Digital Chumps
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It’s my understanding that previous One Piece video games have established a positive reputation both among the series’ fans and the gaming community. If that’s the case, it’ll be better for both parties to ignore this title and hope outsiders will do the same in hopes of preserving that standard.
Monochroma isn't shy about its influences. It looks like Limbo. It features an escort mechanic similar to Ico. It yearns to express a fraternal bond like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. By defining its look, play-style, and passion through a buffet of modern classics, Monochroma's identity is left to the strength of its execution. Unfortunately while Monochroma's story manages some delicate moments, its gameplay can't escape obscene points of needless frustration and mechanical tedium. It's the latter that comes to define the experience.
Playing as a Werewolf should be fun and exciting, simple as that. Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood doesn't come close to offering that. Between the dull and laborious Human and Wolf gameplay and the lackluster Werewolf gameplay, it's difficult to recommend Earthblood to anyone. Above story and visuals, gameplay for this type of game should be king. Instead, Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood ends up being too sheepish.
One Piece: World Seeker falls flat. Its poor mechanics, sloppy combat, slow pacing, and repetitiveness all made me want to stop playing. The game has a decent story but was not worth the frustration. I would not recommend. 4/10
On paper, Tennis World Tour was supposed to give us a spiritual successor to Top Spin Tennis. Unfortunately what we've ended up with is something that's far from perfect and whilst some tennis fans may still pick it up they should do so knowing that they're in for a frustrating ride. It's likely we'll never know why things ended up as they did here but without some serious post-release patching it's a hard game to recommend.
There is so much potential in Extinction but it's all wasted. It's such a shame to see a game with some seriously fun ideas turn into something that is such a drudgery to play.
Island Time VR is a survival game deprived of effective resources. Elements that should be in great supply—variability, actionable materials, and available real estate—are reduced to a minimum, instead depending on the novelty of virtual reality for sustenance. With PlayStation VR's incapacity for a proper room-scale experience, Island Time VR is left out to starve.
Killing Floor: Incursion doesn't challenge the notion that shooting galleries are a shoulder-shrugging default for virtual reality. Any potential for dramatic tension and imaginative gunplay is squandered by repetitive enemy encounters, tedious action, and rudimentary objectives. Loud guns and roaring carnage are muted by Killing Floor: Incursion's nondescript comfort in inertia.
Super Bomberman R falls short as a complete package. The single-player, while reaching for something a bit different with level design (and it achieves it), falls short with uninteresting bosses and slow enemies. The online play of the game is only good on a local level, while the actual online gaming experience is hindered by the lack of players and atrocious delay. Until Konami gets these things addressed, I can only say look backwards to the Turbografx or Saturn for the best Bomberman experience, as you simply won't find it here.
Pixel Gear seeks enrichment from the path of least resistance. Its virtual shooting gallery is adequate enough to qualify as a game, but its vacant ambition prohibits sustained engagement or durability. The bare minimum is a discouraging target. Pixel Gear's gunplay is not capable of aiming any higher.
Jump Force, released in February to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Shonen Jump manga, brings together many recognizable anime characters. Though it is a good effort to commemorate 50 years of one of the most iconic manga magazines, its awkward control scheme, poor hub-world design, and subpar story leaves much to be desired.
Dead Rising 3's inability to operate without consistently crashing wasn't a simple technical shortcoming, but rather a comprehensive failure that came to damage and define every aspect of its experience. Looking back on my time with Dead Rising 3, I'm not thinking of open-world mayhem under the stress of a cataclysmic time crunch, but rather the ugly and sudden halt of everything I found enjoyable in the intended game.
Through the eyes of an exasperated protagonist, Those Who Remain borrows from better games to tell a by-the-numbers horror story with the illusion of morality. Rife with puzzles so simplistic they become tedious, its delivery may leave players in the dark.
Left Alive was not a fun game to play. It lacked personality, even though it wanted to be an MGS clone so bad. It lacked complication for a stealth game, as well as comfortable character movement and slow ramp-up of difficulty. I think if the devs could have had more time to smooth out these rough areas, then the game would have been decent, if not good.
Dynasty Warriors 9 is extremely repetitive, and it gets to the point of frustration and boredom. The graphics in game are nothing to talk about. It would be different if the game had subpar gameplay and beautiful scenery, but you won't find that here. Unchallenging combat is just salt in the wound. This is not a game I recommend, and its 80 something playable characters cannot save it.
Perception's attractive thesis—a blind woman should be capable of investigating the menacing house from her nightmares—creates space for an original protagonist inside of an extraordinary circumstance. A premise isn't a promise, however, as Perception quickly abandons novelty in favor of rote objectives, aimless antagonism, and a narrative set adrift in a sea of platitudes.
I wasn't compelled by the story, the characters, or the atmosphere. I didn't feel any sense of tension or immersion with Mathew and his plight. The presentation of the game from graphics to on-screen font to voice-acting was very generic and lackluster too, making the whole experience a struggle and not very enjoyable. Without a walkthrough, I probably would not have pressed on because I just was not finding the experience worth my time and effort.
Earth Defense Force 4.1 is a lesson in how endearment can turn into exasperation. Like the best magic tricks, it's astounding the first time you see it, but a waste of time when the performer can't figure out how to move on.
Onechanbara Z2: Chaos aims to be a garish, hyper-sensory accelerant of calculated brawling and provocative identity. It hits some of its marks—a generous frame-rate and a firm commitment to kitsch melodrama among them—but it's closer to the edges boredom and mediocrity. For a game meant to elicit a range of responses, all that it leaves the player is trite indifference.
Infinity Runner boasts an attractive premise - a werewolf must escape a space station - but its thinly sliced narrative doesn't contain any satisfactory hooks and its moments of player agency rarely reach any sort of plateau. Infinity Runner's beautiful premise isn't an invitation to something greater; it's an excuse for an otherwise incidental experience.