Showing 1-10 of 34 items
PS4 - 5/5 Very, very good. I think it might be my favourite story in the RGG universe yet and I’m a big fan of the cast; Yagami is a likeable protagonist and good “straight man” while Kaito, his ex-Yakuza partner, is one of my favourite characters full stop. The game takes an approach like a TV drama rather than a film of anime, and while the length of some of the “episodes” is inconsistent, the whole thing builds to as satisfying a climax as they’ve managed to pull off. The battle system is excellent too; enemies are tuned to do more damage than I’m used to but when you’re playing well you’re just bouncing off walls and flipping over people. The end got a bit hairy though - make sure you remember to get some food as well as the usual energy drinks because you’ll need them! Of course it isn’t perfect, with a few little annoyances that persist, but after a couple of weeks I can’t remember them. Instead I remember the crazy situations, the fun battles, the plot and the friendship system, where you regularly check in on people around the city to advance their stories, maybe do a few side cases and generally become a bit more of a resident of Kamurocho than Kiryu ever did.
Switch - 3/5 Good overall. My main issues were the occasional difficulty spikes mostly driven by high enemy damage; there were long periods where I would make constant progress punctuated by little difficulty spikes where the game decides that if you haven’t bought the right equipment you can die in two hits. Loses a mark per the Kangaroo Court system for having both a slippy slidey ice world and control reversing power downs.
PC - 3/5 It’s fine. I definitely would have been annoyed if I’d paid full price but as part of game pass it’s a fun way to pass a weekend. It needed more Terry Crews (they get him, then all the story stuff after the start is generic because you can choose different agents - boo!) but I enjoyed bouncing around the city with the Director acting as my hype man. Fun weapons and agility orbs did enough to make up for some occasionally shonky targeting, a throwaway story making everything a bit samey and some weird difficulty spikes. I wasn’t happy with how it ran on my PC; I’m used now to having to turn down rendering resolution on my 1070 but the constant micro-stuttering is really bad and made it look much less smooth than the (excellently detailed) performance information let on. I shouldn’t be able to perceive judder at a reported 100 frames a second!
PC - 5/5 Really great fun almost all the way through. The game simultaneously encourages careful stealth and all-out aggression which means that the approach you choose always feels like the right one. A broad range of skills and prosthetic gadgets unlock through the game, which definitely feel like a good replacement for putting points into stats; by about halfway through I definitely felt like I had found my play style without being locked out from trying something new. Special attention should also be given to the audio and animation; the sound effects are really top class and it’s clear that the artists really relished working on a Japanese setting for once. In one area in particular there would be parts where I’d just stop and watch the enemies, and that’s not even because I was eavesdropping on their conversations. If I had to complain about anything it’d be that I didn’t enjoy the final boss as much as I could have. I think the end boss in Bloodborne is probably the best one I’ve fought against because it’s a complete test of the techniques you’ve used up to that point while still feeling like you’re making progress. The final boss in this, though, just made me feel like I was banging my head against a wall for a couple of hours, at which point I just crossed over the narrowest of margins and almost immediately beat it. The thing is, though, there wasn’t a single other boss where that happened (though there were a few where I had some sort of realisation which made things a lot easier - another of the game’s very strong points). Overall, though, I think that the best thing about Sekiro that I can say is that it has finally pulled me out of a period of a few months where I have felt generally a bit burned out on games.
PC - 4/5 Really solid exploration platformer. I liked the level system (apparently it was released in parts originally) and the artwork was excellent. Good music, too. Not a big fan of one hit death spikes though! Bit too much talking as well.
PC - 4/5 Really neat little promo game for the 3DS version of Strange Journey. Some good mechanics come together, swapping between Jack Frost and Jack Lantern for elemental damage and resistances (some fun colour swapping to avoid damage on bosses in particular!) and the equipment you get near the end is really fun. The difficulty is a bit uneven in that once you get the ability to buy healing items it pretty much trivialises the rest of the game but I definitely could have played it a fair bit more. The ending is more SMT than I expected too.
PC - 5/5 Really great remake. Lots of fun to play, looks fantastic, plenty of tension, and doesn't hang around past its welcome.I spent a fair while during the game kind of wishing the shooting was a bit more consistent in terms of dealing damage to enemies, but that's not really the point is it? I really appreciated the way the map worked, too.
PC - 5/5 It's the same game on PS4, but I managed to brute force it to 60fps+. The graphics really shine at higher resolutions and the controls fell really nice at higher framerates. Some glitches remain though; some minigames are harder to play at higher framerates and the ragdoll physics are even more comedic. It's like Titan Quest at times, flinging enemies all over the place. Penalising a game for having you launch enemies 10 feet into the air sometimes does feel like it goes against everything I like in games, so I won't do it.
PC - 3/5 This is actually Magic Potion Destroyer - there's no page for it. I'll see if I can add it later. Fun little idle game with a story. The soundtrack isn't quite the trance spectacular that it was in Magic Potion Explorer, which is a big shame. Looking forward to what comes next though.
PC - 5/5 Ladybug just keep getting better and better with their Metroid-style platformers. Not being fully into the Touhou world, I didn't realise that the character you play as in this game is basically Dio Brando from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure; as your chances to use your time stopping abilities increase you are just throwing tens of knives into every single enemy. Really fun game system based around slowing and stopping time, an excellent soundtrack, and some fun bosses all come together to make a really great 3-4 hour game with just enough bite to keep you entertained. There's an extra level coming on the 14th of June, I'll definitely try that out.