Such an odd choice of game design. They could make a Pokemon-style game with open-world battling and I'd have lapped it up, but this format has glaring issues. The pace is amazingly slow and the story far too long. Plus, the digi-volution is an obscured mess, with the best ones coming too late or not at all. The game is clearly oriented toward replayability, but no way am I sitting through this more than once.
A 15hr game padded out to 40hrs is never a good idea, especially when the first game was a roguelike. They had the premise **** story and a chance to steal the niche of space shooter from Star Wars but blew it massively.
Elden Ring has received much praise and critical acclaim elsewhere, so in my review I'd actually like to tackle some controversies and areas where I took exception to Elden Ring, despite enjoying it for nearly 70 hours. The graphics are the best that the Souls genre has to offer and at present are being added to via patches to make them even more stable. My main gripe with them was the framerate dipping sometimes but this was not often or harsh enough to hinder my enjoyment. Elden Ring on one hand is possibly the most accessible Souls game so far, but on the other hand it could easily be a complete nightmare if it's your first Souls game One or two of the early bosses are clearly designed for you to pass and come back to later when you are stronger, however non-Souls players won't know this and could easily be frustrated. The biggest gripe I have with ER and Souls games in general is that an online guide is an essential if you want to progress without constantly hitting barriers. This is doubly evident in ER where we are advertised an open-world, but in reality you will be crushed quickly if you wander too far off the expected path. The game is more like a series of smaller open areas which then become a huge open world by the end, which isn't really a problem as each area gives you plenty to do and explore. Another issue I take note of in ER in particular is this seems to be the Souls game with the cheapest enemies, bosses in particular. I noticed that when enemies do a combo there always seems to be one or two additional attacks that are less intuitive, as if designed to simply catch you off-guard. Added to this was the fact that I ran the tankiest strength build I could conceive of (without going through complex guides) and many later enemies were doing serious damage still, so it makes me hesitant to play as any other build. This brings me to another issue I had with ER. It's simply too big and too long. When I was on hour 69 and beating the final boss I breathed a sigh of relief rather than satisfaction, glad that it was finally over. This doesn't inspire me to replay the game and amazingly I still didn't complete some additional quests and optional bosses as I'd simply become fatigued of the game by this point, especially as the harder optional bosses such as Melania are simply cheap two-stage bosses. Many fans lord over the quests in Souls games but these are one of my most hated areas of the game. They are obfuscated by design, intentionally not giving you obvious or clear instructions. I find it quite bizarre that Fromsoftware would barricade some of their best content and make it very easy to miss - many quests are time or context specific so you can miss an opportunity to complete them altogether. Again, some fans love this but I'm not one of them and disagree with this design. On that note, I'll also give my two cents on another hot topic - difficulty. I fully believe Souls games should have adjustable difficulty levels. Again it baffles me that Fromsoftware would barricade the game itself away from potential fans, although judging by recent sales they don't need to worry about that as much. I just believe that in general we should identify where barriers exist in games and look at whether they need adjusting, and this is already something From is aware of as they have nerfed some weapons and bosses already. Tied to the quests we also have the overall story. Elden Ring is probably the most coherent of the Souls games I've played in terms of story, but again leaves a lot of it in the backseat in favour of gameplay. This is one thing I am in favour of, as I found that when cut-scenes did happen I was much more interested and engaged. Despite my criticisms above, Elden Ring is in the top-tier of games I have played throughout my life and will likely remain a favourite as it shows exactly how an open-world can be done, throwing a gauntlet in the face of games such as Assassins' Creed and Far Cry. It baffles me that developers look at Elden Ring's success and still insist on their exploitative live services. One final thing I have to say is that I actually regret buying ER day one as there is still a lot of updating and patches being brought out by Fromsoftware, so I would actually recommend waiting a few months or for the inevitable GOTY edition as DLC is sure to follow also. This is one game you cannot afford to miss.
We need to stop calling it 'review-bombing' as these low scores represent the response from a community that is sick of being insulted by mediocre products charged at ever-increasing prices by increasingly corrupt corporations. This is how we raise our voice as the powerless underclass.
The graphics have improved, but that's all. The price is ridiculous, bearing in mind Sony also raised the price on PS5s recently too. Do not support this practice.
Pay to win? When will Blizzard ever learn? Will they stop abusing their employees? Do you guys not have phones? So many questions, such obvious answers.
Trek To Yomi is an indie game with character and style clearly visible from trailers and screenshots that drew me in. The actual game itself is a rather mixed bag, however. The graphics are Yomi’s selling point. Much has been touted about the Kurosawa influence, yet to most of us it’s just a black and white Samurai game. In cut-scenes the graphics are impressive with a hint of simplicity, whilst in action scenes things become more dramatic as you witness the elements alongside incidents such as fire and destruction. These make for engaging backdrops for the action to take place. The Yomi side of it, however, suffers for this. The foggy and puzzling supernatural backdrops I found to be less immersive and the spectres more annoying than striking. The gameplay of Yomi is where you expect the bread and butter to be as a Samurai game, but it’s actually the game’s weakest point. The combat is inconsistent at best and downright cheap at worst. It can be satisfying to slice through opponents, yet the controls I found to be temperamental in their responsiveness and combos couldn’t be executed consistently. Most combat boiled down to a Wild West style quick-draw, with whoever gets the first hit usually being the winner as the combat stun-locks you into defeat. A special mention goes to the bullcrap final boss who does exactly this with a ridiculously long combo. Basically, most of the game sees you running through corridors and killing enemies in your way. I did find a few times where I needed to reload as I got stuck on the environment and some puzzles were more annoying than challenging. Then again, Yomi isn’t marketed as an action game. It’s a Kurosawa film in game form. The story is a fairly simplistic tale of student-master-love-interest triangulation. The Yomi aspect brings in a supernatural element later in the game but I didn’t think this added much worthwhile. It was the most tedious part of the game for me and dragged on too long as you navigated clichés of facing up to your past killings and failure to protect the one you love. There’s nothing wrong with the story, but nothing remarkable either. Overall, Trek to Yomi is a game worth playing with some caveats. It’s neither a cinematic nor a gameplay masterpiece. I applaud it for trying something a bit different and with more focus on improving the combat it could be quite a gem ****. Game Pass makes it much more recommendable.
I missed out on BOTW when it first released, and I think that's where the real problem lies. It is not over 5 years later and the game has not aged well compared to what we have in 2022. I am hot off the heels of completing Elden Ring, so I should have expected this. Still, there are elements of BOTW that deserve criticism even in 2017. The graphics are a strange one. Simplistic and charming, they are also challenged by performance issues and when confronted by a huge landscape, simplistic graphics can backfire, which it does here. The gameplay of BOTW is unfortunately aged and superseded by many other games. It seems Nintendo have tried to capitalise on the open-world trend, but the end result is BOTW playing like a hastily-patched together mixture of games like Skyrim, Witcher and Horizon. One of the earliest missions involved marking four shrines on my map, however it was not made clear that the goal of the mission was to travel and complete the shrines - there was no prompt to move the mission along organically. I looked this up online and many others faced the same dilemma, which tells me it is very bad game design to have such ambiguity. The most frustrating aspect of this game is just how slow everything is. It takes forever to travel. I see a horse is added eventually but this is really needed from the beginning and fatigued me quickly. The stamina bar is a ludicrous design choice also, making Link the most physically unfit protagonist I've seen. BOTW loves to tout itself as open-world, but this is more like an empty world than an open world. It would have been much more enjoyable for me had it been compressed so that there was less banal running and backtracking. The story of BOTW plays a minor role and at this point needs a serious shake up. It's as lazy as Mario with the whole princess and bad guy concepts. Overall, this is not the masterpiece it's made out to be. I don't even find it to be a quality open-world game of its time when it was released the same year as Horizon Zero Dawn and two years after The Witcher 3. Avoid.
Where The Heart Leads (WTHL) is potentially an excellent hidden gem, so obscure that I came across it by accident. Unfortunately a critical flaw in the game design caused a score lower than I wanted to give it, but I must use my own experience since it's my review. The graphics of WTHL are very charming. They are not overly detailed or jaw-dropping, but they convey what the game is trying to achieve well. One key facet is that only your character is drawn and animated properly, while the rest of the cast takes on a ghostly ethereal appearance. This had me scratching my head at first but then became something I appreciated as it really places the emphasis on your character being central to the story. Other than that, the camera angles and lack of detail occasionally makes it tricky to traverse some areas but with the familiarity you build up this issue gets resolved quickly. The gameplay of WTHL makes for an interesting discussion. Some may argue there is almost no gameplay here and depending on how you define gameplay, then you could be right. Gameplay involves exploring your environment and interacting with objects and people. There's no jumping, fighting or much action other than that. The gameplay here is only there to communicate the story. What we do see is the ability to make choices ala Life is Strange. This may not be everyone's cup of tea but the story can really be compelling so I recommend it on that basis. The story of WTHL is the core of the game and what you will remember. I really enjoyed getting to know Whit's background and the development of him and other characters, influenced by your decisions. This is something I am careful not to spoil so it's tricky to review in a game where narrative is key. Some sections of the game did drag on a bit much, though. Now I talk about the specific problem I had. In one mid-section of the game I was required to take down some sculptures. I went up to said sculptures and nothing would happen - no prompt or indication, no clue from other characters and despite extensive exploration and looking online, no solution could be found. I may be missing something stupidly obvious, but the game does this a few times occasionally, leaving you adrift to figure things out. This experience may have been unique to me so I'm not going to lambast the game completely for it, but it has prevented me completing an otherwise 4/5 star game. Overall, WTHL is a game I'm very disappointed not to be able finish. This speaks volumes about how much I enjoyed the game, so it's an easy recommendation for those who value story above all else. My only worry is the potential bug I found may not be the only one, so I hope your experience was not ruined like mine.
Hellpoint aims to be a souls-like and this is not a problem. What is a problem for me is that Hellpoint plays more like a lower quality version of Dark Souls. The graphics in Hellpoint are not overly problematic other than some framerate issues. The biggest problem I have with Hellpoint's graphics are intertwined with my issues with the level design. They are simply too one-dimensional. Where Dark Souls had compact and diverse areas, Hellpoint sprawls through corridor after corridor of familiar steampunk backgrounds. This made me get lost a lot in levels due to each area looking so familiar that I couldn't tell where I was in a level. Overall, the graphics make the game harder to enjoy and harder to play. The gameplay is an interesting one. The brief experience I had with it left me with the impression that unfortunately it was just a poor-man’s Dark Souls again. The controls are almost identical and the attributes and stats function almost identical to Dark Souls. Curiously I wasn’t able to do back-stabs, which I’m guessing were not included in the game. It wouldn’t be a Souls-like without mentioning the difficulty. I didn’t find my time overly difficult. What I found was most of the difficulty came from bad level design, having to traverse long, repetitive and confusing areas with only one ‘bonfire’ that I could find. This was very problematic as when I entered the Embassy and met my first true OP enemy, it created a vicious circle of death and looping back for my souls, souring me on the game massively. The story of Hellpoint also tries much too hard to imitate Souls by being cryptic and minimalistic in how it is conveyed. This doesn’t really work as well for Hellooint simply because the gameplay and visuals aren’t there to complement it. Overall, Hellpoint tries far too hard to imitate Dark Souls instead of distinguishing itself from Dark Souls. It is a very unmemorable cheap knock-off that made me put it down very quickly, whereas Souls kept me pushing through to the end. I understand Hellpoint came from a small team and a tiny budget, but that cannot forgive the mundane and bad gameplay and level design. I don’t see the point of suffering through an inferior version of Dark Souls having already completed the original game.
This was a very well received game so I was excited to play it. Unfortunately, I do not see what all the hype is about. I believe it's the visuals and the ambience that caused DD to launder itself to the hearts of many critics. The game has a creepy yet charming graphical style, merging black and white with more colourful and vibrant environments. Movement is smooth and fluid to create a feast for the eyes. At the same time there is a certain simplicity as nothing is extraordinarily detailed but carves its own identity. Having said that, some environments and enemies will get repetitive quickly. The gameplay of DD is where it trips over itself a bit. I found this very basic and over-rated. If you've played The Witch and Hundred Knight (an obscure reference in itself) then you will feel the familiarity here. Trawling through dungeons you meet groups of largely the same enemies and solve fairly simple puzzles, familiar to Zelda players. The problems are the these enemies are annoying and repetitive, plus there isn't much reward for beating them. Unlike a game like Dark Souls, it's only worth beating them so you know how to do it - after that just run past them. The level design leaves a lot to be desired. The backtracking and general tediousness was one of the main things that made me quite 1/3 into the game. The Hub area in black and white is a nice and novel idea, but in execution it's just really time-wasting to explore. Speaking of time-wasting, this game does a lot of that. Between traversing overly-long levels and overly-long boss fights, this sinks some hours. This would be less of a problem if checkpoints weren't so unforgiving. Four hits and you're starting over - quite a challenge if you like it. However, I despise having my time wasted as it sometimes isn't my skills holding me back but plain bad luck or slippery controls. I really liked the idea of the upgrades, but unfortunately their impact is miniscule, presumably until much later in the game. DD really shot itself in the foot for me by early in the game asking you to collect four souls to continue through a door, which could be very annoying to find as they weren't necessarily in a logical sequence. The story of DD is where it does go for something a it more original. The humour can be a bit amateurish and trying too hard, though. But, I enjoyed the oddball cast of characters I had met so far. Overall, Death's Door is a nice attempt at something original and different, however many critics seem to be either going easy on it or being blinded by indie bias to give it some proper scrutiny. Death's Door is a fairly simplistic game that may test your patience more than entertain you.
Yet another disappointing and over-rated indie- darling to add to my list. The graphics in OW can be impressive such as when on the Giant's Deep, but overall are very simplistic and childish. This is not a problem in itself but it does make for a very one-dimensional feel for a game that touts itself as thinking outside the box. The gameplay of OW is downright awful for me. First off, we have the time loop mechanic. Thank God it doesn't take long to discover this as it was the final nail in the coffin for me. I'm not sure if they were aiming for replayability here, but it just created an awful amount of tedium and repetition for me to do the same things over again. Speaking of tedium, the game seems to pride itself on not telling you where to go or what to do. There is a difference between open-ended exploring and just plain obtuseness and pretentiousness, the latter of which this game unfortunately falls under. I suspect the rave reviewers are a bit like Dark Souls reviewers - they use guides. I found no intuition in my 30+ years of gaming experience to be of use here. To add to this, the physics and controls are awful too. Early in the game you control a little drone-like device that's basically harbinger of what's to come as it handles terribly and flops about before smashing into the ground. When I visited each of the planets, I didn't find much of interest. Then I learned the game is a bit like piecing together a most annoying and tedious jigsaw where you have to hunt down the pieces. As for the story, well I'd need to actually make progress in the game to learn the story or what the point is. I am clearly biased as I absolutely loathe the laziness of time-loop mechanics, so perhaps I was never going to enjoy this game. Overall, I hate Outer Wilds. It's a pretentious indie game that tries too hard to be different and forgets to be enjoyable. It wasted too much of my time but I'm grateful I gave up when I did before wasting even more time.
The Procession to Calvary (TPTC) is an excellent and refreshing game that I heard about through a famous YouTuber. Its unusual take on pretty much every aspect **** hooked me immediately. The visuals of TPTC are striking due to the obvious use of medieval paintings cleverly animated ala Harry Potter-style. This genius approach allows for both unique and humorous effects that wouldn't have been as well executed with traditional realistic graphics. It's also a very ingenious way to circumvent the lack of funding indie games suffer, which in turn raises a question of whether indie games are better off with lower budgets. The gameplay of TPTC feels a bit more familiar as it is base on a point-and-click style. You have to explore your environment manually and converse with people you meet to figure out how to move the game forward. There were a handful of occasions where I looked up the next step online as it became a bit more obtuse, but overall it was very enjoyable and fun to explore and hear the humorous dialogue that ranged from vulgar to hilarious lunacy. Some might lament that the game is rather short. It definitely is short, but to me that's a positive thing that prevents repetition and the game becoming stale, since it's not meant to be taken very seriously. The story of the game is borderline nonsense designed to be funny, which it fortunately does very well. Your character is looking for any excuse to murder and will do whatever it takes to get there, with the charming yet funny adventure that ensues. I really enjoyed the random insanity that would come out of people's mouths and the bizarre situations you find yourself in. Overall, TPTC is a unique, hilarious and refreshing indie game that may not be everyone's cup of tea, but made for an excellent evening of vintage entertainment for me thanks to Game Pass, so I'm happy for once.
Nobody Saves The World (NSTW) is an exceptional RPG that I found incredibly addicting despite a very familiar gameplay loop. The graphics are largely 2D but detailed and fluid to the extent that you can tell great care was taken with them. When the framerate hits its peak the game is a pleasure to look at. Everything is well-designed, from the maps to the enemies. I didn't find it overly repetitive despite the repeating enemies and dungeons. The theme was a bit post-apocalyptic which explains the lack of vibrant colours in many places but it would have been nice to see more fantasy dungeons filled with rainbows or something, The gameplay of NSTW is the familiar dungeon-crawler RPG loop that we know so well from the days of Diablo and similar games. What NSTW does ingeniously well is to innovate this by having your character change forms instead of having to equip weapons and armour. This simplified without dulling the whole process of being an RPG. I loved levelling up my forms to unlock newer versions. To add to this ingenuity they also later allowed mixing and matching of the abilities between forms, allowing for a lot of creative freedom. The only downside to this was that upgrading is achieved through reaching goals with each form and some of these goals could be very tedious and annoying to achieve. These were the minority, however, and most upgrades were great for surreptitiously teaching you how to use abilities, showing that boring tutorials are not always necessary. Most of the missions were engaging and enjoyable, but a handful also became annoying such as at the archery range and the dungeon where every hit causes 9999 damage. The story of NSTW makes for compelling narratives as you aren't neck-deep in lore, gradually learning what has happened to you and your goals as the game progresses. There's a lot of humour in there too which I really enjoyed. The game also benefits from the option of engaging with the story as much as you want or just zooming through the dialogue. Overall, NSTW is the perfect way to start 2022 in gaming at a time when I found myself burnt out by the same old crap by the end of 2021. It marries familiar mechanics with clever innovation for a very enjoyable experience.
Celeste is one of many in a line of indie darlings that has received swathes of critical acclaim. I strongly disagree with the general perception of this game being so positive. The graphics are one of the finer points of Celeste. I am growing continually weary of the retro visuals approach but Celeste manages to evolve this slightly with some vibrant and trippy visuals, especially later in the game. The graphics do an excellent job of creating the ambience intended. The biggest issue might be that combining it with gameplay makes it difficult when precision is needed for platforming. This segues me into discussing gameplay nicely. Celeste is a very difficult platforming game. This is my first red flag with all the critical acclaim - no way can that many reviewers be skilled enough to beat this game without the assist mode. I give the studio major kudos for having the assist mode but also take issue with the fact its existence is a must for me to access most of the game. The platforming for me just was not fun or challenging. When I finally succeeded I was bitter because I knew a lot of it was luck and that worse platforming was still to come. This is Celeste's biggest problem for me, as it becomes very one-dimensional very quickly. You are constantly platforming with very brief breaks for the story. It doesn't help that I'm not a huge fan of platformers in general, but games like Mario have shown us for decades how this genre can be navigated with more depth than Celeste. The story of Celeste is where I think a lot of the critical acclaim is biased by. On one hand it's quite nice and relevant to have mental illness feature prominently in a game. On the other hand, it has been done better elsewhere and at worst is outright pretentious and obnoxious. I can't care about Celeste's mental health when the punishing platforming is bad for my own sanity. We saw this same rubbish in Hellblade, another game positively-reviewed for the mentally-ill protagonist and not the actual game itself. As you can probably tell, Celeste was not a game I enjoyed. As I accuse reviewers of being biased I come from my own biased perspective as I have played so many pretentious indie darlings that it put Celeste at a disadvantage, however games do not exist in isolation and Celeste should have learned from its peers. This game I recommend for a very niche audience who enjoy punishing platforming, which I imagine to be much fewer than those who claim to have loved this.
Crosscode is an inspired game with a retro feel that looks like a typical 2D RPG on the cover but there is so much more to it. Unfortunately, that 'so much more' is what I really don't like. CC's graphics make no secret about harking back to the 16-bit era of SNES games. I find these style of graphics to be generally welcome but it seems far too many indie developers are going for this style in recent years, making me a bit tired of seeing them. The difficulty with CC in particular is that there is a lot of platforming and simplistic graphics make it harder to differentiate between the latitudes. Having said that, I appreciate that it's also a clever way of working around the lower budgets indies have. The big problem I have with CC's graphics is that I experienced some serious framerate and screen tearing issues early in the game that left an early bad impression. I had to search online and turn off many of the video settings just to get it to run decently, ironic given the 16-bit graphics. The fact that both PS4 and PS5 versions of this game exist also makes it less acceptable to find these issues. The RPG elements of CC's gameplay are very good, mostly. What I really didn't like was having to collect so much materials to allow me to buy equipment rather than just use cash or get them from enemies. This brings me to another big issue I had with CC. 90% of the few hours I played were just gather and fetch quests. I don't mind some of these as they help you learn the mechanics and story ****, but they really were used to excess here. Apparently this improves as you venture further into the game but the idea **** is to compel you, not hold up promises that things will get better. I did not expect puzzles to play as much of a role as they do in CC. Again, I like some puzzle elements, but CC really took this to excess for me. The first dungeon was just room after room of puzzles. Just when I think I got to the end there were even more and I lost my patience with the game. I do like the creativity in some of the puzzles but the shooting feels very slippery and imprecise for how often it's needed in puzzles. The story of CC was what captivated me most and I'll be most sorry to miss out on that. The character being a largely silent protagonist is always a divisive approach, in this case for the better as there is enough dialogue already. The story felt very meta as it reminded me of Assassins' Creed where you are in the Animus, which felt a lot more original than standard fare RPGs. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to keep me going in the game. Overall, Crosscode seems to be another critically-acclaimed indie darling that leaves me very sceptical of the overwhelmingly positive praise. I accept that it may just not be my cup of tea but it left me remorseful that Sony do not allow refunds, so lesson learned for me to do more research or buy on Steam.
Valley is an interesting game that caught my eye as it appeared to be more of a running simulator than a walking simulator. The graphics of Valley are mostly pretty good. There are some amazing bucolic scenes greeting you a you soar through the air. The downside of this really is that they end up being one-dimensional. You're either in a nice forest or in the dank steel hallways of a factory, with the latter being very unpleasant to the eyes. Valley could definitely have benefitted from more variety especially during the fast-paced sections. The gameplay of Valley comes down to traversal, opening boxes and hitting switches. When I was on the move and going at great speeds the game was at its most enjoyable. The mech suit is a genius gimmick to elevate the game from a mere walking simulator. The downside was that faster speeds were of course harder to control. This is to be expected, but getting stopped abruptly in your tracks kills enjoyment easily and exposes where Valley is rough around the edges. The traversal could also be a bit wonky as you rely on grapple hooks being responsive and landing on sometimes small platforms. The good thing is the punishment for death isn't so severe but if you fall from a great height you may be respawned on a platform near to the height you died, not the height you fell from. This was infrequent for me but maddening when it did happen. The gimmick of Valley is that you can breathe life into the valley by reviving dead fauna and animals. This is a nice touch that adds a bit of optimism to the game. They story of Valley connects the areas you explore well. There are quite a few documents to read and I must confess I skipped a lot of these in favour of exploring, but the story comes together cohesively regardless. Rather than texts, Valley could probably have benefitted from audio logs that fed you the story as you explored like in other walking simulators. Overall, Valley is a great game conceptually but you can really feel the limitations of the budget in execution. There is still plenty to enjoy and I appreciated it not being a particularly long game either. This is the kind of game that makes me very interested to see what the studio put out next, and that's commendable in itself.
Spiritfarer isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea but is still a game I recommend despite its flaws. The graphics of Spiritfarer are done very well, a cartoon style that captures your attention and is able to capture every theme or mood that it aims for. It does come across as fairly indie but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The graphics serve to emphasise the atmosphere and the Everdoor in particular always is a sight to behold. The gameplay of Spiritfarer capitalises on well established mechanics from games like FarmVille, **** Valley and The Sims. A lot of these mechanics such as growing food and dealing with the needs of characters are usually mechanics that make me groan due to their prevalence for over a decade, but Spiritfarer manages to employ each of these mechanics to create a holistic package that is still enjoyable. What stands out about the game is the boat being your base and how you essentially build a village on it with regular upgrades. This is actually quite genius and innovative as it eliminates a middle man in the usual RPG routine of travelling on foot - you can undertake tasks whilst the boat is en-route. The downside of all of this is that repetition creeps in the longer the game lasts, and unfortunately I found Spiritfarer to be a bit too long and some of the resource gathering to be a bit of a chore. I soon learned that the best way when I needed something was to look online for the fastest route to acquisition. It gets quite irksome for me when characters are getting overly choosy about what they eat when few of them provide any service of their own to benefit me. Spiritfarer's forte by far is the story. You are essentially escorting souls into the afterlife, learning about them, getting to know them and how they are connected to your past. This is Spiritfrarer's strongest suit because as you escort each character you do find that you cared for them and miss them once they're gone, even if they were a bit of a pain on your boat. The same downside from before weighs the story down too - I found it too long. This could be a person preference but there's a certain 'cycle' of events involved in escorting a character through the Everdoor and it gets repetitive to the point that I was skipping dialogue towards the end, losing out on the emotional aspect of the story. Overall, Spiritfarer is a game I can easily recommend. It uses familiar mechanics to tell a more meaningful story, a story which has definitely carried more meaning for me than most games in recent years. It does outstay its welcome a bit, but still clocks in at under 30 hours if you know what you're doing.
Unpacking is a very different game. It is also a very simple game yet one that also carries a compelling gameplay loop that had me coming back again and again, completing the game one level at a time. The graphics of Unpacking take a simplistic and befitting approach. The vibrant artwork is pleasing to the eye, and my only criticism is that smaller objects can be hard to distinguish and identify, but this was never game-breaking for me. The gameplay is the bread and butter of Unpacking. The premise is incredibly simple: you have boxes piled up in each room of your home and you need to literally unpack them and place items in a suitable manner. This begets a fun game of Tetris-like gameplay as you slot items into shelves or chaotically chuck them wherever you can find space. There is a lot of satisfaction to completely unpacking a room. My biggest criticism of the gameplay is that it can be restrictive in where items must be placed. One room in particular had me hide a photo in a drawer, which was really obtuse and specific; I’d never have figured that out without looking it up, but at the same time it fits with the narrative. The story of Unpacking may seem non-existent, but there is a subtle narrative at play, as each home you unpack seems to be for the same person as you follow them on their journey of life, sharing their adventure and heartbreak along the way. One of my favourite things about Unpacking is probably that the game does not outstay its welcome and is the perfect length for compacted enjoyment. Overall, unpacking is a real breath of fresh air for someone like me who tries of beating people to death in videogames. Far too many games fall into this gameplay loop and we can easily forget that videogames need not be violent to be enjoyable. I can definitely recommend this game.
While I really enjoyed TL2, the third entry feels like a step backwards. The graphics don't seem to have improved. If anything, they are worse. TL2 gave me Fortnite and free-to-play vibes, which TL3 only emphasises, missing an opportunity to carve a more original and unique look. Character customisation is really lacking when creating a new character, while the varieties of armour are nice but predictable at this point. The gameplay of TL3 makes some very strange changes, removing a skill tree format that suits ARPGs really well. The concept of the contracts also felt very free-to-play. This is quite disappointing as my mage character was quite bland rather than a specialist in the elements or summoning etc. Having a fort to build and customise is a nice touch, but mostly useless and irrelevant other than boosting my luck and stashing gear. Even on lower difficulties enemies appear to be bullet-sponges, making some of the boss fights a test of endurance rather than skill. The story of TL3 feels borderline non-existent and incoherent. TL2 had me pursuing an alchemist, which was vague but at least tangible, whilst TL3 seemed to just keep telling me to proceed to the next linear goal. TL2 was a breath of fresh air from the stale Diablo formula, but TL3 represents the tiredness of the genre and the cynicism in modern games slipping into live-services, so I won't be surprised if TL next takes the step into a full-blown mobile game the way they attempted to do with Diablo. Avoid.
I took a punt on Rustler based on how it seemed to not take itself too seriously and was unashamedly embracing its GTA-features. While this is an apt summary of Rustler, it also doesn't do justice to quite an entertaining and compact experience. Rustler's graphics hark back to the old-school GTAs with a birds-eye view. This allows for graphics to be less detailed in-line with the lower budget the game had and it works really well. One disadvantage of GTA was that you struggled to see where you were going, but Rustler circumvents this by having you on horseback, with most horses and traversal covering a fairly short distance. You will see framerate drops and imperfections, but really the graphics fulfil their purpose. The graphics are far from a PS5 standard, but the price of the game also reflects this and I think that's perfectly fine. The gameplay of Rustler borrows from GTA and borrows very well. The horses can be tricky to handle and this is likely to be the most common issue you experience, but at the same time this is also a skill to be learned. You won't have guns but you do have an array of blades and bows to handle. The combat isn't ground-breaking but also easy to learn quickly. The missions and Rustler as a whole tends to be short and snappy, which really works in favour of the game to prevent repetition and padding. The main quest and side quests provide just enough content that I was neither unsatisfied or over-saturated by the game's end. Some of the quests can get a bit fiddly, such as jousting which seemed a tad inaccurate, as well as a specific mission involving collecting bodies which had an insanely narrow time-limit. These are something that can be overcome with a bit of practice but do cause mild frustration. The story of Rustler is really where it shines. Humour in game like this can often reach immature and toilet-level of intellect, but Rustler manages to toe the line between crude insolence and clever barbs. There are plenty of references such as Monty Python and a general attitude of not taking life too seriously. I don't want to spoil the game, so I'll just say that there's a bard-core version of Queen's "I want to Break Free" that was a real highlight of the game for me. Despite the humour there is a coherent narrative and direction to the game centred on a kind of revenge plot that I found surprisingly engrossing also. Overall, Rustler is a game that hasn't attracted the attention it deserves. I found it to be a concise, humorous and enjoyable experience that I can wholly recommend. It may not be a next-gen paradigm shift, but it never sets out to be and makes no airs or graces at deriving inspiration from classic GTA. This is well worth a try.
Brilliant Diamond teeters the line between yet another lazy remaster and a breath of fresh air. For me, I find that the remaster does improve the game quite a bit but is still undermined by decades old mechanics and lacking in innovation. The graphics are the most noticeable difference here. They may even be divisive as the heads of the characters are absurdly enlarged compared to their bodies. This was jarring at first for me but I got used to it. What made me sceptical was the similarities to the models in Miitopia. Anyway, it is quite nice seeing the game on a TV screen, but where the graphics do quite suffer is in the simplicity of the designs as some pokemon such as Scyther are mostly one block of colour. Having said that, the vivid colours in some areas do stand out and the game is still immediately recognisable as Pokemon. The gameplay is where Pokemon struggles/refuses to innovate. The core mechanics we all know and love are here, although many grow tired of them by now, myself included. They tried with Sun and Moon to shake up the formula a bit, with S+S attempting and failing at the open-world approach. BD reverts back to the tried-and-tested linear approach, for better or worse. What stands out to me are the gym battles and Elite 4, in that these were often quite a difficulty spike. I remember this always being the case with Pokemon but it's a flaw of the game to find you have been raising the 'wrong' Pokemon for the Elite 4 and a real faff to raise the one you need at the last hurdle. Having said that, I give kudos because the gym leaders and Elite 4 go outside the box from the usual rock-paper-scissors elemental approach Pokemon has always taken. The Underground is a new addition, and a peculiar one at that. The digging for treasure aspect resembles lootboxes too much for my liking, while the overall tunnels were a bit vacant and the rooms where you meet Pokemon I always found to contain the same handfuls I've already encountered. The game does seem to have some end-game content, however after 20+ hours and beating the Champion I had had enough and switched off at this point, but hardcore fans could spend dozens of hours here. The story of BD is probably Pokemon at its weakest and most formulaic. Obviously a remaster isn't a remake, but it really does show the aging concepts as the same story format is woven throughout the entire series. You won't be surprised by what you find here. It may be that Pokemon is in a strange epoch. I grew up with it and the simplicity was appropriate as a child, but now I'm older it feels like the games have aged too but not developed. Perhaps Pokemon is caught in a bind between appealing to children vs long-time followers like me, so I can appreciate that but perhaps a simple solution is to release two very different games instead of almost identical ones. This is an amazing con and I don't understand how Nintendo still get away with it, so I deduct points for that always. Overall, this is merely yet another Pokemon experience. It's nice to dive into for nostalgia but really they could have remade the first three generations instead as they are far more memorable for me. This game does show potential for when the effort is actually put it and makes me curious if Arceus will try stepping outside the box a bit. I'd recommend waiting for that rather than buying this.
Alan Wake is the type of game that stirs fond memories for the cult following that embraced the game back in the day. I missed the first release in 2010 so this was a good chance to see what I missed. While I'm glad to have had this opportunity, Alan Wake has aged quite poorly in some areas but remains a worthwhile adventure. The graphics of AW are good, with character models benefitting from the remaster treatment. One thing I noticed was framerate drops on occasion and even during cut-scenes, which is odd for a remaster. AW also doesn't get many opportunities to display graphical power when much of the game takes place in the dark, but the brief moments spent in daylight allowed for some interesting views and the graphics overall have not aged as badly as the gameplay. The gameplay of AW falls into a one-dimensional approach that is a bit protracted and aged now. There is quite a bit of walking to be done, as well as standing waiting for AW to catch his breath as he is realistically depicted as unfit to a fault. The concept of weakening enemies with the torch and then killing them with guns is fine, but by the end of the game this is quite a tedious mechanic and there really isn't much else to the gameplay. AW involves puzzles and traversal, but these are probably the worst aspects of the gameplay. I found it rather arduous to enter an area, have the camera pan to my target, and show me the distance I needed to travel and the switches/doors I needed to resolve en-route. These areas were then predictably hindered by spots of enemies exactly where you would expect them to appear, making them a nuisance rather than a horror. I give kudos to AW for largely generous checkpoints, as it is curiously easy to die in this game. There were a few areas that took a few attempts and what I learned was not to be conservative with ammo as you lose it all so bloody frequently anyway. The story of AW is what brings the game to a quite positive rating for me. A tale of trying to rescue your wife soon becomes immersed in all sorts of mystery and supernatural elements that you should explore for yourself rather than have it spoiled here. There was a lot of faff with reading manuscripts that I barely bothered with and it didn't hinder my experience. The small cast of characters you meet do a good job of making themselves likeable or unlikeable as intended by the writers. Overall, Alan Wake is a good and innovative game considering it was released around 2010. In 2021 it feels dated in some ways but the concept and premise it brought to the table still work really well. I realised that these are the same developers who made Control (which is awful) and Max Payne (which is awesome), and the influences of this is visible in AW also. If you have never experienced AW before, this is a good way to do it although it could probably lose a chapter of the game for a more concise experience. If you played the original, this is hard to recommend.
I was quite shocked to arrive on Metacritic and see this score being so low when I quite enjoyed it. It appears many of the problems listed by others were not experienced by me, possibly due to playing TL2 two years after release, so patches have done some good work. The graphics of TL2 were actually the one thing about the game I really didn't like. I found them a bit too cartoonish and resembling of Fortnite, a game I absolutely hate. However, I persevered through this to enjoy the game regardless. The diversity of enemy characters is quite impressive and I give full kudos for having a zoom function for the camera. The main downside was it could be hard to tell when enemies were actually dead or not as their outline remained highlighted briefly after death if they fell behind and obstacle, but this is a minor qualm. The gameplay of TL2 is why we come to this game. It's unavoidable to make Diablo comparisons and that's exactly what I will do, although TL2 was much more satisfying to play given all the crimes going on by Diablo's developers. Anyway, one of the biggest issues people seem to have had was only five buttons could be used to bind skills. This was never actually an issue for me because I was able to build a strategy where only 3/4 skills were used regularly and the rest of the build relied on passive skills, but I can see how this would frustrate characters who are more complex such as mages. The length of TL2 was just about right, because eventually it does get repetitive but this allows for gameplay to feel addictive as I always wanted to explore that little bit further before switching off. Added to this was the gameplay loops involving gaining and upgrading gear and I had a very good time. One odd thing that did happen to me was one of the early quests glitched out and I never got to beat it. Not exactly the end of the world, but very annoying to proceed through the game with it open in my log. The story of TL2 is purposefully minimal. You're given a reason to progress by seeking out the Alchemist. If anything, my gripe with the story is that they don't reveal the Alchemist until you fight him. It could have added to the tension by having progressively bigger fights with him throughout the game but again nothing deal-breaking. Overall, TL2 is a pretty good game and a fine alternative to Diablo to salve your conscience and wallet. It can feel bordering on empty at times but provides enough content to keep you coming back for me.
The game itself is a bit of a mess, but the story behind it warrants an absolute zero score also. Such shady and downright corrupt practice from Rockstar, who should be ashamed and punished badly for this travesty of a release.
It brings me no pleasure to say that XYS7 is unfortunately average in all ways. The game has its charm from the Asian themes and context but ultimately is a very middle-of- the-road outing. The graphics may be one of the best things about XYS7. The environments in particular I found to be beautiful, with the green foliage to the autumnal leaves in other areas. The downside of this is that it's counterbalanced by dungeons that are incredibly bland and grayscale affairs. The character models which look good are also plagued by wooden movements in cut-scenes. This is a consistent issue with XYS7 - everything is dragged down to average whilst showing great promise. The gameplay lets XYS7 down a bit. The most consistently irritating thing I found was a lack of a sprint function, which is quite an issue in an adventure game. You have waypoints you can teleport with, but there isn't always one nearby, so sprinting would have been very helpful. The combat is fun, if a bit basic. One thing that could have really boosted the experience would have been to be able to switch characters and play as your companions, rather than the single instruction you are restricted to giving them. By the end of the game I was fed up of encountering enemies rather than excited for a battle. I also don't understand the imprison concept - it would have been far better if your skill bar for this just built up with each kill rather than having to execute a separate strategy mid-battle. A final note on combat - boss difficulty spikes were very odd, especially with the final boss who barely damaged me except for one fire attack that one-shotted me multiple times. Exploration in the game could also get a bit stale and irritating. Quite a few obstacles could be traversed with a simple jump, yet for some reason our protagonist cannot jump at all. I didn't appreciate having to take the scenic route. The story of XYS7 is a plot involving political warfare mixed with supernatural elements in trying to save your sister's life. One of my biggest issues with the plot was the amount of unnecessary cut-scenes where little happens. The game could really benefit from a smoother transition into cut-scenes also, instead of the outdated fade-to-black, as this adds to the length of cut-scenes and ruins any fluidity. Whoever's idea it was to use a bird-like voice for one of the characters portrayed by a talking bird made a very bad choice, as I found it such a grating voice, whereas none others bothered me at all. Overall, the plot of XYS7 is fairly unremarkable, and I heavily criticise the end-game section that made me traverse from area-to-area just for cut-scenes before sending me into New Game+. In summary, XYS7 isn't a bad game, but it's also fairly unmemorable too. Having glossed over the Wiki page after finishing the game, it appears this series has been going since 1990. This makes me even more critical, as a budget may be lacking but innovation and creativity should be flourishing much more than is evidenced here. XYS7 plays more like an early PS4 title rather than a 2020 title. It still makes me interested in seeing the next game, but much less likely to buy it.
Metroid Dread comes nearly 20 years after Fusion as a sequel, and unfortunately it feels like it has aged badly in those 20 years. The graphics are actually where it shows some promise. The detail on backgrounds, models and textures allow Dread to excel where Fusion was limited by technology at the time. The downside is that there I quite a bit of repetition and predictability. You face the same graphical themes as yesteryear, traversing through lava, ice, oceanic and other familiar environments that do not really scream imagination. One specific issue to note is that I found the design of the map to be absolutely dreadful: a real clusterbomb of colours and shapes amounting to a ghastly eyesore. The gameplay is where the game becomes a tedious act in frustration and repetition. I will make a special point around the EMMIs. I found them to be absolutely stupid and irritating. They are invincible and kill you with an unfair quick-time event. This does not add dread or suspense to the game. It’s just really irritating when you have to run and die repeatedly because of one little slip-up. In Fusion the SA-X was handled much more sparingly and was more effective as a result. Then we have the other dreadful element – the level design. Metroid has always been about exploration, but never before have I been so bored and irritated by having to traverse long distances on the map and getting lost because the game gives you almost zero direction most of the time. I do give kudos for the addition of the parry mechanic, even if it is likely stolen from Dark Souls. It really truncates tedious battling with minor enemies. Getting upgrades feels great as you can do new things, but it’s also the same formular Metroid has been regurgitating for decades now. This is intertwined with the story; Mario, Zelda and Samus all seem to be living through Groundhog Day as every single game has the same premise – Samus goes to strange location curiously lacking in a back-up plan, inevitably gets attacked and loses all her powers. I suppose we don’t really play these games for the story, but a bit of creativity wouldn’t hurt either. Overall, Metroid Dread is a great game if this was the early 2000s. In 2021 the only thing it really has going for it is the Metroid branding. There are amply MetroidVanias out there now and I struggle to recommend Dread as one of them when I recall enjoying myself so much more with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which is a cheaper indie effort that really puts Metroid to shame with its AAA budget and price-tag.
I was recommended TX as I was reading up on Cold Steel, a JRPG series by the same creators. What I didn't realise was just how similar TX would be to this and a lot of other RPGs, including Persona. Having said that, the game doesn't seem any worse off for it. The graphics of TX are pretty standard Anime style, familiar to anyone who has played Falcom's games before. They aren't going to push the PS4 very hard, but you do get some nice varieties in the dungeons as magic and backgrounds make up for the more mundane aspects of the high school setting. This was originally designed with the PS Vita in mind, and stands alongside its peers such as Tales of Berseria. The gameplay of TX is also comparable to Cold Steel, but TX takes a real-time approach more like a hack n slash. One pleasant surprise is that the game does not fall into repetition as much as it could. Dungeons are just few and far enough between, characters are plentiful, and combat mechanics offer enough layers and special moves to the combat to keep it fresh. Having said that, due to the length of the game I resorted to easier difficulties, which also staved off repetition. The backbone of TX is alternating between high school life and the dungeons, very similar to Persona 5. This means that things can get fairly repetitive from the sheer fact that all dungeons follow a linear pattern of minor enemies leading up to a boss at the end. Still, the game breaks this up well with cutscenes to help. There are quite a few game mechanics to dig your teeth into, from equipment to cooking and even a social media app where you receive quests. Again the former of this seems to borrow from Cold Steel a lot, so be wary of burning yourself out if you play too many Falcom games in quick succession. On the other hand, the familiarity helps get into the game faster. The story is where TX stands out most and excels best. I surprised myself by the end of the game in that I had grown fond of all of the characters and wanted to see how things played out for them. The main protagonist (Kou) was a bit too much like Rean Schwarzer from Cold Steel for my liking, but the gradual introduction of characters helped build them into people I could connect with. However, I did take exception to one major concept in the game. I did not realise the significance of the name of the game, in that Tokyo Xanadu was the original release, with 'eX+' later adding extra content an an afterstory. I really have mixed feelings on the afterstory. By the time the original game ended things felt pretty closed, but the afterstory brought back a lot of repetition as it seemed kind of a desperate way to achieve a more happy ending. Despite my misgivings above, TX is another astounding JRPG that will survive in my memory for a long time. I look back on it positively. It could have done with some truncating, but being alongside the characters for this journey was very rewarding and enjoyable.
Falconeer is an impressive feat for one man to create, however my standards for PS5 games means it still falls quite short of being a game I can recommend. Throughout the game it is quite visible that it was built on a small budget, which is not always a bad thing but in this case it is a bad thing. The visuals in Falconeer are generally good but one thing I could not un-see was that it's largely one-dimensional. The few hours that I played took place mostly at sea and this made for a bland environment. The water effects look nice but visibility is very limited, meaning you can't really see all that far ahead, and there isn't much detail to the environment. Enemies are generally sprites speeding by too quickly to appreciate any graphical achievements. The gameplay of Falconeer is also a bit one-dimensional. Pretty much every mission I played followed the format of 'go here and shoot that, then return home' There are a variety of weapons and customisations you can make but the game doesn't do a very good job of directing you to these and explaining what they do. The game encourages you to pick up bombs from the water, but this is a mechanic I could rarely get to work, and the Falcon can be painfully slow at times. The story of Falconeer may be its best concept. I enjoyed that each mission, despite being essentially the same mission, also had a purpose and you received updates after each mission showing the progress of the story. My only problem here is that the repetitive missions made the story feel longer than it actually is and caused me to give up half way through. Overall, Falconeer is a nice effort by an indie-developer but should not have warranted a physical PS5 release. Even for the comparatively low price it is difficult to recommend, as I explored it due to the paltry PS5 catalogue of remasters and enhanced PS4 games.
I found that after the original LiS, the series began a downward trajectory, with LiS2 being my least favourite. However, I find True Colours (TC) to be possibly the best LiS game so far and I will explain why below. The graphics don't appear to be leaps and bounds ahead of the previous entries despite being on the PS5. There are definite improvements with character models, environments and overall fluidity, but also nothing jaw-dropping and even some FPS drops at times. Having said that, few of us play LiS for ground-breaking graphics; the slightly anime style works really well here. The town of Haven is characterised beautifully with its serenity alongside an atmosphere of "there's something bigger going on here". The gameplay of TC adds a refreshing gimmick allowing you to basically read people's minds. It's portrayed as Alex being a bit of an empath who feels other people's emotions and this leads to basically telepathy. This created interesting scenarios in whether to respond to someone's emotions and help them or not. There is one specific chapter where you are sent on a LARP quest that was rather tedious to find some items, but this was livened up by adding fun RPG-like turn-based combat, and I appreciated them attempting something different without dragging it out. The game boils down to conversations and the choices you make. I'm not so sure of whether my choices did actually make much of a difference, but then again my play-style is a mediator rather than rocking the boat. I can't say much more without spoiling the game. Speaking of story, this is probably my favourite story so far. It doesn't drag on too long, it's not set in an adolescent coming-of-age high school context (looking at you, Max) or full of teenage angst (looking at you, Chloe). Alex can be a little bit bland but I think the idea is for us to mould her via the choices we make, and overall I found her possibly the most likeable protagonist so far in the series. Again it's hard to dig deep in this area of the review without spoiling so I fully encourage you to play for yourself and go in blind. Overall, TC was a pleasant surprise. I was worried about the direction of the series and LiS2 didn't exactly enthral me. TC shows a zenith of the series to the extent I now wonder what can come next given how much material and contexts they have traversed so far. LiS seemed like it could have been forgotten after the original, but TC makes it all worthwhile. Also of note is that I achieved a Platinum trophy without too much monotony, so perhaps that biases me too. Like every LiS, TC is a story-oriented game so you should know what you're in for, but for me it is definitely recommended.
