92 public written reviews
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I never found underwater levels in any game fun. They often share the same gameplay quirks: sluggish character movement, a diminishing oxygen meter and agile underwater enemies to keep you in constant motion. In fact, many games treat water as a deterrent to keep the player from wandering too far out of bounds. Subnautica is one of the few exceptions where I found the underwater traversal and exploration fun.…
I enjoy indie games because they are bold and experiment with unique gameplay ideas. I also sometimes dislike indie games because they are bold and experiment with unique gameplay ideas. The Textorcist falls into the latter column. The problem with this game is it combines two genres that are simply incompatible. It also doesn't help that the writing isn't great and the narrative didn't hook me in. Oh yeah and…
Read the full review The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia
I’m probably not the first person to admit this, but I don’t think the Grand Theft Auto games are actually that fun to play. They are spectacle crime simulators, with arcady driving and mediocre gun combat. While their narratives feature top notch voice talent and good moment to moment writing, the stories themselves end up as cliche Mafia stories involving feuding gangs and eventual betrayals. Enter Sleeping Dogs,…
Night in the Woods is a very specific game for a very specific audience. At first glance, it’s a cutesy adventure game featuring anthropomorphic characters with minor platforming elements. On closer inspection, Night in the Woods is a game that addresses depression, anxiety and the struggles of living in a small town. This indie game manages to punch above its weight and delivers a story with some serious emotional…
I love XCOM 2 especially with the War of the Chosen add-on. The game is fantastically complex and nuanced with hundreds of hours of potential gameplay. If it were not for the extraordinary levels of “XCOM jank” specifically in vanilla XCOM 2, it would easily be in my top 10 games of all time. My expectations for XCOM: Chimera Squad were wildly unrealistic. I wanted the game to capture the same highs I experienced in…
I admit I’m ignorant of the Japanese indie scene. Basically whenever I think of a Japanese indie game, I think of either a game made with RPG Maker , a Visual Novel or a game made by a ridiculously talented person like Pixel with Cave Story . To my delight, Tokyo Dark is none of those things. Tokyo Dark is a psychological horror adventure game by Japanese indie team CherryMochi. It is a game based on the likes of a…
Reviewing XCOM 2 almost 5 years after its release is both a blessing and a curse. It’s great to play XCOM 2 at its greatest potential with all of the DLCs including the War of the Chosen add-on. XCOM 2 is a complex, challenging strategic game with potentially hundreds of hours of enjoyable gameplay. It’s unfortunate to report that even with XCOM 2 at its apex, the game is horrendously buggy, especially when playing…
Read the full review An amazing strategic masterpiece if you can tolerate the numerous bugs
Disclaimer: This review is based on the Geofront Fan Translation patch on a Japanese PC copy of Zero no Kiseki. There is no official western release for this game. UPDATE: A western release has been announced by NISA and it will be based on the Geofront's translation. The Legend of Heroes:Trails games are an underrated series of JRPGs known for having excellent world building, sharp witty dialog and meaningful NPC…
The original Steins;Gate is not only a great VN game, it is an excellent piece of fiction. Steins;Gate is the best time travel story I have ever experienced. It features a phenomenal cast, wonderful chemistry between its eccentric characters and rigorously sticks with its time travel logic. The story is detailed and complex, yet comprehensible at the same time. The game does a great job explaining how wordlines and…
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore or TMS for short, is a goofy, fun and lighthearted JRPG. The game is a collaboration between ATLUS and Nintendo and was planned to be a merger of the Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem franchises. Unfortunately fans of either series will be disappointed to learn that neither franchise is properly represented in TMS. The game is best described as a Persona game with heavy J-Pop…
The Fall was a cleverly designed adventure game about an AI facing the conundrum of violating protocols in order to save its human occupant. The Fall Part 2: Unbound is a direct sequel and takes place directly after the ending of The Fall. If you haven’t played The Fall yet, do not play this game. The only way to talk more about this game is to explicitly spoil the ending of part one, you have been warned! The Fall…
On paper, Ikenfell sounds amazing. It’s a 16-bit RPG with gameplay inspired by the Paper Mario series and a setting reminiscent of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books. I wanted to find something to like in this game, but there are numerous elements to the game that didn’t work for me. The story is a wild goose chase. The gameplay is punishingly difficult. The presentation is bland. There are some really odd-ball…
Did I play the same game as everybody else? Maybe it's because this is my first DMC game, but this game is so poorly paced and juvenile. On the first playthrough, you constantly learn new skills even at the endgame so it's impossible to master any of the late game weapons/skills before credits roll. The fact that blood orbs are shared among Nero, V and Dante also doesn't help. You barely play as V and spending blood…
Finished the game last night and contemplated writing a full review but ultimately decided I better not because it will inadvertently spoil something. Outer Wilds is an ambitious game with a full dynamic and realized solar system. While the game lacks enemies to fight, the space and planets themselves are more than dangerous enough as it is. This game will not hold your hand, give you a nice big objective marker and…
DONTNOD’s latest adventure game is about a pair of twin siblings Tyler and Alyson Ronan who are reuniting for the first time in ten years. Their reunion is bittersweet as the twins plan to sell their childhood home in fictional Delos Crossing, Alaska. After going through their own belongings, Tyler and Alyson enter their deceased mother’s room only to discover that their mother has been hiding more secrets than the…
Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a fantastic turn based strategy game with social sim mechanics. The series has been kicking along for more than two decades but hasn’t garnered much interest from the West until FE: Awakening . The FE games have mostly been iterative, making minor tweaks to each subsequent game. That paradigm changed with FE: Path of Radiance for the GameCube. It was Intelligent Systems ’ most ambitious…
Carrion is a monster power fantasy game. You play as a hideous tube-like monster escaping from an underground research facility. The game makes you feel like a terrifying, powerful predator by slinging tentacles at humans and devouring their limbs using one of its' many mouths. The more the monster eats, the more it grows. When the monster absorbs specific radioactive substances, it gains new skills such as…
Played the Remastered Edition on Heroic Difficulty Halo: Combat Evolved proved that it is possible to create a competent shooter on consoles. Halo 2 is known as THE seminal console shooter, a system seller and the only reason the original XBox had a longer shelf life than it should have. I was not one of these players. I was a PC player that loved playing Counter Strike and going from Counter Strike to Halo 2, is no…
Final Fantasy XV is a game of severe contrasts, lackluster combat and poor narrative pacing. The game features an open world and yet also features a staggering long set of linear corridors. The game features a diverse and large set of interesting characters, but you barely get a chance to learn about them. The game also features action combat that can get remarkably complicated, but the game never challenges…
Pyre is the 3rd game developed by indie-hit developer, Supergiant Games . Pyre is a strange game and can’t easily be categorized into a specific genre. Supergiant’s previous games: Bastion and Transistor both tread familiar grounds, with the first being an action game and the latter being an action strategy hybrid. Pyre, on the other hand, feels like a mad scientist’s experiment. Pyre is a mix between a sports game…
There is no question that XCOM: Enemy Unknown has reinvigorated the tactics genre. After Firaxis ’s success with XCOM, many developers have tried to follow suit including Ubisoft and Nintendo . Unfortunately none of these tactics games have come close to the level of polish and complexity of the XCOM games. Gears Tactics is Microsoft Studios’ attempt to hop on the tactics train. The core tactical gameplay is an…
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is the direct sequel to Ori and the Blind Forest . The game oozes with even better art, music and cutscenes compared to the original. Will of the Wisps is also longer than its predecessor. The new game is filled with side quests, time challenges and puzzles to solve. There are a few blemishes to Will of the Wisps such as its’ new combat system and story. It is also not a substantially…
I can’t put it in any kind words, Supermassive Games dropped the ball with Man of Medan. This game should have been a phenomenal successor to their critical sleeper hit, Until Dawn . On paper, everything sounds great. Man of Medan takes the same formula as Until Dawn with a more condensed narrative experience and an option for local and online co-op. In reality, almost nothing about the game from a narrative,…
Read the full review The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan
Hollow Knight perfectly encapsulates the feeling of isolation and discovery in a metroidvania. It entreats players to wander deeper and deeper in an elaborate maze filled with boss fights and secrets. It tells its story with the environments, whether it’s the sparsely populated town of Dirtmouth, the luscious botanical gardens of Greenpath or the remnants of a great civilization in the City of Tears. The game pulls…
I originally written this as a review and abandoned it due to lack of time and only now rediscovered my draft after planning to write a review for another game. It's been quite awhile since I last played Chaos;Child, so instead of trying to finish the draft, I'm going to list the bullet points from my draft of what I felt when I finished the game. Chaos;Child is the ugly duckling of the SciAdv series. It is a sequel…
Wargroove takes no shame in riffing Advance Wars . It completely copies the turn-based tactical formula that made Advance Wars such a hit on the GBA and DS. The game mimics even the minute details such as terrain bonuses and unit types. While I enjoyed my time playing Wargroove there was always a sense of deja-vu, as if I’m not playing a new game but rather a fantasy mod of Advance Wars. Wargroove has a few original…
What immediately strikes you upon first playing 428: Shibuya Scramble is the use of live action photos and videos. This game is not a low budget FMV game with characters acting in front of a green screen but instead features numerous characters and extras on set, in Shibuya Tokyo. Scenes are incredibly varied taking place on the streets, in malls, on top of rooftops and more. The production quality of this game is…
Let’s be blunt, the only reason you should be remotely interested in Akiba’s Trip Undead & Undressed is if you want to look at anime girls in their underwear. There is no grand arching plot. There are no deep battle mechanics. And this is not the game that is “so bad that it’s good”. The whole game is designed around the mechanic of stripping girls (and boys) of their clothing. Vampire-like beings named Synthisters…
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (TCS for short) is the 6th entry in the Trails franchise by Nihon Falcom . Similar to the long running Final Fantasy series, TCS can be enjoyed without playing its’ previous entries. TCS falls in that special realm of game between a AAA title and an indie game. There is a noticeable gap in graphical fidelity and production values in TCS compared to a AAA game but there is…
Read the full review The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
=========================================================== SPOILERS!!! This review will spoil character names and plot events in Persona 4 and Persona 5. =========================================================== Persona 4 Golden (P4G) is my favorite JRPG to date, so I couldn’t wait to play Persona 5. But instead of immediately grabbing my hands on Persona 5 at release I was eagerly waiting for the improved…
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, (shortened to LR) is the last game in the beleaguered Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. The first game was an utter mess of hallways and handholdy tutorials. The sequel was a massive upgrade from the first game that took fan feedback to heart but had a nonsensical time travelling plot that goes nowhere. LR in the meanwhile is a completely different beast, sporting a new battle…
Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the direct sequel to the hot garbage known as Final Fantasy XIII . I would have never guessed that I would have had so much fun with FFXIII-2 after my soul-draining experience with FFXIII. It is no exaggeration that Square Enix took fan feedback from the first game close to their hearts and did a thorough a 180° with this game. In fact, Square Enix made such drastic measures that they…
Final Fantasy XIII is not a good game. The story is poorly delivered and makes little sense unless you refer to the Datalog. The characters constantly speak in non sequiturs. The first TWENTY hours is a series of hallways mixed with tutorials. Side characters are introduced, only to quickly disappear or reappear after dozens of hours. The CGI cutscenes feel out of place introducing gameplay ideas, settings and…
Hand of Fate is a fantastic rogue-like that mimics the experience of going through a D&D campaign. The game differentiates itself by having the player choose what enemies to face, what events to see and what equipment will appear. It's an interesting twist on the typical randomly generated dungeon because you get to pick your fate *no pun intended*. Unfortunately even after two years of its' release, Hand of Fate is…
Common Path (free version) Review Dies irae ~Amantes amentes~ (i'll note as DI for short) has many problems, first of which comes with the name that roughly translates from Latin as: "The Day of Wrath Hymn: Lunatic Lovers". If you thought the title was incomprehensible, you are in for a treat. I have played through the common path storyline and found the game to be nonsensical from top to bottom. Combine WWII era…
Dishonored by Arkane Studios is one of the many games that tries to chase after what made Deus Ex special and ultimately misses the mark. Dishonored is an action game first and foremost with a frustratingly difficult non-lethal option. The game has an impressive setting but doesn’t do much with it because of a stereotypical revenge tale. The game commits its’ first mistake early in the tutorial by informing the…
It's hard to recommend visual novels because of the negative stigma they receive. I wish it wasn't the case, but most visual novels deserve the harsh treatment. Too often visual novels are comprised of the usual formula of dating sim, underage looking girls and nudity. I’m not discounting the fact that there IS an audience for these kinds of games, but their overwhelming presence clouds the genre with the…
Read the full review Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet
I bought Out There Somewhere on a whim. It had good reviews on Steam, cost less than a dollar (was on sale for 49 cents) and was reported to be a short game. I didn’t have much to lose. Either I lose a few hours of my time or have a brief but enjoyable experience, fortunately it was the latter. Out There Somewhere is advertised as “inspired by Cave Story , Super Metroid and Portal ”. Great! I love all three of those…
Move over God of War there is another game based on Greek mythology and it is Apotheon. Sure some Greek Gods show up as personas in Persona 3 or playable gods in Smite , but there aren’t many games entirely set in Greek mythology. With all that said, it is very unfortunate that Apotheon doesn’t do anything much with its’ story. The story is similar to that of God of War without the constant talk of being angry and…
Read Only Memories takes place in Neo San Francisco where robots are everywhere and cybernetic and genetic engineering are commonplace. Similar to the San Francisco of today, Neo San Francisco faces a similar crisis where the rich and elite are all in the tech industry. Also similar to current San Francisco is the openness concerning the LGBT characters. In fact in Neo San Francisco, no one bats an eye to see a man…
It's June 7 th , 1995. Kaitlin has come home after a year long trip in Europe. There's no one to greet her other than a note taped on the front door. The note is from Sam and tells Kaitlin not to go digging around to find out where he or she or it has gone. As you enter the house, the lights flicker on. The house appears to be deserted. Welcome to Gone Home. Gone Home is an exploration adventure game that tasks the…
Skies of Arcadia Legends is a port of the Dreamcast’s Skies of Arcadia with enhanced graphics and additional side quests. The game is mediocre, with a forgettable storyline, a cast of one-dimensional characters and has a broken item system. The game’s high points are the cinematic air battles and the traversable 3D environment, but everything else about the game is as generic as JRPGs get. Skies of Arcadia Legends…
Fans of the Disgaea franchise will undoubtedly pick this game up but players new to the Disgaea franchise will find the gameplay grind-heavy and a lot less forgiving than other games on the DS. STORY Disgaea DS tells the story of Larharl, the prince of the Netherworld who wakes up from a two year slumber to find his domain in chaos and sets to defeat his enemies with his vassal sidekick Etna. What turns out to be an…
“Revelations: Persona” is an antiquated RPG. Everything about the game, from its’ presentation to its’ game-play belong in a much older era. Similar to most retro RPGs “Revelations: Persona” has no tutorial, has many random encounters and has very few save points. That is to say “Revelations: Persona” has not aged well and should only be experienced by those who purchased it around the time it came out. For those…
