JHJ
2021
Kinda weird how simultaneously clunky and intricate this game is. I relished unfurling the mystery and loved how a system I thought was designed simply for ease ended up being vital to the story. Smart and fun.
2022
Watching your wee cat interact with the world is wonderful and the world can be interesting to explore but unlike the PS2 classic A Dog’s Life there isn’t a series of button presses that can make your cat poop which means you can’t then pick up said poop and throw it at the townsfolk.
I’m enjoying this generations trend for refined PS2 character action games but like many other attempts there is an original voice lacking from Kena, one that would give it more mental staying power as well as more joy in general. The world feels empty when large and stubbornly clumsy when linear. The story feels plain and generic and it’s focus of spirits can sometimes make the world feel dead and empty in a very dissatisfying way.
2023
Tchia has all the components of a great game but lacks the connective tissue. Navigation feels half baked. Combat is painfully dull. Feels like it’s taking cues from hundreds of games but just doesn’t know how to put those pieces together.
2022
Some great visuals and great Japanese mythos blend with hyper-collectible hunting in a game that only needs a couple of tweaks to be an unmissable cult classic. If I had less of a broken brain I’d probably not have got as hooked to sucking up souls into piece of paper but hey I’m broken.
The improvements are astounding. This story is so vital that the actual game this is DLC for now just feels like a prologue. Tighter, far more varied and a plot that is staggeringly ever present throughout. Shocked by how much of an upgrade this really is.
2023
I’ve spent a weird amount of time playing this terrible iPhone game. Apple really just doesn’t give a shit about games.
2023
Did you ever play Bioshock and think “I wish this protagonist was duke nukem”? Well do I have the game for you.
At one point the dialogue and the main character made my eyes roll back so far into my head that I couldn’t see anymore so I had to stop playing.
At one point the dialogue and the main character made my eyes roll back so far into my head that I couldn’t see anymore so I had to stop playing.
Pushing through tedium is rewarded in is considered sequel which manages to feel less relentlessly bleak and yet still spectacularly miserable. The pace can be quite erratic and I’m always frustrated by games that punish you for breaking stealth/killing as a story beat. I tried for hours to complete one section without killing anyone only to realise it was intentionally impossible. This isn’t a problem unique to Plague Tale, it’s an issue which seems to affect every game that attempts to be both action packed and morally story driven.
2020
It’s a big old beautiful bit of box-ticking and collecting which feels surprisingly characterless considering how seriously it takes itself
2023
Maybe I thought about this one too much but the idea that the “dark arts” which just insta-kill enemies are for some reason 10000x worse than a spell which turns your enemies into explosive barrels which you can throw at the other bad guys so they both cease to exist, really ruined all my immersion. The world is kinda beautiful and the child in me is just happy to see 4K hogwarts but to be perfectly clear, this is a game that requires brain deletion to truly love everything that is going on
I’d really rather not do all this backtracking and there is an awful lot of filler but then you remember that some kid in the back of the car in 2004 got to spend hours with this game and ignore all of the tedium around them. So yeah not amazing but for a portable Zelda time killer pretty great.
The Xbox game pass has opened a strange world of c-tier indie games which are trying to evoke some cherished cult classic with some ironic internet humor or some really overblown teen angst drama. I both love and hate this new chapter of my video gaming life but rainbow billy is trying some really nice things. It’s mostly harmless with some moments that felt smart and others that were so tedious I was confused why they’d made their small teams life harder for something so needless. Ultimately I fell into a nice and comfortable gameplay rhythm but found that although there is the illusion of deep social mechanics you can storm through the game treating every character exactly the same (one fun exception being an enemy who is upset if you do to well in a fight)
2022
Though it is bafflingly low budget, once I had become the master of my lizard bike, zooming around this simultaneously messy and empty world was a fun power trip. I also actually caught them all, thanks Reddit.
2021
Everything felt quite incongruous. I’d explore only to find dead ends then just randomly find myself in a different biome that didn’t gel with anything around it. The portals that pixelate the games also feel completely pointless. Where the previous game pastiched to the point I didn’t really feel the need for it, Axiom Verge 2 spins it’s wheels trying to be something new yet old.