do so in a bland, boring, and sometimes even unenjoyable manner. Many aspects of the game are already showing their age, particularly the poor visuals and the unintuitive combat – it’s a game that feels like an odd experience to be playing on a modern home console.
This game is clearly built with repeated plays and speed running in mind. In fact, the game comes with an individual arena and overall speed run timer built in. Each wave of each battle starts in the same way (enemies appearing in the same positions), so I can certainly see this game being popular in the speed run community as players try to find the most efficient pattern of mowing down the enemies as quickly as possible.
There’s no denying that Merge Games have done a truly brilliant job in modernising this classic SEGA game and bringing it into the hands of a new generation of gamers. While those who played it all those years ago are bound to get a nostalgia kick out of DX, the decades I’ve spent playing polished platformers have spoiled me and as such there were many aspects of Alex Kidd’s gameplay that felt imprecise and tedious.
Thanks to its intriguing story and truly excellent combat, Scarlet Nexus offers one of the better original anime game experiences in recent years. Although the game achieves some phenomenal highs and will almost certainly appeal to those seeking brilliant sci-fi action, there are unfortunately many moments where interactions and excessive dialogue feel like bland filler episodes and will tempt you to skip them entirely.
Combining a bleak yet entrancing world with expansive exploration and seriously satisfying combat makes Ender Lilies one of the best in the genre, and in ways surpasses the games that have inspired it. Every moment throughout its 10 – 15 hour journey is captivating to say the least, and the game has taken me completely by surprise in what I can comfortably say has been one of the finest games I’ve played so far this year. If you consider yourself a fan of games like Symphony of the Night and Hollow Knight, you would be doing yourself an absolute disservice by not playing Ender Lilies. This is a game you must play.
There is a long history of both good and bad pirate games across a variety of different consoles and genre styles. From the recent Microsoft hit Sea of Thieves going all the way back to 1987 and the original ‘Sid Meyer’s Pirates!’ on Commodore 64, you have probably played a pirate game before and honestly you’ve likely played a better pirate game than this one too.