Digital Chumps
HomepageDigital Chumps's Reviews
Ori Mees did a superb job with Blake: The Visual Novel. The story is compelling, the choices feel real, and the consequences will have you trying the game again once it’s done.
SaGa Frontier Remastered has great upgrades that positively add to the original gameplay experience, especially if you loved this title back in the late 90s. If you have never played this, it might seem like an overwhelmingly difficult game with a mess of great ideas that had not been completely sorted out. It was certainly ahead of its time and groundbreaking in some areas of gameplay.
Foregone is a whirring pastiche of ideas that came to define the last decade of side-scrolling action games. There remains an artful satisfaction to cutting through hordes of exquisitely fashioned monsters across splendid vistas but, without a thought to call its own, Foregone's performance will be consigned to oblivion the moment its player puts down their controller. It's a beautiful, sterile wasteland.
Madden NFL 22 has some good parts to it, mainly the usual suspects, but falls flat with Face of the Franchise. I know Face of the Franchise is a key part of Madden's success and what fans look forward to as a main piece of the Madden pie each year, but honestly, it has so many glitches in it that at times it is unplayable. Could these be fixed, and this year's title saved? Most definitely, but as it stands at launch, the game has issues that need rectifying.
The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos is a great tactical RPG from Artefacts Studio. It has everything you want from a tactical RPG, adds a sprinkle of difference with some of its design elements, and brings it all together with a solid bit of wacky humor and fun personalities.
Anyhow, outside of my own struggles with the controls that happens in every Japanese fighting game, I liked what KOF XV had to offer in terms of special moves and mechanics.
Guayota contains a great deal of difficulty and tested my patience quite well. I loved how it implemented puzzles in a way that isolated puzzles on a per-dungeon basis. However, I wanted a bigger payoff from completing its more difficult-levels, and I wanted the light version of the levels to have something to ease the difficulty. That said, Guayota was a great test of my logic and reasoning skills in the few hours I spent in-game. I loved the aesthetic, design, and general level construction, so it's worth playing if you're interested in an indie gem with unique puzzles for an afternoon playthrough.
Golden Force is a fun, retro, side-scrolling experience not for the faint of heart. Full of challenging battles and pixelated fun, this run-n-gun will keep you on your toes.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II continues the pace of Infinity Ward's 2019 reboot. An adrenaline-fueled campaign tackles present day threats but also takes a backseat to a gun-centric multiplayer experience that goes against the grain in surprising ways, allowing players a chance to fine-tune their operators.
Split Fiction is the culmination of Hazelight Studios' work in the cooperative space, a vision only constrained by the boundless limits of creativity. Players are fed a buffet of expertly executed ideas, bursting at the seams with variety and challenge.
I would have liked to have seen shorter load times and a revised inventory management system so that players can more easily avoid spending so much time in their inventory, but these are things that could very well be addressed with patching. Those two gripes aside, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is an awesome game and a wonderful experience to sink into.
Moon's commentary on the nature of its hero, expressed not only through its narrative but also its entire suite of mechanics, is its toolbox for deconstructing the template of the JRPG. Learning it's a long-lost game from 1997, operating with the inescapable sentimentality and eccentricity of the modern indie scene, underscores how long it took the rest of the world to reach places Moon had already been. Even with its anachronisms, Moon is a surprising novelty.
Running around taking down the undead, racing through the streets, and mowing down creatures is honestly all you could ask.
All that said, Alan Wake Remastered is fine remaster of a great game. Alan Wake has aged well and still offers a compelling thriller story with some fun gameplay to keep you entertained for a dozen or fifteen hours. Whether you missed the game way back when it first came out, or just haven’t played it in a decade, it’s a worthy addition to any collection.
Post Void is a barrage of garish visual information parading through the interface of a first-person shooter. As either an act of mercy or a concession to humanity, modest roguelite trappings force all of Post Void's noise and fury into manageable dosages. This leaves Post Void as a wonderful party drug, provided you can sustain the party and handle the drugs.
It's a game that will make your life a living hell but in a way that's addicting and forever challenging. Cuphead is a damn good time.
Amerzone from developer Microids Studio Paris is a Myst-like experience that features a heavy narrative, great characters, and incredibly challenging puzzles. It may not be for everyone, but those who want this type of gaming experience will certainly be thrilled with the delivery.
House of Ashes doesn't offer a new unique tale that I found with Little Hope or Man of Medan. I did enjoy my time playing through another The Dark Pictures Anthology tale, but it hasn't left an impact on me as a player as Little Hope did. Choices often felt inconsequential, and few and far between. Character development for all of the characters outside of Salim was underwhelming and disappointing, even though the backdrop of the Iraq War in 2003 was ripe for compelling character development.
Fae Tactics is a solid game, delivering players a fun, thoughtful adventure with enough unique combat and visuals to justify spending time with it.
Lithium City's neon violence is a fountain of ideas that expands until it explodes. Its objective may be to clear tricky bad guys out of hostile rooms, but its justification is to force creative and spontaneous solutions out of an evolving set of kinetic problems. What's left on Lithium City's table is a full meal served in a medley of exquisite morsels.