Game Reviews
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Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun – Review
While most modern stealth games are more about encouraging you to play in a stealthy manner while still giving you options when things go wrong, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun demands that you strike from the shadows or die. Played in an isometric view, you’ll be controlling multiple characters as you make your way across treacherous enemy territory and complete objectives. It’s very much in the vein of older tactical games like Commandos, but with a lot more depth to the gameplay and a really interesting story. The game is based in Japan around the Edo period, and your role is to infiltrate, sabotage and assassinate as you are ordered. The story is well told and the five characters you play as are personable and have their own motivations. While you start off controlling just one ch...
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy – Review
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is the latest entry in the Uncharted series, based in India and follows the journey of Chloe and Nadine as they set out to find the Tusk of Ganesh. The events in the game take place almost a year after Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End concludes, and is a standalone story. That being said, having played the previous games in the series will familiarize you with many of the characters in the story and even some of their motives. However, the game is a self-contained adventure and newcomers will find it easy to get in and have an enjoyable experience with the game. Fans of the series will recognize Chloe from Uncharted 2 where she plays a significant role, and from the smaller role she plays at the start of Uncharted 3. Nadine was one of the main characters in Uncharted 4...
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy – Review
If you’re someone who has never played the older Crash Bandicoot games – maybe you were too young or the games felt too old compared to modern platformers – then Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is an absolute must play. It’s hands down among the best and even most needed remasters of today, that stays true to the formula of the original games while bringing it up to the polish of today’s visuals. While Naughty Dog made the original games, the remasters have been made by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision. And they have done a fantastic job of recreating Crash just as many remember from their childhood right down to the music, level design, and the overall style. And where most older games don’t translate all that well on to modern systems, Vicarious Visions’ meticulo...
Super Cloudbuilt – Review
When it first released in 2014, Cloudbuilt was a fast paced 3D platformer that emphasized on freedom, precision, open level design and parkour. Sadly, even though it got critical acclaim, it never garnered the mass appeal that it deserved. However, Super Cloudbuilt is a superb remaster of the original, and makes substantial improvements and additions to it. Developed and published by Cloud Eleven, Super Cloudbuilt is a beautiful looking free running game where you play as Demi who finds herself in a strange new world. She has no memory of where she is or how she got here, and as you progress through the game you keep unlocking new information about her. While the story is lean and clearly not the focus of the game, it is fascinating enough to keep you engaged. Most of the appeal comes from...
Procedural Death Machine : Sundered Review
You’re a wanderer in a razed world, who discovers an ancient monument that sucks you into a boundless, surreal cavern filled teeming with foes of all kinds. Forced to make your way fighting through hordes of these enemies, you journey on, guided by an entity known as the Shining Trapezohedron in hopes of finding a way out. You’re in a passageway, and get overwhelmed, resulting in death. When you come back, you find out that the passageway is not quite how you remembered it, neither do you face the same group of enemies. There’s no memorizing locations here. Welcome to Sundered. Welcome to your procedurally generated hell. The reason behind the procedurally generated rooms is quite simple. The ancient races that used to inhabit the cavern had a conflict, which lead to a ri...
Darkest Before Dawn – The Long Dark – Review
After almost 3 years in Steam Early Access, The Long Dark is finally out for PC and consoles, and the end result is a truly harrowing and immersive survival experience along with a compelling episodic single player campaign. The game is set in the harsh cold Canadian wilderness in the aftermath of a geomagnetic disaster. The climate anomaly is clearly giving a nod to today’s climate sentiments. While the game features a robust single player campaigns with 5 episodes, two of which are available as of writing this review, the main component is the Survival Mode, which is a free-roam non-narrative survival sandbox. You start off scavenging for the most basic of items to survive, including food, shelter and a source of heat to stay warm. Surviving in The Long Dark is a brutal, challenging and...
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls – Review
If you are new to the series, Danganronpa can be quite intimidating. It’s a massive series of tales spread across various forms of media, including games and anime series. So what Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls intends to is actually fairly simple and beneficial to the player – tell a shorter more contained tale in the Danganronpa universe. You start playing as Komaru Naegi, who is being held against her will in an apartment in Towa City. However, the life of confinement seems at least comfortable, and she wants for nothing – well, except to be free, that is. This changes one day, as she finally breaks free, only to find that Towa City is now facing a threat from massive bear-robots called, Monokuma. Children across the city have banded together to bring down ...
Through The Fire And The Flames – Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice – Review
It feels like Ninja Theory is set on proving themselves with Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and they have done so successfully. Hellblade is a visually stunning achievement, with a heavy layer of psychosis, fluid combat, creepy voice acting that can get under your skin, and a haunting tale set in Viking/Celtic mythology woven together. If you’ve not heard of Ninja Theory before, they are the guys who made Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey To The West (one of my personal favorites), and DmC: Devil May Cry. Hellblade is their attempt at creating something unique and powerful, and for the most part, they have accomplished that goal. You play as Senua as she makes her way into hell to fight for the soul of her dead lover. She is also plagued by severe psychosis which twists her perc...
Bis.nes – Vostok Inc. – Review
Vostok Inc. is in equal parts a twin-stick shooter and a clicker, which makes it a twin-stick clicker, or a click-stick shooter. Surprisingly enough, it does both aspects of the game really well, resulting in an enjoyable and challenging twin-stick experience bundled with the relaxing rhythm of idle clickers. As the game’s official description puts it – You’re the newly appointed CEO of Vostok Inc. As a greedy, space-capitalist your ultimate goal is to get filthy, stinking, rich! And that’s basically it. You start off with a ship and venture forth into space. Initially you are shooting down enemies in the usual twin stick fashion, along with asteroids in space. Shooting them down gives you ‘Moolah’, which is the game’s currency. And when shooting things ...
The Town Of Light – Review
The Town Of Light is based on real events in Italy and is set during the early 20th century. You play in first person, and relive the life of a 16 year old girl and her time in a mental hospital. At its core the game is a psychological tale, and that is the game’s strongest component. As you explore your surroundings, you can interact with various objects in the world and the story keeps unfolding. The whole place has a very creepy feel to it and it adds a lot to the overall tension. The girl’s narration is also spot-on and does a very good job of relaying a young girl’s fear and confusion, as well as her mental issues. Renee suffers from severe anxiety and blackouts, and later on is a victim of sexual abuse. She is then admitted to the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra, ...
Leaving Lyndow – Review
Leaving Lyndow is a walking simulator with a bit of exploration, point and click elements, and puzzles thrown in. And I don’t mean that in a reductive way, I like all those things and actually had a great time with the game. The game is quite short (about 45-60 minutes long) and even though it is set in the same universe as Eastshade, the upcoming larger game, it has different gameplay mechanics – Eastshade will be an open-world game with longer conversations, quests and where the player can make their own story; while Leaving Lyndow is more of a glimpse into Clara’s life and her last day before a dangerous expedition, with short puzzles and closed off areas. As mentioned, you play as Clara, who is leaving her home to join the Guild of Maritime Exploration. The game begin...
Real Virtuality – SuperHOT PS4 & PSVR Review
Right from the first moments of SuperHOT one thing is made immediately clear – this game has got style, and presents it boldly. Time moves when you do, and everyone is out to kill you. Presented in a unique fashion, you start by navigating the menus of piOS, and launch Superhot.exe. You’re then playing through small areas where enemies are coming at you with guns, fists and melee weapons. Everything is still when you don’t move and every move you make has to be a calculated decision. Presented in a minimalist way, there are whites everywhere, punctuated by red enemies and bullets. You start of simple by facing just a couple of enemies, but soon enough you are facing down up to ten enemies coming at you from every side. You punch out the first enemy, throw a cue ball at th...