2007
Very innovative puzzle game. There's nothing quite like the portal gun, and it's so satisfying to use. Bit on the short side though, and not a lot of meat on it. Feels a bit like a prototype. I've never played Portal 2 before, so maybe that'll be where the real meat of this idea comes into play.
Also the way that the camera can spazz out after exiting some portals when falling can make it harder than it should be to properly aim in the little window you have while in the air.
Also the way that the camera can spazz out after exiting some portals when falling can make it harder than it should be to properly aim in the little window you have while in the air.
This review contains spoilers
So much better than the previous DLC's.
For one thing, since this acts as a standalone story, the level scaling problems of the previous expansions aren't present. It's not a case of blowing through the early game just to fight the super strong extra boss at the end. Now it's a full on story that you level up with naturally. And the amount of content here blows the other 2 expansions out of the water five times over. This is basically an entire extra saga, complete with the little extra padding and giving focus to little things that the original story may have skimmed past.
One of my favourite parts was when it used the ui to creative effect during Future Gohan's last stand, and his final attack completely breaks the ki bar, and then the following battle has you basically unable to do anything. Neat little touches.
I especially like that they didn't just stop at the Androids, and added a little post-game for the Babidi stuff that was told in Super.
For one thing, since this acts as a standalone story, the level scaling problems of the previous expansions aren't present. It's not a case of blowing through the early game just to fight the super strong extra boss at the end. Now it's a full on story that you level up with naturally. And the amount of content here blows the other 2 expansions out of the water five times over. This is basically an entire extra saga, complete with the little extra padding and giving focus to little things that the original story may have skimmed past.
One of my favourite parts was when it used the ui to creative effect during Future Gohan's last stand, and his final attack completely breaks the ki bar, and then the following battle has you basically unable to do anything. Neat little touches.
I especially like that they didn't just stop at the Androids, and added a little post-game for the Babidi stuff that was told in Super.
2016
Pros:
+Tight and responsive controls controls
+You can feel yourself improving and it's satisfying as hell.
+There's an addicting mini-game you can unlock
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's an extremely short and simple game. I got it from PS+ a long time ago, and I don't think I'd ever have been happy paying for this, but it was a fun little thing to get for free
Notes:
•I played this solely because there's one day left until Animal Crossing comes out and I needed a super short game to play in the meantime. This was at the very top of my list of PS+ games and it fit that bill nicely.
+Tight and responsive controls controls
+You can feel yourself improving and it's satisfying as hell.
+There's an addicting mini-game you can unlock
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's an extremely short and simple game. I got it from PS+ a long time ago, and I don't think I'd ever have been happy paying for this, but it was a fun little thing to get for free
Notes:
•I played this solely because there's one day left until Animal Crossing comes out and I needed a super short game to play in the meantime. This was at the very top of my list of PS+ games and it fit that bill nicely.
1998
This game plays like a bunch of people who don't know exactly how to play Mario Party so they make up the rules as they go along.
Half the minigames are pure shit. Why are there team based 4 player games? Why are there 1v3 games where the 3 literally can't do anything, like the pipe choosing one?
Mario Party did not start out with its formula properly refined.
At least the boards are good.
Half the minigames are pure shit. Why are there team based 4 player games? Why are there 1v3 games where the 3 literally can't do anything, like the pipe choosing one?
Mario Party did not start out with its formula properly refined.
At least the boards are good.
Multiple improvements to the first, like a proper story mode, way more characters, a level up system. Ai are a cheap son of a bitch though.
2021
This review contains spoilers
It's not quite the "explore the maps and work everything out by yourself" game that many were expecting. It's more of a "explore the maps and you'll find things the game will then tell you how to use". I don't mind it too much. At first it seemed way too hand-holdy, but honestly by the end of the game there's just SO MANY notes, audio logs, eternalist conversations etc that I doubt most people would be able to piece this game together by themselves.
It's also hard to tell exactly how much the game tells you where to go. Through exploring I found a ton of things that the game made notes of, which were then later important parts of a quest. Would the game have told me where to find this step 4 part of the quest if I hadn't found it before, or would I have still had to look for it myself? You just find so much stuff out of order that should feel rewarding, but instead it makes you think "did I really find it myself, or did I just find it earlier than the game would tell me where it is?". It's that kind of thing that makes it hard to judge exactly how immersive this game truly is.
Gameplay is extremely fun though. After a slow tutorial, you start being able to customise your loadout. There's not a whole ton of stuff to unlock, but it's always nice finding a new trinket that fits your playstyle, and the slabs are consistently exciting to get. The problem comes from how limited the loadout slots are. There's only 3 weapon slots, so chances are you'll find your preferred weapons early enough that every other weapon will just be left on the ground since you have would have sacrifice one of your main weapons (for the rest of the run) in order to pick up this new weapon and infuse it.
The game does seem to hint at a different loadouts for different missions idea, but I found using a versatile loadout that kinda does a bit of everything but master of nothing worked for 90% of the game, only requiring to be changed for specific trophies or optional missions.
I did really like the maps. After playing through them all so many times they felt like home. The little touches done between times of day to make the maps feel different are nice, but honestly the majority of the time it still feels like the exact same map as any other time of day, just with enemy placements switched and certain quests only being available now. There's a few exceptions, the one that comes to mind off the top of my head is the complex at night which strips away most enemies and instead turns the level into a booby trapped obstacle course.
The one thing I wish maps had more of was environment variety. I get that the plot of the game kind of requires a lot of laboratories and big imposing areas full of science equipment, but the most fun places to explore were always the one-offs, like Charlie's live action role playing game, or, well, most of Fristad Rock. I wanted way more of that.
The visionaries had some effort put into developing them and making them stand out, but most of it falls into "tell don't show" as it comes in the form of notes, email chains etc. I do appreciate the ones that they put the personalities into the actual locations they're at though, like, again, Charlie's role playing game, or Aleksis's mask party. I guess that's a problem that goes hand in hand with the idea that most of the visionaries had to be scientists though, since labs are where you'll find a lot of them.
I also wish more of them stood out from regular enemies, rather than just being slightly stronger versions. Wenjie is the only one who gets any kind of real mechanic implemented into her battle, as she's cloned herself so you have to kill all the clones. For other characters it's just a case of fight/stealth your way to them and then kill them. So the worst visionaries are by far the ones that have no mechanics AND are just in boring lab locations (like Fia or Egor). If you wanna know anything about them other than "they're scientists" you really need to look for it.
Basically I found the game super fun to play, it's fast paced, full of fun details, a ton of content spread across relatively small maps, and I even grew to enjoy Colt and Juliana's banter. It just feels like it missed its full potential.
Also the online mode is garbage. It uses the concept of invading other players games to try and kill them, but like...most people are going to play in single player mode to avoid losing all their progress from having someone invade their game and kill them. I really can't think of a worse thought out mechanic in my life. Nobody WANTS to have other players come and reset them back to the start of the day, devs?? Why would you think people wouldn't just turn that off as soon as possible?
It's also hard to tell exactly how much the game tells you where to go. Through exploring I found a ton of things that the game made notes of, which were then later important parts of a quest. Would the game have told me where to find this step 4 part of the quest if I hadn't found it before, or would I have still had to look for it myself? You just find so much stuff out of order that should feel rewarding, but instead it makes you think "did I really find it myself, or did I just find it earlier than the game would tell me where it is?". It's that kind of thing that makes it hard to judge exactly how immersive this game truly is.
Gameplay is extremely fun though. After a slow tutorial, you start being able to customise your loadout. There's not a whole ton of stuff to unlock, but it's always nice finding a new trinket that fits your playstyle, and the slabs are consistently exciting to get. The problem comes from how limited the loadout slots are. There's only 3 weapon slots, so chances are you'll find your preferred weapons early enough that every other weapon will just be left on the ground since you have would have sacrifice one of your main weapons (for the rest of the run) in order to pick up this new weapon and infuse it.
The game does seem to hint at a different loadouts for different missions idea, but I found using a versatile loadout that kinda does a bit of everything but master of nothing worked for 90% of the game, only requiring to be changed for specific trophies or optional missions.
I did really like the maps. After playing through them all so many times they felt like home. The little touches done between times of day to make the maps feel different are nice, but honestly the majority of the time it still feels like the exact same map as any other time of day, just with enemy placements switched and certain quests only being available now. There's a few exceptions, the one that comes to mind off the top of my head is the complex at night which strips away most enemies and instead turns the level into a booby trapped obstacle course.
The one thing I wish maps had more of was environment variety. I get that the plot of the game kind of requires a lot of laboratories and big imposing areas full of science equipment, but the most fun places to explore were always the one-offs, like Charlie's live action role playing game, or, well, most of Fristad Rock. I wanted way more of that.
The visionaries had some effort put into developing them and making them stand out, but most of it falls into "tell don't show" as it comes in the form of notes, email chains etc. I do appreciate the ones that they put the personalities into the actual locations they're at though, like, again, Charlie's role playing game, or Aleksis's mask party. I guess that's a problem that goes hand in hand with the idea that most of the visionaries had to be scientists though, since labs are where you'll find a lot of them.
I also wish more of them stood out from regular enemies, rather than just being slightly stronger versions. Wenjie is the only one who gets any kind of real mechanic implemented into her battle, as she's cloned herself so you have to kill all the clones. For other characters it's just a case of fight/stealth your way to them and then kill them. So the worst visionaries are by far the ones that have no mechanics AND are just in boring lab locations (like Fia or Egor). If you wanna know anything about them other than "they're scientists" you really need to look for it.
Basically I found the game super fun to play, it's fast paced, full of fun details, a ton of content spread across relatively small maps, and I even grew to enjoy Colt and Juliana's banter. It just feels like it missed its full potential.
Also the online mode is garbage. It uses the concept of invading other players games to try and kill them, but like...most people are going to play in single player mode to avoid losing all their progress from having someone invade their game and kill them. I really can't think of a worse thought out mechanic in my life. Nobody WANTS to have other players come and reset them back to the start of the day, devs?? Why would you think people wouldn't just turn that off as soon as possible?
2020
I got very overwhelmed by this game at first with the amount of stuff going on at once (it didn't help that my decks were a huge mishmash of like 10 different mechanics), but after playing some games and knowing how everything works to the point I can play on the fastest speed without getting lost, it's so addicting and fun.
I haven't played a ton of rogue-likes, so I can't say how it fares in the genre, but compared to the very similar Slay the Spire, I like this one since the beginning of a run gives you 3 randomized cards already, so the start of the game isn't as slow as STS. It also means you're more likely to build around certain deck types depending on what you're given, as opposed to always going for just the "best" one.
5 classes (1 more in the DLC), each with 2 hero cards + starter cards, being able to use 2 classes per run, many different mechanics to try and capitalise on. It all just adds up to a game that doesn't get boring fast at all despite the seemingly repetitive nature.
I will say that I kind of wish there was a longer mode. I wanna see the game scale with things like a fourth hero buff and whatnot.
I haven't played a ton of rogue-likes, so I can't say how it fares in the genre, but compared to the very similar Slay the Spire, I like this one since the beginning of a run gives you 3 randomized cards already, so the start of the game isn't as slow as STS. It also means you're more likely to build around certain deck types depending on what you're given, as opposed to always going for just the "best" one.
5 classes (1 more in the DLC), each with 2 hero cards + starter cards, being able to use 2 classes per run, many different mechanics to try and capitalise on. It all just adds up to a game that doesn't get boring fast at all despite the seemingly repetitive nature.
I will say that I kind of wish there was a longer mode. I wanna see the game scale with things like a fourth hero buff and whatnot.
It's okay, but the location is very boring for a Dead Rising game, although it does do what it can to make it worth playing after DR2, like new combo weapons. It has some story stuff that maybe goes somewhere in the future, maybe not - I haven't played the sequels yet. Assuming it does carry on, then this was a pretty necessary epilogue to DR2.
The way survivors are implemented is kinda interesting. There's no notifications anymore, instead you just kinda gotta stumble in to them. And you don't have to lead them back either, it's just a case of finding them and "saving" them. Though some of them do still have requests. Not sure if this is really better or worse. The game definitely gives you plenty of time between cases to find them, but that time can also feel surprisingly long if you're only in this to quickly experience the story. After all, there's only so many ways you can entertain yourself killing zombies in such a limited environment when you've had much more options in the main game.
It's a fun enough, short ride. Nothing special. The gun enemies do suck some fun out of it though.
The way survivors are implemented is kinda interesting. There's no notifications anymore, instead you just kinda gotta stumble in to them. And you don't have to lead them back either, it's just a case of finding them and "saving" them. Though some of them do still have requests. Not sure if this is really better or worse. The game definitely gives you plenty of time between cases to find them, but that time can also feel surprisingly long if you're only in this to quickly experience the story. After all, there's only so many ways you can entertain yourself killing zombies in such a limited environment when you've had much more options in the main game.
It's a fun enough, short ride. Nothing special. The gun enemies do suck some fun out of it though.
2014
These dumb idle clicker games are so pointless but they draw me in. This one is pretty neat with all the RPG elements. There's certainly a lot of things to unlock and upgrade so even after starting over a week ago there's still elements to it that I haven't touched.
Honestly pretty meh. The location is insanely generic for Left 4 Dead, there's no standout set pieces or moments. Incredibly short even by DLC standards (another 2 act one). And it has a fuel gathering part in the finale which is always one of the low points of these games, particularly in single player.
I love the idea of this mode, and I think it works well as a survival game – I got so many close calls where my hunger or temperature were low, and it makes every combat encounter that much more tense. I just wish it had a more clear goal than just “Survive until you find the big rescue fire thingy and then you can just end it here or keep going for points I guess”. The fact a day 1 and day 10 run don’t do much different other than put you higher on an online leader board means I feel like very few people will truly get invested in this for more than a couple of runs. I think having some kind of progress to carry over, and collectibles to find between runs (that you only keep if you survive) would do great for it.
Also the whole randomly generated map thing is pretty useless when the map is just one big blank snowstorm with all the caves you find feeling exactly the same.
Also the whole randomly generated map thing is pretty useless when the map is just one big blank snowstorm with all the caves you find feeling exactly the same.
If your favourite part of the main game was stopping to read documents every 5 minutes then I have amazing news for you.
For real your enjoyment of this DLC will depend entirely on how much you care about learning about the Croft family history.
Edit: This used to be a sole page for Blood Ties DLC, but it's now updated to include a full celebration pack which had "Lara's Nightmare" too. Unfortunately it's been too long for me to properly review the mode, but I did remember it being pretty fun if not repetitive towards the end.
For real your enjoyment of this DLC will depend entirely on how much you care about learning about the Croft family history.
Edit: This used to be a sole page for Blood Ties DLC, but it's now updated to include a full celebration pack which had "Lara's Nightmare" too. Unfortunately it's been too long for me to properly review the mode, but I did remember it being pretty fun if not repetitive towards the end.
Rating these is always hard because technically I think the overall rating of the game is lower than the highest rating I'd give an individual game in the collection. Most of the games in the collection are either ones that you'd play once and never again, or just ignore completely.
To be fair though this one is a lot better looking and highly polished than many of these type of games, which is expected since it's from Nintendo.
I guess if you absolutely love board and card games this is a great way to have them all available at once while saving space and set-up time, although you lose out on a lot of the satisfaction a physical game can bring.
I'm pretty lukewarm on most of these games, so an average rating of 2.5 seems right.
To be fair though this one is a lot better looking and highly polished than many of these type of games, which is expected since it's from Nintendo.
I guess if you absolutely love board and card games this is a great way to have them all available at once while saving space and set-up time, although you lose out on a lot of the satisfaction a physical game can bring.
I'm pretty lukewarm on most of these games, so an average rating of 2.5 seems right.
2000
Very similar to the previous game despite the leap in console generation. There's a few new mechanics, like hyper beast drive, an extra super move per character and some kind of sway dodge, but none of them are explained in game. Presumably they're in the game manual, but if you don't have that gotta look it up online (and I could still never get the sway to work consistently).
It even suffers that extremely horrible difficulty curve the previous 2 games have had. Placing the game on the medium difficulty will make the first fight insanely easy, and the 9th and final fight plays like a pro. I don't get why they bother having difficulty options when a single arcade run differs so damn much.
Story mode is gone, now arcade mode tries to take its place, except instead of having a fully fledged story with each character, we instead get a few "cutscenes" before the first battle and after the last. These cutscenes are just like in 2, where they're still images with text overlayed, which was already cheap feeling in 2, but now that they've got a brand new powerful hardware to work with AND they reduced this story to two small segments, it's far less forgivable. Also not gonna lie but the story lost me on this one, it felt like there was tons of new lore and terms being thrown around that were never in the second game.
There's a lack of new characters too, going from 6 or 7 in the second game to only 3 in this one. And of those 3 one is a robot clone of another. The other two characters are a chimera and "unborn". These are all cool concepts in theory, but when the draw of your game series is being able to play as humans who transform into animals, it'd be nice to get new real animals to play as instead of 3 "special" forms.
This game did improve training a lot, input display is now back from the first game after being mysteriously gone from the second, but they now also show whether each hit in a combo is high, middle or low, so if you want to get really indepth the training is very accommodating to that.
Overall it feels more or less like the last game with better graphics. I gave it a slightly lower score because making the story near non-existent really hurt how much characters were able to stand out.
It even suffers that extremely horrible difficulty curve the previous 2 games have had. Placing the game on the medium difficulty will make the first fight insanely easy, and the 9th and final fight plays like a pro. I don't get why they bother having difficulty options when a single arcade run differs so damn much.
Story mode is gone, now arcade mode tries to take its place, except instead of having a fully fledged story with each character, we instead get a few "cutscenes" before the first battle and after the last. These cutscenes are just like in 2, where they're still images with text overlayed, which was already cheap feeling in 2, but now that they've got a brand new powerful hardware to work with AND they reduced this story to two small segments, it's far less forgivable. Also not gonna lie but the story lost me on this one, it felt like there was tons of new lore and terms being thrown around that were never in the second game.
There's a lack of new characters too, going from 6 or 7 in the second game to only 3 in this one. And of those 3 one is a robot clone of another. The other two characters are a chimera and "unborn". These are all cool concepts in theory, but when the draw of your game series is being able to play as humans who transform into animals, it'd be nice to get new real animals to play as instead of 3 "special" forms.
This game did improve training a lot, input display is now back from the first game after being mysteriously gone from the second, but they now also show whether each hit in a combo is high, middle or low, so if you want to get really indepth the training is very accommodating to that.
Overall it feels more or less like the last game with better graphics. I gave it a slightly lower score because making the story near non-existent really hurt how much characters were able to stand out.
I played this in the definitive version and didn't even realise it was a DLC tomb. It was actually the very first one in the game... It's fine, it's a short 5 or so minute puzzle involving a plane. Doesn't stand out from the other optional tombs I've done.