Tag: Reviews - Page 33
Review SolSeraph - A God-Like Disappointment That Proves What A Classic Actraiser Really Is
Sol Sacrifice
Ace Team’s SolSeraph immediately grabbed our attention when it was surprise-announced at the end of last month. Here, finally, was a spiritual successor to SNES classic Actraiser that looked to head back to the roots of the franchise by reinstating the winning combination of platforming action and Populous-lite strategy that was...
Review Senran Kagura: Peach Ball - A Shiny Casing Full Of Used Pinball Machine Parts
Pinball X jiggle
In the annals of video game history there have been a great many iterations of the classic arcade game of pinball, whether traditional 'realistic' recreations of tables or fresh digital spins on the genre. Pokémon Pinball, for example, built on the foundation of Kirby’s Pinball Land and added an addictive ‘catch ‘em all’...
Review Stranger Things 3: The Game - Netflix's '80s-Themed Sci-Fi Series Comes To Switch
Turn it up to Eleven
Once up a time – well, to be more specific, a generation or so ago – licensed tie-in video games weren’t the sole domain of LEGO. Practically every film property had its own video game equivalent, usually doing nothing more than offering gamers an easy way to boost their gamerscore or trophy count. Of course, this was back...
Review What Remains of Edith Finch - One Of The Most Unforgettable Games On Switch
Sugar, we're going down swinging
The haphazardly-built house of the Finch family is far from just a location in What Remains of Edith Finch. With the entirety of developer Giant Sparrow’s game taking place in and around this singular family residence, it’s obvious that a lot of work has gone into making the house its own standalone character...
Review Lucah: Born Of A Dream - Look Past Those Divisive Visuals And You'll Find A Fine RPG
Demon cleaner
A nightmare can be a powerful thing. Locked inside your own mind, it can be a place where your worst fears, regrets and moments of shame emerge from the shadows to haunt and taunt you. Thankfully, we all tend to wake up from these imaginary hellscapes, but it’s not quite that easy for the hero of Lucah: Born of a Dream. They’ve...
Review Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator - A Heartwarming And Likeable Visual Novel
Daddy Cool
From the outside, everything about Dream Daddy: Dadrector’s Cut suggests a horny dating sim. It looks for all the world like the developer has simply swapped out buxom anime college girls for hot single dads. Spend a few minutes with it, though, and you’ll soon discover a touching visual novel that focuses on relationships, shot...
Review Psyvariar Delta - A Classic Shooter That Will Leave You Buzzing
The definitive (psy)variation
The original Psyvariar was released nearly two decades ago, developed by Success Corporation (of Cotton fame) and taking full advantage of Taito’s G-NET arcade board to effortlessly shift around simple polygonal models and hundreds of bullets on screen; any freeze frame taken could have passed as an impressionist...
Review Graveyard Keeper - Stardew Valley With Rotting Corpses? Not Quite
Can you dig it?
Have you ever played Stardew Valley and thought it was missing a talking skull named Gerry; Witch burnings at the not-so-subtly-named Witch Hill; removal of skin, fats, bones, organs and more from human bodies; the ability to run a church and gather sweet, sweet donations; making paper out of the deceased’s’ skin? We’re going...
Review Q-YO Blaster - It's Not Quite Parodius, But It's The Next Best Thing
Let slip the beheaded space dogs of war
If you’ve ever subjected yourself to the surreal and brilliant horizontal shooter that is Konami’s classic Parodius or if you’ve yearned for the glory of those relentlessly goofy and bizarre shooting galleries filled with every unrelated object the developers could seemingly stuff in at random, then step...
Review SEGA AGES Wonder Boy: Monster Land - When RPG Meets Arcade Platformer
The boy is back in town
By this point, anyone familiar with the Sega Ages series should already know what to expect: a flawless port of a single game from Sega’s history, complete with a few tweaks and updates here and there to provide the ultimate version of that game. Wonder Boy: Monster Land is the latest offering from Sega and developer M2,...
Review Dandy Dungeon - Legend Of Brave Yamada - Games Development Goes Meta
Dungeon master
Video games have been knocking around for so long now that they’ve even started making games about making games. From project management of Game Dev Tycoon to the silly Flash-based antics of Game Corp, the finer points of software development has already received the meta treatment. By that thinking, Dandy Dungeon - Legend of Brave...
Review Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered - Blowing Things Up Never Gets Old
Guerrillas in the mist
When the original Red Faction dropped in 2001, it was kind of a big deal. Sure, it wasn’t the best first-person shooter we’d ever played, but its destruction physics really were something else. Corridor shooters could often be stifling and claustrophobic affairs, but Red Faction just pointed a grenade launcher at the walls...
The ultimate sacrifice?
Since this review was originally published patches have reportedly addressed or improved one or more of the issues cited. While we unfortunately cannot revisit games on an individual basis, it should still be noted that the updated game may offer an improved experience over the one detailed below. The product of one of the...
Review Mainlining - A Rare Example Of A Game That Doesn't Belong On Switch
Crime and self-punishment
Mainlining places players in a world where the Government has introduced the BLU Pill Act and reactivated the secret service network known as MI7, giving them full and unadulterated access to the personal online information and lives of the population within their jurisdiction on the internet. You play as a member of MI7...
Review World End Syndrome - A High School Summer Holiday Murder Mystery Love-In
The world ends with you
Ah, young love! Fixing eyes in freshman class… Inventing excuses to meet your crush… Daring to hope they like you back… Collecting and cataloguing candid photos of every girl you know… World End Syndrome successfully bottles the bristling potential of the summers of youth: before school’s back, perhaps you’ll...
Review Citizens of Space - Fans Of The Super Mario RPGs, Take Note
Higher, further, faster, baby
Four years ago, the 3DS and Wii U were graced with a JRPG from Eden Industries called Citizens of Earth, which emulated the offbeat style of Nintendo’s cult-classic EarthBound to wonderful effect. Still, it was a bit of an uneven experience at times, with a series of niggling little issues that a sequel would likely...
Review Furwind - Likeable Platforming Action That Dulls Too Quickly
Outfoxed
Animals make wonderful game protagonists, this much is certain. From classic games like Frogger to evergreen mascots like Sonic the Hedgehog, animals have enjoyed the spotlight in games for decades. Just recently, cats were well represented in the delightful Gato Roboto, and of course we have Animal Crossing: New Horizons to look forward to...
Review SEGA AGES Virtua Racing - A Truly Historic Remaster Effort By M2
It’s hip to be square
The Sega Ages series has quickly established itself as the premium name when it comes to retro gaming on the Switch. While each release is generally more expensive than other old-school offerings on the system, it’s worth it for the pristine emulation, the extreme attention to detail and the way developer M2 improves each...
Review Devil May Cry - A Stone-Cold Classic That's Trapped In Time
Better the devil you know?
A good 18 years on, it’s mind-boggling to think Devil May Cry was once destined to become what we now know as Resident Evil 4. Capcom clearly wanted to take the series in a new direction at the turn of the millennium – and it did four years later, although in a more traditional and now much-beloved form – but a...
Review Blade II - The Return Of Evil - A Diablo-Style Action RPG That Might Surprise You
Evil intentions
The words ‘mobile game’ almost always come with unwelcome connotations when they’re ported over to another platform. For us Nintendo Switch owners, we’ve seen plenty of poorly executed optimisations pop up on the eShop, so we’re naturally a little hesitant whenever another free-to-play ‘hit’ gets the console treatment...
Review Super Mario Maker 2 - The Last 2D Mario Game You'll Ever Need
Build your own adventure
If there was one game designed with the Wii U Gamepad in mind right from the very start and used it to its fullest potential, it was ZombiU. If there were two games that did that, it would be ZombiU and Super Mario Maker. Everything about the feel of the game and the interface screamed that this is a title that is best...
Review Cybarian: The Time Traveling Warrior - A Short But Sweet Action Throwback
Cyberpunk 577BC
Joining a seemingly never ending list of retro-inspired platform games, Cybarian: The Time Travelling Warrior has perhaps one of the most far-fetched premises around. You play as Cybarian, a butch barbarian from olden times who discovers the coveted Sword of Ages. Upon wielding the mighty sword, he suddenly gets magically transported...
Review Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled - A Karting Treat For Fans And Newcomers Alike
It’s got loads in it (literally)
Although it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a Mario Kart 9 any time soon, the Switch is starting to grow its own roster of licensed karting games in a way not seen since the GameCube days. Just last month we got Team Sonic Racing, for example, and even though the likes of Nickelodeon Kart Racers and Hello...
Review We. The Revolution - A Dense Historical Romp That's Certainly An Acquired Taste
J'adore?
Video games have the incredible ability to transport players to periods of history that would otherwise be almost completely inaccessible outside of books or film. From exploring the Ancient Greek Islands in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey to taking on the roles of various World War I combatants in Valiant Hearts: The Great War, games give us...
Larry loner
The Leisure Suit Larry games are one of those things no one really admits to liking. There’s clearly an audience for them - you don’t release roughly 10 games over the last 30 years without gaining a decent following (yes, they’ve been around that long). However, the mixture of school playground humour and Carry On levels of sexual...
Review Slender: The Arrival - A Bland And Bare Take On Slenderman Horror
Eight Pages? We’d rather read a whole book
It’s impossible to deny that the black-suited, faceless Slenderman is an iconic horror figure. Ever since its creation on the Something Awful forums, the cultural phenomenon made waves throughout the internet, helped by the 2012 freeware horror game Slender: The Eight Pages. Over the years, the...
Review The Last Remnant Remastered - An RPG With Fine Ideas Scuppered By A Lack Of Clarity
A remnant of a different time
You’d be forgiven if, when watching the surprise announcement of The Last Remnant Remastered coming to Switch, your first thought was “What?” Though the The Last Remnant has largely been forgotten in the current gaming industry, it once hopefully represented the future of Square Enix, with the president of the...
Review Rolling Gunner - An Essential Shooter That's Perfect For Newcomers And Veterans Alike
Bullet Heaven
The year is 2061 and a fully automated energy system known as BAC has gone rogue, mankind teeters on the brink of extinction unless one hero pilot, (that’s you by the way), can manoeuvre their STORK fighter, equipped with the newly developed Rolling Gun, deep into enemy territory to face off against a sentient robotic terror and save...
Review My Friend Pedro - Totally And Utterly Bananas
Let's split
Devolver Digital’s latest death spectacular, My Friend Pedro, starts as it means to continue – with a masked protagonist roused into consciousness from his slumber in the basement of a murderous criminal’s hideout by his only friend, a floating sentient banana called Pedro. The pair quickly purloin a pistol and make for a quick...
Review VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action - One Large Cutscene With A Gameplay Chaser
Blade Runner, Akira and Cocktail collide in this visual novel
VA-11 HALL-A from Sukeban Games features a future UseNet group on which games by Sukeban are criticised for lacking any gameplay. So you can’t say they didn’t realise, but can that self-awareness excuse a near-absence of interactivity? Even by visual novel standards, this is light...
Review Contra Anniversary Collection - Run 'N Gun Perfection
Gunning for glory
And so we come to the end (for now) of Konami’s triple helping of retro compilations. After giving us an arcade collection that was heavy on the shooters and a Castlevania collection that celebrated the spooky series’ early days, the same treatment has now been given to the Contra series, which offers some of the finest run...
Review PlataGO! Super Platform Game Maker - An Awkward Super Mario Maker Clone
All the tools you need to create something you wouldn’t want to play
The definition of karma is giving a reviewer who has handed out their share of 4s and 6s in the last month a review copy of a platform game creator and effectively saying ‘you do better’. While PlataGo! presents an ample feature set that leaves mean critical types with few...
Review Super Neptunia RPG - An Easygoing Take On A Cult JRPG Series
The Console War rages on
For those that haven’t stumbled across this side-scrolling RPG series, the Neptunia games have been knocking around since 2010. Originally created by Compile Heart, Idea Factory and various other Japanese studios since, the adventures of chirpy goddess Neptune and the ongoing Console War have been a PlayStation console...
Review Phantom Doctrine - XCOM Meets James Bond In This Scrappy Strategy Epic
Spooks show
While our interactive medium has played host to a fair few ‘spy games’ over the years, most have opted for stealthy infiltration (hello Splinter Cell and Metal Gear) or all-out gunfights with the occasional silencer thrown in for good measure (see just about every James Bond game ever made). However, it’s the games that dig deep...
Striking a chord
From the opening menu that uses not the rousing Zelda overworld music but the understated theme from Ocarina of Time's title screen, you know you’re about to go on a special journey. Cadence of Hyrule (we won’t bother with its ludicrously long official moniker) takes the music we all know and love and remixes it with the...
Review Collection of Mana - Expensive, But Ultimately Worth Every Penny
It's Mana from Heaven
While Square's Seiken Densetsu series continues to this very day, it's the two SNES / Super Famicom outings on which the franchise arguably built its enviable reputation. Seiken Densetsu 2 – better known in the west as Secret of Mana – is one of the finest RPGs ever made, while its sequel has only been held back from global...
Review Radiation City - A Bug-Ridden Clone Of DayZ That's Laughably Overpriced
We built this city on meat and booooones!
No matter what your thoughts are on the open-world zombie survival game DayZ, there’s no denying its cultural importance. Ever since Bohemia Interactive first released the original ARMA 2 mod for PC users, there’s been a countless number of copycats and “spiritual successors” releasing on every...
Nothing hollow about this one
Sword Art Online has been around for quite a while now; what started in 2002 as a simple light novel series has gone on to span a multimedia franchise including several books, manga adaptations, video games, movies, and – yes – an impending live-action Netflix series. It was only a matter of time before the...
Review Battle Worlds: Kronos - A Hex-Based Tactical Title That's Tough As Old Boots
When worlds collide
“Battle Worlds: Kronos is a hard game,” reads an ominous opening message. “But if you can’t beat it, that’s not because it is too hard.” That warning might sound a little cocky, but there’s truth to it, too. Because beneath its wonky CGI cutscenes and well-worn sci-fi setting lies a turn-based strategy game that...
Review Bullet Battle: Evolution - A Cut-Price Call Of Duty That Fails On Almost Every Level
Dishonourable discharge
Mobile games have come a long way in the last two decades. There was a time when Snake was the only option for on-the-go phone-based entertainment, but over the years the games on offer have grown more profound in their scope as handsets have turned ever smarter. Now we have fully-fledged racers, shooters and MMOs, right...
Review Super Skelemania - A Metroidvania That Doesn't Hang About
A bare-bones, budget take on the Metroid formula
Despite their content-filled, often weightily atmospheric and sprawling worlds, the non-linear platform games we commonly call ‘Metroidvanias’ have a long-running association with quick completion times. From the original Metroid’s multiple completion time-based endings to the speedrunning...
Review Warlocks 2: God Slayers - Magic Mayhem That Would Have Benefitted From Online Play
A gathering of magic
Once upon a time, there was a game that arrived on Kickstarter, and with added promise of a Wii U version to bolster its cause, it successfully funded itself – much to the happiness of its backers. Three years later, said game finally emerged from development, by which time it had assumed a slightly different name and...
Review Slay the Spire - A Sublime Fusion Of Genres You Simply Have To Experience
Dungeon Master
There are a handful of Switch games we know we’ll likely never uninstall from our systems; an elite list of titles so addictive and so well suited to the portable nature of Nintendo’s system that they’ll always have a special place allocated on that MicroSD card. We’re talking about games like Mario Kart 8, Celeste, Axiom...
Review Hue - An Inventive Indie Puzzler That's A Few Shades Away From Greatness
Hue and Cry
The most terrifying explanation of blindness is that you don’t see endless blackness; it’s been described as seeing nothing. If black and white are still colours on the visible spectrum, if those colours are still seen by light bouncing off our retinas, then to see nothing means those would be absent. No constant black, no constant...
Review PixARK - A True Survival Horror, And Not In A Good Way
Let this one go extinct
In 2009, the gaming industry was forever changed when a humble indie game called Minecraft was first made available to the public, introducing the world to a new genre of sandbox gaming that would go on to be cloned and mimicked to death in the ensuing decade. One of the most recent offshoots of this concept is PixARK, a...
Review Timespinner - Another Superb Metroidvania For Your Nintendo Switch
Timespinphony of the Night
In Timespinner, the player steps into the shoes of Lunais, a young woman in a nomadic society that trains talented magical youth like her as Time Messengers – people prepared to be flung back in time to warn of dangers to the clan. The spacefaring Lachiemi empire has become one such danger, and is obsessed with...
Review Cricket 19 - Performance Woes Can't Dampen This Decent Sports Sim
Bowled over
While cricket may have spawned a few video game duds over the years, we’ve also been treated to some of the best sports sims ever made. Super International Cricket set the standard early on with some fine form on SNES, Brian Lara Cricket on PlayStation rounded off ’90s era crease battling with style and Ashes Cricket proved a decent...
Review Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth - The Last Picture Show
You'll find me in the matinée, the dark of the matinée...
Atlus has been one of the strongest supporters of Nintendo’s 3DS handheld over the years, keeping RPG fans busy with a total of seventeen stellar RPGs from the company. These releases have been coming at a consistent and reliable pace since the 3DS’ first year, so it's only fitting that...
Review Golem Gates - A Unique Twist On The RTS Formula That Takes Away More Than It Adds
My Precious?
Golem Gates, the second game from indie developer Laser Guided Games, was originally released in March of 2018 on PC and now makes the jump to Switch with its unique BattleForge-esque twist on the usual RTS formula, adding a deck-building mechanic which see players contend with the random nature of how attack cards are dealt out in...
Review TT Isle Of Man - The Safest Way To Experience The World's Deadliest Motorsport Race
Mad Manx
In the motorsport racing calendar, few courses hold quite as much infamy as the Isle of Man TT. Described as "38 miles of terror" by one Sports Illustrated reporter in 2003, the time trial course has been running on and off since 1907 and sees superbikes racing past front doors and around country lanes at breakneck speeds. It’s one of the...
