lebk2440

This is a 2D beat’em up style game where you can play coop with up to 4 players. 4 characters are playable and there 8 levels with a boss at the end of each. I’m kind of disappointed. Don’t get me wrong it is also quite fun but only when you’re not in a boss fight. The game has a weird stutter. Like every time you hit or get hit, everything slows down, which is a fine concept but this game does it way too much and makes it feels sluggish and slow. I think it would feel much better if it were a bit faster. Your character also gets stunned for way too long and there’s no chance to recover. That’s why I hate boss fights. You can find yourself in a situation where you just get hit so many times with absolutely no way of getting out of it, which leads to certain death. You can actually hold a button to recover mid air but it just doesn’t work when you get it many many times in a row. Also the movement doesn’t feel good. You can’t jump and move up or down (meaning in the foreground and background). If you want to move up or down you have to be on the ground and walk/dash, cannot be done while mid-air. Makes the game feel even more sluggish. I played the game with the Day One Patch and certain levels, especially the later ones like 5 and up, had poor frame rate. I’ve seen videos of certain textures not loading in and just showing a checkered texture. The patch fixed that but it still happened once in the last level, it was weird but quick and painless. After beating the game once, I decided to beat it again but I unlocked everything with the accessibility option. So tag team mode was unlocked and all the moves as well. I did a solo run with the ability to swap between all the characters at will with the press of a button. That was very fun. I absolutely recommend playing it that way. I can imagine this game being really good in multiplayer. Every character has its own set of moved and special attacks. Every move was also easy to pull off and chained well together. The music was pretty good overall, but one song « Surfing on the Lava », was absolutely amazing since you do surf on the lava when it comes on. The art style is really good looking, the animation is great and the character models look awesome. The game is humorous but it only made me chuckle at best. Cool game, needs more polishing for frame rate and bugs. Bosses were not enjoyable. A few core mechanics really annoyed me. I recommend playing this on a different system for better frame rate, I’ve heard it’s more stable. 7/10

I’ll start by saying this is the weakest title in the series. But it had its good moments I admit. The story happens before the 1st Uncharted. There are less known characters and I didn’t find them particularly interesting. The familiar face(s) that do show up in the game are just as good as they usually are. The story itself did keep me entertained but it took a little while to pick up. It’s nothing new though, you look for a treasure and bad guys are doing the same thing which causes conflict. A few twists and turns et voilà, good old Uncharted story. Puzzles were not the highlight of the game at all. Very simple, barely puzzles if you ask me, they were mostly about matching pieces together to copy an image/symbols. Not much thinking required. Collectables were annoying to pick up as they interrupted the game every single time by opening the menu and showing you what you found and what you unlocked, like a playing card for instance. There’s an entire card game linked to this game as free DLC, it’s called: Uncharted Fight for Fortune. Unfortunately it has been delisted and therefore I was not able to play, which then made those cards useless. Now about all the Vita gimmicks packed in the game. They really abused of the Vita’s features. A lot of them I found were unnecessary, like almost every time you cross a narrow beam or bridge, Drake will stop and you have to keep his balance by tilting the console left and right. The game uses the touch screen for many different animations and moves by swiping the screen in a given direction, it is usually time sensitive. At times it works well but it’s overused. The back of the screen is also used for rowing and climbing ropes, that worked well also. However I quickly returned to using buttons when possible. Then you had charcoal rubbing and cleaning objects big rubbing the screen. Very annoying to do and too many of them. There’s one feature I used all the time: The touch screen. Instead of controlling Drake normally during climbing sequences, you can draw a path by dragging your finger on the hand holds and he will just automatically climb on his own following the path. I found that very useful especially when jumping on a rope that is easy to miss, I would just tap on it and done. The climbing didn’t feel quite responsive so putting Drake in auto pilot was great. Overall this was a good game even with the overwhelming amount of gimmicks. It played well enough after getting used to the controls of the Vita. Story was entertaining. The game didn’t look too bad either considering it’s on a handheld.

Okami This game is insanely beautiful, probably the prettiest game I have ever seen. The entire game is a living painting. The colours are so rich and it looks incredible on the OLED screen of the Nintendo Switch. The music is quite good but nothing more than that. Fits well with the game and Japanese theme. The story was okay, it was somewhat entertaining but not more than that. It was quite long actually, felt like it was dragging. I’d say the game could’ve been shortened a bit. There was a mega load of text dialogues, way too much in my opinion. It took me a while to beat that game because I often didn’t feel like getting back into the game. Could be just me but I wasn’t eager to return to the world of Okami unfortunately. On the other hand, once I was back into it, I was really enjoying myself quite a bit and it was hard to stop. So it’s kind of a weird feeling that I had, not wanting to play but then really enjoying playing… The combat was quite unique and surprisingly quite good. Once I got multiple brush techniques it became very versatile and fun to use. There was a good variety of weapons to use and different ways to combine them. You can use a primary and sub weapon. Every weapon can be in the primary position or the sub. That same weapon will be used in a totally different way depending on the position it is equipped. That part was well done. The enemies… Wow! the enemies, their design is like nothing I have ever seen before, so creative it’s totally crazy, you have to see it to believe it. Almost every time a new enemy appeared I was like, what the hell is that thing? And where’s the front? Same goes for the bosses, my god those were cool. I disliked the 3D platforming, it felt too floaty and imprecise. It got me frustrated on multiple occasions. The dungeons and puzzles were so diversified. That game excelled at keeping environments, puzzles, enemies and abilities new and fresh. The developers had some great ideas. It was a relatively easy game, I died 0 times but it was somewhat difficult at times don’t get me wrong. Frame rate was solid at 30fps. Playtime: 33h46min

An absolutely beautiful and cute game. This 3D puzzle game had me scratch my head more than once trying to figure out its many puzzles. I was pleasantly surprised with the difficulty. I usually find puzzle games to be somewhat on the easy side with only 1 or 2 more difficult ones. But in The Last Campfire, there was quite a handful of puzzles that I was like: « how the hell am I supposed to do that ? » Next thing you know I figured it out and every time it was very satisfying. I thought that most puzzles were above average in their design. It was quite nice to have the narrator talk a bit to indicate that I had made progress in the puzzle, a welcomed hint during those hard ones. There were definitely some puzzles that were quite easy but I think it was deliberate to fit in with the context of the story. The goal of the game is to reach the last campfire. However you have a journey ahead of you which involves a few different areas. In each area you have a campfire and you must find and help enough Forlorns to progress to the next area. Forlorns are others of your own kind that are frozen in stone due to their lost of hope or personal issues. Each time you reach one, you are presented with a puzzle and upon completion, the Forlorn is saved. To reach every Forlorn in an area you have to navigate this intricate map full of puzzles and a few interesting NPCs. I’ve had quite a few issues with the frame rate and loading times. Too often, the game freezes for a few seconds to load. This is quite annoying because it could happen anywhere not just when you change to a different part of the map, it could be right in the middle of a 1 room puzzle. Often, the frame rate randomly dropped significantly. The game was still quite playable though. The game crashed on me once when leaving the last area to reach the end. Narration was perfect, that voice fit perfectly with this game. Sound design was extremely good, the stones moving, water, everything was high quality in that department. Music was excellent and memorable in some cases. 5-6 hours to complete. 7/10

Immortals Fenyx Rising was very addicting and it certainly gave me that Breath of the Wild feeling which was very welcomed. However, it is very different in so many ways. Bad stuff out of the way first: the story **** a lot. Character models are weird and unappealing. I did not like the voice acting at all. Dialogues were intended to be funny but my god it is was far from that. Another thing that annoyed me was the gliding, you can’t go backwards! You have to make this weird circle to turn around, highly annoying. Besides all the bad, you have an amazing game in my opinion. Combat is really good and satisfying, especially when enemies die, they shoot out into the horizon like a canon ball. Exploration was awesome since there are many things to find, well mostly puzzle, like a mega load off puzzles. Some are mediocre but I found the majority to be well designed and fun! Often the rewards for doing a puzzle was underwhelming like just a few gems and a new visual for a weapon/gear you already have. If you keep doing side stuff, the game allows you to become insanely powerful and I love when games do that. I played it on hard and man oh man, at the beginning I kept dying trying to kill a god damn bear, at the end, nothing could stop me with the way I used my gear/weapons, god powers and potions. Like the last boss was a joke. But most of the game I considered was difficult at the hard difficulty because I wasn’t all decked out the entirety of the game. But at one point you get just too powerful for the game and that’s fine, it’s a good reward. Last thing I want to say is, Fenyx is the type if game that I was like « ok I’ll just do one more thing then stop », an hour later I was still playing. 45h to complete with lots of side stuff. Played on the Switch, runs really well, 30fps. It had a few dips in the frame rate but nothing too jarring. Load times are on the long side but are acceptable. 8.5/10

Giana Sisters is a solid 2D platformer. I’m quite surprised, I was expecting something like a Kirby game in terms of difficulty but I was very wrong, this game kicked my ass several times. I played on Hard mode which had less checkpoints and extra hit gems. What makes it difficult is that most of the time you die after taking only 1 hit, this can be quite unforgiving. It’s never too frustrating because checkpoints are frequent and you respawn immediately with no load times. The gameplay is very tight and responsive. The cool mechanic in this game is the ability to manipulate dreams. With the push of a button you can toggle your character between “cute” and “punk” personalities. When you’re in cute mode the world is nightmarish and when you are in punk mode everything is bright and joyful. You can dash and twirl (glide). When you dash you also simultaneously change into punk mode. If you are already in punk mode then nothing changes. The opposite happens when you twirl. Levels are based on these two moves and are amazingly designed! The developers really knew what they were doing when designing the levels, it was so original! Many ideas I hadn’t seen in any other platformer! In the later levels, it went really fast. This might come in as a bold statement but I think I would like 2D Sonic games to be like Giana Sisters: Fast but still feels good when things are slow for exploration. Like seriously, punk mode is definitely Sonic and cute mode is Tails. Finding secrets was always an awesome challenge and I was always actively looking for them. I couldn’t find them all, some are really well hidden. There was definitely something missing though. I think it was the characters, I didn’t really care for them or the story. Maybe it’s the franchise itself that didn’t appeal to me. The music was excellent, however I think it was reused a lot, I can only remember a couple of themes used over and over. Good thing they are great tunes though. Excellent game, such a joy to play. It’s still very cheap to buy to this day on the Switch. I played it on the OLED and it’s such a beautiful game. 9/10

I had a real blast beating this brutal 2D run and gun. Even though it’s brutally difficult, it is such a satisfying game that keeps on giving. The game keeps providing you with new weapons to keep things fresh. There’s an upgrade mechanic to the weapons, I personally chose a set of weapons and stuck with those until the end. I tried all of them but you can choose what suits you. The parry mechanic is great, just use your shield and time it properly but there’s a bonus to this, if it’s a projectile, it’ll stick to your shield and you can shoot it back, usually dealing lots of damage. It’s so satisfying when you shoot back a large amount of projectiles that you’ve successfully parried. One thing that really bothered me was that as soon as an enemy would be off screen, it would become invulnerable, like it didn’t exist anymore, except that it could still hit you with projectiles/lasers. Sometimes, even if you can still see part of the enemy, your shots won’t register hitting the enemy. It’s especially bad during some boss fights. Graphics are beautiful, disgusting and so gory at the same time, which is an awesome combination. At times it was difficult to determine what was a platform and what wasn’t. This game controls extremely well, very responsive and that’s important when you sharp reflexes are needed. The metal music fits very well with the game. Being a metal head myself I can listen to this without playing the game. Solid frame rate 60FPS all the way through, fast load times. Overall an excellent game. Highly recommended for gamers who are looking for a challenge, cool space guns and metal music. 9/10

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

What an awesome game!! Very short but that’s ok. It makes you feel so powerful controlling that monster especially when you’re at its biggest. The sound effects are perfect, straight out of a horror movie. I loved that I could be huge then, a few seconds later, at the tinniest possible and somehow survive by feeding off corpses at the bottom of a pit. Then, become huge again and just wreck the crap out of everything. I loved that game. No map, but it’s surprisingly easy to find yourself. The DLC was good, I’d say it was a bit more difficult then the hardest parts of the main game. There were Christmas lights! Very short once again like 30min.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Love it! Such deep mechanics in there I still haven’t mastered a few things when it comes to growing rice, but you really don’t need to know everything, the rice grows well enough with basic knowledge. The combat was so on point, after I was playing for a while a became really good at it, felt really powerful, and the variety of attacks the game gives you is really nice, you can choose your favourite ones and use them all the time or change them up, it changes how you play. The more you use an attack the more it’ll level up and become more powerful. The progression is surprisingly really well done like I never felt like I needed to level up and grind to beat a certain section. I guess it depends on how good of a rice farmer you are. A few things bothered me, like going back into previously beaten level to clear different objectives was kind of tedious but necessary to discover new areas. Certain enemies were resistant / weak to certain attacks but it isn’t written anywhere and I still don’t know because I haven’t looked it up. Last thing is the game was a but too long. Took me 36 hours. The best part was the last 10-12 hours, that was so much fun because I was familiar with everything and the special attacks really became interesting and fun to use. Anyways I recommend it but you need to be ready to commit to it because the most fun I had with it was the last third of the game. Although the rest was a lot of fun too. The game runs very smoothly in terms of frame rate, I experienced very few frame rate drops and they did not bother me.