It’s difficult to place Astral Chain into a single game genre since each level presents a slightly different challenge. It’s part 3rd-person action, part on-rails shooter, part "Xenoblade Chronicles 2" combat (ie: Driver/Blade team), part detective RPG, part “Luigi’s Mansion” (though the Legions are much cooler than the Poltergust), part interactive story, and somehow it throws in part “Frogger,” as well. The game reminds me a bit of the WarioWare series due to the sheer variety presented to the player. It’s such a random collection of activities that the default playstyle (ie: difficulty) is set to “Casual,” meaning that you’re basically free to button-mash your way through the game. Worrisomely, this setting can only be changed after the first level is completed. While there are tougher difficulty settings, the unfamiliarity of each new scenario basically means you’ll need to already be familiar with the particulars of each level before attempting them at higher difficulty settings. (For the true movie-watcher there’s also a story mode that has the game play itself for you completely.) Astral Chain is a game that’s so “outside the box” that I won’t even attempt to give it a score. All I know is that it’s not for me, and I caution anyone thinking of buying it to get a physical copy in case you discover the same thing--then at least you can re-sell it and get some of your money back.
The world of A Short Hike has cute graphics styled like an enhancement of a DS-era Animal Crossing game, compelling exploration-based gameplay like Breath of the Wild (without any of the combat), and irritating item-gathering quests like the collecta-a-thon games created in the 1990's. The overall package comes together nicely, but the main storyline's pacing may disappoint some players. To make the credits roll there is a single objective that is easily accomplished after playing about half-an-hour and completing roughly a third of the total game content. Adding some metroidvania-style progression gates would have improved the pacing of the main story compared to all of the optional side-stories and upgrades that are available. A Short Hike is essentially a very promising demo that's been made available for purchase. Let's hope we see future games from this team with more content and improved pacing.
In theory a game that combines the real-time combat and open world of an Adventure game with the stat-building and leveling-up of an RPG should be wildly appealing. Especially when it also removes the RPG genre's text-heavy cutscenes and narrative. Monster Hunter Rise does, indeed, deliver on those positive elements. Unfortunately, despite the new and widely-praised options for quicker traversal of the environment, combat is a cumbersome chore. Something as basic as positioning your character for continuous properly directed forward attacks is painful. For standard enemies this means your AI-controlled “pals” will frequently finish off the encounter while you’re character is still completing its heavy-attack animation where the monster used to be several seconds ago. Dodging seems to be overly generous for avoiding damage, as well. When facing boss monsters, this meant I found myself wailing on the light-attack button repeatedly and dodging anywhere (the direction didn’t seem to be important at all) to avoid damage when an attack was incoming. It also seems to be ridiculously easy to take a break during combat in order to heal, as your pals keep the attention of beasts while you run away—in addition to beasts frequently retreating all on their own. For the players that stick it out beyond the early learning-curve I’m sure there are probably thousands of nuances to combat that evolve as you progress, but the game doesn’t seem particularly interested in presenting them to the player initially. Most of the early in-quest text tutorials (and there are a lot) seem to focus on item collection, presenting possible uses for items in scenarios that you won’t have a use for until a later quest. All of the elements for a smash hit are certainly present in Monster Hunter Rise, but players are going to have to dig and invest a lot of time to find them. Games are supposed to be fun, though, and I definitely didn’t have enough of that in my initial play-sessions to warrant the additional time investment to find it.
Octopath Traveler is essentially a successor to the 2D Final Fantasy games of the ’90s. (Personally I would have preferred a successor to Chrono Trigger, but it looks like Square-Enix is satisfied with leaving that legacy idle.) The narrative is a mash-up of 8 separate medium-length JRPGs, each with its own focus on the personal life of its main protagonist. While some stories seem completely unrelated, in others there are hints that something bigger is happening on the periphery. Some plot events are more engaging than others, but all are serviceable to move you from dungeon to dungeon. And while all of the boss battles in the main stories are excellent, there are many more optional dungeons with challenging battles that are part of side-quests. In fact, the game is so expansive you may not need to purchase another traditional JRPG this generation due to the sheer amount of content offered. Octopath Traveler falls short of being a perfect experience due to its narrative presentation, but it’s still fair to call it a masterpiece. It’s signature “HD-2D” graphics and engaging battle- and job-systems are the new standard for the “modern/traditional JRPG hybrid” genre. The story-telling mechanics fall unfortunately short due the enormous scope of its world’s history, but if you like traditional JRPG battles its a forgivable shortcoming. The knock is mainly that there’s seemingly no grand “save-the-world” presentation, but the backstory is there if you invest the time to understand how the characters fit into it. Seeing it through to the end, including all of the optional post-game content, is a 100-plus hours experience that won’t leave you disappointed.
Despite the deserved critical acclaim from the games-as-art crowd the beautiful visuals, enchanting audio, and charming piecemeal storyline of Hades just can't make up for the utter repetitiveness that the game is built entirely around. As a hack-n-slash rogue-lite there's just no avoiding the fact that improving your gameplay skill will only get you so far, and eventually each run boils down to the vain hope that the next randomly generated upgrade is something that will actually be useful, but all too frequently is not. It's a mechanism related to the microtransactions currently plaguing online games, but somehow Supergiant has figured out how to incorporate the gacha-addiction mechanism into the offline singleplayer experience at no additional charge.
Mario Kart 8 attempts to restore the series to glory after the less-than-epic but still popular entries for the Wii & 3DS. While it does smooth the roughest gameplay elements of its immediate predecessors, Mario Kart 8 attempts to make up for the series's other recent shortcomings with gaudiness and a huge number of cart customization options and tracks. Mario Kart 8 is easily the best entry in the series in more than 15 years, but while it's a competent & carefully crafted game it still lacks that certain combination of skill and focused mayhem that early entries in the series created so well.
Forget about Fire Emblem and its "medieval teen professor relationship" simulation. Into the Breach is the hardcore strategy game you've been looking for on Switch. This game will constantly batter you with lose/lose scenarios, but when you achieve victory in its brutal sci-fi scenarios you will be genuinely pleased with yourself. The classic faux 16-bit art style and the sombre orchestral music are great additions to an already superb package.
"Luigi's Mansion" is the best tech demo that was ever released for the Gamecube, and the same is true about "Luigi's Mansion 3" on Switch. Too bad Nintendo priced both games like a full AAA release, though. Fun for kids or fans of simplistic adventure games, but not a game for me.
As a fan of RPGs that use the Active Time Battle System (and its modern variants) I’m always on the lookout for the RPG that will finally bridge the gap between that style and the modern real-time battle style. With all of the praise surrounding the Xenoblade series, I did some reading on the battle system and picked up a cheap physical copy of Torna with high hopes. In comparison to ATB, the Xenoblade battle system basically assumes that you’ll want to use your character’s weak attack as quickly as possible, and does so automatically. After a “charge-up” period, you can direct your character to use more powerful alternate attacks by pressing a corresponding button—which leads to further “charge-ups” when performed correctly. Playing on Normal difficulty, my first battles with Lora and Jin were enjoyable and challenging. By the time I reached the first set of boss battles, though, I’d already mastered the limited set of moves at my disposal, and dispatched them without breaking a sweat, though I was quite satisfied with coordinating the right moves at just the right moments. Unfortunately, the next progression in the battle system introduced at that point in the game is the addition of friendly teams to your fights, and things go off the rails here for me. Since the player only controls one team at a time, each of the other teams is auto-battling without any active input. In terms of combat, this effectively means that any enemy you are battling will have its HP reduced periodically by the game itself. This makes the battle system more technically complex than before, but it actually has the effect of making fights easier to win and the battle field also becomes a terrible mess visually making it harder to time your own team's alternate attacks. You can try to go it alone with one team, but the game is balanced so that this is not practical unless you somehow manage to take on only one enemy at a time or just go level-up on your own for a while. The game is absolutely beautiful and the voice acting is quite good, though the characters are stuffy and environments are all stiff in typical JRPG fashion. But for me this battle system has a “close but not quite” feeling, and I just didn’t find it fun once more aspects were added on top of the base system.
Early in the review the reviewer compares T-Rex's claws to Donald Trump, for some reason. Is that some sort of meme that doesn't translate across the pond?
We’ve all seen the message-board discussions comparing The Witcher 3 (W3) with Breath of the Wild (BotW). For anyone that hasn’t spent some time playing both, the comparisons may seem natural given the superficial similarities in settings, weapons, basic stories, and open-world gameplay. Having now played both games, though, I firmly understand that these games are nothing alike where it probably counts the most: player accessibility. BotW is a stand-alone Action-Adventure game that cares about introducing players to its story and gameplay concepts without overwhelming them; it masterfully teaches the player how to play as Link regains his memories during progression through the game. On the other hand, W3 is the conclusion to a major Action-RPG series that isn’t concerned about catching you up on what you’ve missed previously; it throws the full weight of it’s back-story and character ability systems at you and assumes that proceeding through the story (and perhaps locating its simulated soft-core pornography) is motivation enough to work through the frustration that will initially saturate the experience for new players. In the course of playing through W3’s Prologue and the beginning of Chapter 1, I came across a dozen or more scenarios that I was completely unprepared to face by the scripted in-game tutorials or the literally hundreds of pop-up messages in the menu system. In early occurrences, I simply chalked it up to needing to familiarize myself further with the game’s many combat & crafting abilities. I would then spend some time reading online guides learning how to handle the situation and some time in the game-world practicing. My eventual triumphs were satisfying, but almost immediately followed by the same cycle in a new setting. By the beginning of Chapter 1, when I was presented with a pop-up that explained the game had automatically selected a quest intended for level 30+ players to pursue—even though it was aware that my Geralt was currently only level 3—I realized that the frustration was unlikely to lessen no matter how much I practiced because the game’s designers just didn’t care about players like me. I have no doubts that W3 contains a beautiful, rich open world with fascinating side quests, detailed graphics, moving music, and voice acting of the highest quality—the Prologue certainly did. But the package that contains those elements is obscured by a mess of clunky menus and obtuse gameplay elements decipherable only by the most dedicated. There is simply not enough enjoyment to be found when the user experience is this low of a consideration in game design.
A practically perfect puzzle-platformer with a difficulty curve that walks the line between challenging & accessible. Stages can be completed in minutes or seconds, but true mastery takes significant planning & trial. At such a low price-point “Boxboy! + BoxGirl!” really should be in every Switch-owner’s library, even if it’s just used to fill gaps between play-sessions of other games.
“Robocalypse” deserved way more positive attention than it received during the DS’s lifetime. One of only a handful of RTS games to be released on the platform, it combines Saturday-morning cartoon animation and sound with a simplified RTS scheme perfectly suited to the DS hardware. Friendly units follow instructions surprisingly well, though it can take time to learn the quirks of issuing and revoking orders. Enemy AI presents a strong challenge, but tends to follow a pre-determined strategy for each map. A worthy entry in your DS library if you can find it.
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the stylized Impressionist graphics and storybook-rhyming narrative give it a charming, dreamy aesthetic that is complemented by the characters and locations. The turn-based combat seems fairly standard at first, but thoughtful alterations to the typical Active Time Battle system keep fights mentally engaging and provide for timing-based tactics that are enjoyable to execute successfully.
Progression through the game world is heavily linear and there are a few performance issues that crop up, though. Even so, the overall effect is a highly engaging experience that feels like a unique French take on the classic 2D JRPG rather than an outright Western RPG.
Not necessarily a “lost gem” in the DS’s catalogue, but still a good metroidvania game on a system that had few competent ones. Griptonite managed to do an excellent job of capturing the “feel” of traveling both the rooftops and streets as Spider-man, and—surprisingly—“Shattered Dimensions’s” most satisfying feature is its combat. Ability upgrades can be located as you progress, and some of these abilities can be chained to your existing move-set to create lengthy combos that require some finesse to pull off right.
The game does have a few shortcomings, though. There are only 4 main enemy types that vary slightly in attacks across “universes,” and the fun is just over way too soon (the game is quite short). There is also an inane touchscreen mini-game that must be completed to move between universes, and it can be a frustrating break from the main action. But if you prefer web-slinging and combo-based fights over the macabre styles and attribute-development systems of the DS’s Castlevania games, then give this one a look.
A very enjoyable platformer with creative stage design and memorable boss battles, it also has heavy metroidvania exploration elements mixed in through combat & ability upgrades. The art direction is gorgeous, the music is toe-tapping, and the story is funny and light-hearted.
The only negatives relate to the fact that the game is the product of a Kickstarter campaign that didn't meet all its stretch goals for content development. It is slightly on the short side, and suffers from some pacing issues in later stages as a result.
Comments 17
Re: Astral Chain
It’s difficult to place Astral Chain into a single game genre since each level presents a slightly different challenge. It’s part 3rd-person action, part on-rails shooter, part "Xenoblade Chronicles 2" combat (ie: Driver/Blade team), part detective RPG, part “Luigi’s Mansion” (though the Legions are much cooler than the Poltergust), part interactive story, and somehow it throws in part “Frogger,” as well. The game reminds me a bit of the WarioWare series due to the sheer variety presented to the player.
It’s such a random collection of activities that the default playstyle (ie: difficulty) is set to “Casual,” meaning that you’re basically free to button-mash your way through the game. Worrisomely, this setting can only be changed after the first level is completed. While there are tougher difficulty settings, the unfamiliarity of each new scenario basically means you’ll need to already be familiar with the particulars of each level before attempting them at higher difficulty settings. (For the true movie-watcher there’s also a story mode that has the game play itself for you completely.)
Astral Chain is a game that’s so “outside the box” that I won’t even attempt to give it a score. All I know is that it’s not for me, and I caution anyone thinking of buying it to get a physical copy in case you discover the same thing--then at least you can re-sell it and get some of your money back.
Score: WTF
Re: A Short Hike
The world of A Short Hike has cute graphics styled like an enhancement of a DS-era Animal Crossing game, compelling exploration-based gameplay like Breath of the Wild (without any of the combat), and irritating item-gathering quests like the collecta-a-thon games created in the 1990's.
The overall package comes together nicely, but the main storyline's pacing may disappoint some players. To make the credits roll there is a single objective that is easily accomplished after playing about half-an-hour and completing roughly a third of the total game content. Adding some metroidvania-style progression gates would have improved the pacing of the main story compared to all of the optional side-stories and upgrades that are available.
A Short Hike is essentially a very promising demo that's been made available for purchase. Let's hope we see future games from this team with more content and improved pacing.
Score: 7/10
Re: Monster Hunter Rise
In theory a game that combines the real-time combat and open world of an Adventure game with the stat-building and leveling-up of an RPG should be wildly appealing. Especially when it also removes the RPG genre's text-heavy cutscenes and narrative. Monster Hunter Rise does, indeed, deliver on those positive elements. Unfortunately, despite the new and widely-praised options for quicker traversal of the environment, combat is a cumbersome chore.
Something as basic as positioning your character for continuous properly directed forward attacks is painful. For standard enemies this means your AI-controlled “pals” will frequently finish off the encounter while you’re character is still completing its heavy-attack animation where the monster used to be several seconds ago. Dodging seems to be overly generous for avoiding damage, as well. When facing boss monsters, this meant I found myself wailing on the light-attack button repeatedly and dodging anywhere (the direction didn’t seem to be important at all) to avoid damage when an attack was incoming. It also seems to be ridiculously easy to take a break during combat in order to heal, as your pals keep the attention of beasts while you run away—in addition to beasts frequently retreating all on their own.
For the players that stick it out beyond the early learning-curve I’m sure there are probably thousands of nuances to combat that evolve as you progress, but the game doesn’t seem particularly interested in presenting them to the player initially. Most of the early in-quest text tutorials (and there are a lot) seem to focus on item collection, presenting possible uses for items in scenarios that you won’t have a use for until a later quest.
All of the elements for a smash hit are certainly present in Monster Hunter Rise, but players are going to have to dig and invest a lot of time to find them. Games are supposed to be fun, though, and I definitely didn’t have enough of that in my initial play-sessions to warrant the additional time investment to find it.
Score: 7/10
Re: Octopath Traveler
Octopath Traveler is essentially a successor to the 2D Final Fantasy games of the ’90s. (Personally I would have preferred a successor to Chrono Trigger, but it looks like Square-Enix is satisfied with leaving that legacy idle.) The narrative is a mash-up of 8 separate medium-length JRPGs, each with its own focus on the personal life of its main protagonist. While some stories seem completely unrelated, in others there are hints that something bigger is happening on the periphery. Some plot events are more engaging than others, but all are serviceable to move you from dungeon to dungeon. And while all of the boss battles in the main stories are excellent, there are many more optional dungeons with challenging battles that are part of side-quests. In fact, the game is so expansive you may not need to purchase another traditional JRPG this generation due to the sheer amount of content offered.
Octopath Traveler falls short of being a perfect experience due to its narrative presentation, but it’s still fair to call it a masterpiece. It’s signature “HD-2D” graphics and engaging battle- and job-systems are the new standard for the “modern/traditional JRPG hybrid” genre. The story-telling mechanics fall unfortunately short due the enormous scope of its world’s history, but if you like traditional JRPG battles its a forgivable shortcoming. The knock is mainly that there’s seemingly no grand “save-the-world” presentation, but the backstory is there if you invest the time to understand how the characters fit into it. Seeing it through to the end, including all of the optional post-game content, is a 100-plus hours experience that won’t leave you disappointed.
Score: 9/10
Re: Hades
Despite the deserved critical acclaim from the games-as-art crowd the beautiful visuals, enchanting audio, and charming piecemeal storyline of Hades just can't make up for the utter repetitiveness that the game is built entirely around. As a hack-n-slash rogue-lite there's just no avoiding the fact that improving your gameplay skill will only get you so far, and eventually each run boils down to the vain hope that the next randomly generated upgrade is something that will actually be useful, but all too frequently is not. It's a mechanism related to the microtransactions currently plaguing online games, but somehow Supergiant has figured out how to incorporate the gacha-addiction mechanism into the offline singleplayer experience at no additional charge.
Score: 7/10
Re: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Mario Kart 8 attempts to restore the series to glory after the less-than-epic but still popular entries for the Wii & 3DS. While it does smooth the roughest gameplay elements of its immediate predecessors, Mario Kart 8 attempts to make up for the series's other recent shortcomings with gaudiness and a huge number of cart customization options and tracks. Mario Kart 8 is easily the best entry in the series in more than 15 years, but while it's a competent & carefully crafted game it still lacks that certain combination of skill and focused mayhem that early entries in the series created so well.
Score: 8/10
Re: Into The Breach
Forget about Fire Emblem and its "medieval teen professor relationship" simulation. Into the Breach is the hardcore strategy game you've been looking for on Switch. This game will constantly batter you with lose/lose scenarios, but when you achieve victory in its brutal sci-fi scenarios you will be genuinely pleased with yourself. The classic faux 16-bit art style and the sombre orchestral music are great additions to an already superb package.
Score: 9/10
Re: Luigi's Mansion 3
"Luigi's Mansion" is the best tech demo that was ever released for the Gamecube, and the same is true about "Luigi's Mansion 3" on Switch. Too bad Nintendo priced both games like a full AAA release, though. Fun for kids or fans of simplistic adventure games, but not a game for me.
Score: 5/10
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna - The Golden Country
As a fan of RPGs that use the Active Time Battle System (and its modern variants) I’m always on the lookout for the RPG that will finally bridge the gap between that style and the modern real-time battle style. With all of the praise surrounding the Xenoblade series, I did some reading on the battle system and picked up a cheap physical copy of Torna with high hopes.
In comparison to ATB, the Xenoblade battle system basically assumes that you’ll want to use your character’s weak attack as quickly as possible, and does so automatically. After a “charge-up” period, you can direct your character to use more powerful alternate attacks by pressing a corresponding button—which leads to further “charge-ups” when performed correctly.
Playing on Normal difficulty, my first battles with Lora and Jin were enjoyable and challenging. By the time I reached the first set of boss battles, though, I’d already mastered the limited set of moves at my disposal, and dispatched them without breaking a sweat, though I was quite satisfied with coordinating the right moves at just the right moments.
Unfortunately, the next progression in the battle system introduced at that point in the game is the addition of friendly teams to your fights, and things go off the rails here for me. Since the player only controls one team at a time, each of the other teams is auto-battling without any active input. In terms of combat, this effectively means that any enemy you are battling will have its HP reduced periodically by the game itself. This makes the battle system more technically complex than before, but it actually has the effect of making fights easier to win and the battle field also becomes a terrible mess visually making it harder to time your own team's alternate attacks. You can try to go it alone with one team, but the game is balanced so that this is not practical unless you somehow manage to take on only one enemy at a time or just go level-up on your own for a while.
The game is absolutely beautiful and the voice acting is quite good, though the characters are stuffy and environments are all stiff in typical JRPG fashion. But for me this battle system has a “close but not quite” feeling, and I just didn’t find it fun once more aspects were added on top of the base system.
Score: 6/10
Re: Review: Jurassic World Evolution: Complete Edition - A Murder Park Simulator With Bite
@breathe_easy Thanks, "Rubio" was the search term i needed to make sense of that.
Re: Review: Jurassic World Evolution: Complete Edition - A Murder Park Simulator With Bite
Early in the review the reviewer compares T-Rex's claws to Donald Trump, for some reason. Is that some sort of meme that doesn't translate across the pond?
Re: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition
We’ve all seen the message-board discussions comparing The Witcher 3 (W3) with Breath of the Wild (BotW). For anyone that hasn’t spent some time playing both, the comparisons may seem natural given the superficial similarities in settings, weapons, basic stories, and open-world gameplay. Having now played both games, though, I firmly understand that these games are nothing alike where it probably counts the most: player accessibility.
BotW is a stand-alone Action-Adventure game that cares about introducing players to its story and gameplay concepts without overwhelming them; it masterfully teaches the player how to play as Link regains his memories during progression through the game. On the other hand, W3 is the conclusion to a major Action-RPG series that isn’t concerned about catching you up on what you’ve missed previously; it throws the full weight of it’s back-story and character ability systems at you and assumes that proceeding through the story (and perhaps locating its simulated soft-core pornography) is motivation enough to work through the frustration that will initially saturate the experience for new players.
In the course of playing through W3’s Prologue and the beginning of Chapter 1, I came across a dozen or more scenarios that I was completely unprepared to face by the scripted in-game tutorials or the literally hundreds of pop-up messages in the menu system. In early occurrences, I simply chalked it up to needing to familiarize myself further with the game’s many combat & crafting abilities. I would then spend some time reading online guides learning how to handle the situation and some time in the game-world practicing. My eventual triumphs were satisfying, but almost immediately followed by the same cycle in a new setting. By the beginning of Chapter 1, when I was presented with a pop-up that explained the game had automatically selected a quest intended for level 30+ players to pursue—even though it was aware that my Geralt was currently only level 3—I realized that the frustration was unlikely to lessen no matter how much I practiced because the game’s designers just didn’t care about players like me.
I have no doubts that W3 contains a beautiful, rich open world with fascinating side quests, detailed graphics, moving music, and voice acting of the highest quality—the Prologue certainly did. But the package that contains those elements is obscured by a mess of clunky menus and obtuse gameplay elements decipherable only by the most dedicated. There is simply not enough enjoyment to be found when the user experience is this low of a consideration in game design.
Score: 7/10
Re: BOXBOY! + BOXGIRL!
A practically perfect puzzle-platformer with a difficulty curve that walks the line between challenging & accessible. Stages can be completed in minutes or seconds, but true mastery takes significant planning & trial.
At such a low price-point “Boxboy! + BoxGirl!” really should be in every Switch-owner’s library, even if it’s just used to fill gaps between play-sessions of other games.
Score: 9/10
Re: Robocalypse
“Robocalypse” deserved way more positive attention than it received during the DS’s lifetime. One of only a handful of RTS games to be released on the platform, it combines Saturday-morning cartoon animation and sound with a simplified RTS scheme perfectly suited to the DS hardware. Friendly units follow instructions surprisingly well, though it can take time to learn the quirks of issuing and revoking orders. Enemy AI presents a strong challenge, but tends to follow a pre-determined strategy for each map. A worthy entry in your DS library if you can find it.
Score: 8/10
Re: Child of Light: Ultimate Edition
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the stylized Impressionist graphics and storybook-rhyming narrative give it a charming, dreamy aesthetic that is complemented by the characters and locations. The turn-based combat seems fairly standard at first, but thoughtful alterations to the typical Active Time Battle system keep fights mentally engaging and provide for timing-based tactics that are enjoyable to execute successfully.
Progression through the game world is heavily linear and there are a few performance issues that crop up, though. Even so, the overall effect is a highly engaging experience that feels like a unique French take on the classic 2D JRPG rather than an outright Western RPG.
Score: 8/10
Re: Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
Not necessarily a “lost gem” in the DS’s catalogue, but still a good metroidvania game on a system that had few competent ones. Griptonite managed to do an excellent job of capturing the “feel” of traveling both the rooftops and streets as Spider-man, and—surprisingly—“Shattered Dimensions’s” most satisfying feature is its combat. Ability upgrades can be located as you progress, and some of these abilities can be chained to your existing move-set to create lengthy combos that require some finesse to pull off right.
The game does have a few shortcomings, though. There are only 4 main enemy types that vary slightly in attacks across “universes,” and the fun is just over way too soon (the game is quite short). There is also an inane touchscreen mini-game that must be completed to move between universes, and it can be a frustrating break from the main action. But if you prefer web-slinging and combo-based fights over the macabre styles and attribute-development systems of the DS’s Castlevania games, then give this one a look.
Score: 7/10
Re: Shantae: Half-Genie Hero
A very enjoyable platformer with creative stage design and memorable boss battles, it also has heavy metroidvania exploration elements mixed in through combat & ability upgrades. The art direction is gorgeous, the music is toe-tapping, and the story is funny and light-hearted.
The only negatives relate to the fact that the game is the product of a Kickstarter campaign that didn't meet all its stretch goals for content development. It is slightly on the short side, and suffers from some pacing issues in later stages as a result.
Score: 8/10