GanymedeJupiter

As a singleplayer game it's flawed but functional. Combat is very basic, the story isn't great, and the game wants you to play the same dozen dungeons over and over. However, the art direction and music are phenomenal, and it's an exceedingly comfy fantasy game. The broken multiplayer is a missed opportunity, but the core game is actually a decent remaster.

It's very brief, but utterly charming. The levels shake things up regularly, ranging from painting invisible obstacles to growing vines to climb, to creating platforms. It's a very interesting and visually striking puzzle game that's worth playing if you're interested by the concept.

Even by mobile free-to-play standards this game is a disgrace. Yet another classic franchise is made victim to cynical money-grabbing. Keep the hell away from this garbage.

Reviewers seemed to have a bizarre and completely unrealistic expectation of this game. It's just a simple but fun little adventure game. It's not very ambitious, but it's decent and enjoyable. Just make sure if you're a gamer that you play on Hard mode. Only being able to take 2 or 3 hits gives the game the hectic and fast deaths and playability of the classic Crash Bandicoot series. It's nothing special, but it's nothing like the terrible game reviewers are making it out to be. I honestly hope there'll be a sequel even.

Personally I found the game to be mediocre last year, but this is a new low. It's a blatant cashgrab made to exploit the empty window of next-gen titles by releasing the same game again at full price with a few tweaks. If you've already played the game, don't bother with this. If you have yet to play it, either get it on PC, the older systems, or just wait for this to drop to the affordable price that something like this should actually be. 'Definitive', perhaps but 'Essential'? No.

Prior to playing this I had heard so many praising it as one of the greatest stories in any video game. Upon finishing I questioned whether those people had any idea what a good story actually is, because Gone Home; despite it's reputation as a great story-focused game; is executed so poorly that it barely qualifies as a game or even a story. There is nothing of interest to discover here but a teenage girl's struggle with her friend. It's different sure, but in the end it's a conflict that has already been resolved and means there is nothing to become involved with or witness here. After 30 minutes to 2 hours of nothing but wandering this empty house, your reward is minimal emotional payoff, and then you're greeted with the credits as trashy 90s punk rips through your ears. I'm upset to see this proclaimed as a good story when the only reason to care for it is if it resonates with your life in some way. There are no events to behold or become hooked by, or even a narrative to experience. It's the artistic equivalent of a poetry piece posted to tumblr. No craft has been put into making this something genuinely great or interesting. It feels like a self-serving vanity project that possesses no substance as story or game. The only merit I found in Gone Home is that it is a display of how terrible something in this medium can be without being broken or offensive.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The best PlatinumGames project yet. It starts off like a run-of-the-mill space shooter, but then the first boss transforms into a giant mech that fires thousands of missiles at you in one attack, and the game starts to show the Shinji Mikami charm. Combat is fast and intense, and using your suit's booster jets to power slide across battefields never gets dull. The weapons are satisfying for the most part, however others like the LFE gun and Lock-on Laser aren't very useful, and there aren't many weapons in the game altogether so you're likely to stick to the same 3 or 4 weapons for the entire game. The boss battles are a treat, with quick-time events given a wonderful over-the-top execution. There isn't much story and what little characters there are never really get developed. This would be forgiveable if the incredibly fun game play lasted much longer. On the easiest difficulty you'll finish this game within 4-5 hours. While you will very likely want to play through again on a harder difficulty immediately afterwards, it's still disappointing that the campaign is so short, and with no multiplayer and only online leaderboards, there isnt much else to do but to play through on the higher difficulties hunting trophies. Still, while a sadly brief game, Vanquish is one of the most insanely fun games you'll play this year. Even if you don't want to pay full price for it, I highly recommend it when it drops in price, and I'm calling it an essential rental. Here's hoping for a bigger, better and funnier sequel.

I'll start off by saying that this is not the "Sonic sequel 16 years in the making" SEGA have been playing it up as. Essentially what you are getting here is 4 Zones of throwbacks to levels from Sonic 1 and 2, as well as some of the most blatant reuse of material I have ever seen in a game. You get to the end of each Zone, and find that every boss is from Sonic 1 and 2, all nearly identical to their Genesis versions except for one or two new tricks. This recycling of old material doesn't stop there however. You'll start to notice as you play through the levels that numerous sections are carbon-copies of parts of the first 2 games. This goes on so much that the game stops feeling like an homage and becomes more like a rehash of old designs. This becomes borderline ridiculous towards the end where you fight every boss in the game again with no changes, equating to what would be the "Boss Rush" mode in other games. Aside from that, the gameplay for the most part is classic Sonic, albeit a very brief reunion. The Acts and boss encounters seem just far to short compared to the Genesis games, with your first run-through of the game lasting no more than 1.5 hours if you don't get stuck on the ridiculously cheap final boss. The music in general is disappointing, achieving nowhere near the quality Sonic soundtracks have always had. It is unlikely you will remember any of the BGM after a week. The controls are fine for the most part but they seem to fail you at the worst possible times, especially for the final boss where using the homing attack will send you flying halfway across the room if you hit the boss, limiting you to 4 chances to hit it every minute which can get annoying very quickly. This game doesn't even come close to achieving the quality on the Genesis Sonic games, with even Sonic Rush for the Nintendo DS proving a much better game. While that game returned to the balanced 2D playability of the earlier games, it also added new twists such as boost and a different playable character. Sonic 4 on the other hand, just feels like SEGA's quick and lazy attempt to return the series' roots by throwing a rehashed remix of a small selection of stages and bosses from Sonic 1 & 2 at us, without bringing in anything to truly make this a new experience and be a proper sequel game. Sonic 4 is a massive disappointment and I would only recommend it if you are feeling very desperate now for the series to play like the old games just one more time. Otherwise, just buy one of the numerous re-releases of Sonic 1 or 2, and perhaps 3 & Knuckles as well since Episode 2 is very likely to be this treatment given to those two games as well when the time comes.