A beautiful example of how aethestics can get you really, really far.

While some might read that as an insult, I promise you, it's not. It's the biggest compliment I can give to a game filled with so much personality and style. Persona 5 might not have a a very original or engrossing gameplay system, and its story might be a bit too much of a cliché by the end; but it more that compensates in other areas.

The only real thing that works against it is its lenght. There's simply no good reason for it to be that long, and towards the middle both the game and story drag a lot.

A hugely influential title that I'd recommend to any JRPG fan, just keep in mind the long visual novel-like sections and its bad pacing.

I have played all its NES precursors. I sure enjoyed them at the time. But why should this be considered a good thing? Why can’t videogames suffer a little more anxiety of influence? Great videogame design is not timeless anyway.

Shovel Knight is merely pastiche. Pastiche with hot colors and killer music and weightless platforming and useless economics and bad deaths. It’s a competent medley, lovingly arranged. It’s not much more.

Shovel Knight and its rapturous reception make me very afraid that most gamers really just want to play the same games, remixed and slightly updated, over and over, forever.

It’s got set pieces, forward momentum, ten varieties of escalation. Man is it exhausting.

Half-Life 2 tries to do so many things, but none of them well. Here, have some stiff guns, some stiffer men, some antlions. Want to drive one clunker? Drive two. Each element is both underdeveloped and overused, making every level feel twice too long. Even its best idea – the gravity gun – fails to develop much beyond furniture-mover-slash-zombie-cleaver.

Perhaps the longing for Half-Life 3 is a desire to experience such breadth and ambition again. Portal, though, suggested we go the other way. Focus tends to age better.

Sometimes your first impressions are wrong. I too found Dead Cells enthralling in the beginning. You stab and shoot and dodge and go: oh this. But the more I played, the less this mattered. What does this serve?

We still care too much about gamefeel. See Destiny. See also Celeste. There’s something icky about the way game critics fetishize it. That luscious feedback, that perfect extension of your will, that zone you wish to stay in forever. Gross.

I’m not here for your goodfeeling weapons. I’m here for enemies that fuck with my feelings. I’m here for encounters. But Dead Cells has no taste for that. Most of its enemies are locked to their tiny platforms, pacing like caged tigers, awaiting slaughter. It’s all discrete and exploitable. There’s no real dynamism. That precious this becomes rote. Nothing accumulates.

Except your cells, of course. Because Dead Cells never wants you to leave empty-handed. The metagame is all reassuring progress and new toys. It’s a people-pleaser wrapped in a hardcore skin. It’s roguelike comfort food, which goes against the whole point of randomness and permanent death. I don’t even care about getting good. I’m here for chance and uncertainty. I’m here to feel our contingency. And this game feeling, this, is not here.

for a while, i had a review of this game left up as "playing this game is a form of self-harm" or something to that effect. that was the result of me trying to get a platinum not only the PS3 version, but also the PS4. now that i've done both, i can actually try to be fair to this game, or at least approximate it.

rayman legends' design philosophy is "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks". there is frankly too much content here, most of it not worthwhile. 1/3rd or maybe even more of the levels in this game are just recycled from origins; there's a character selection/unlocking element that only speedrunners have convinced me has any impact on the actual platforming; there are daily and weekly randomly generated levels that are indefensibly terrible; there's fucking dailies with "collectable monsters"... there's just so much here that does not matter. and i get that there's a strong proponent of this game who would say "why focus on what doesn't work or matter if the core gameplay loop is good?". but that's just it: when you break it down to the base platforming aspect, rayman legends is just okay. nothing terribly special.

in terms of level design, most of them blend together for me. i can say this because, having 100%'d the game twice, only a handful of levels stick out in my memory. i don't think the majority of this game's levels are bad, per se, just very standard platformer-type levels. you have the chase levels, you have the underwater levels, you have the autoscroller levels... so much of this just feels done before, you know? i struggle to think of very many things about this game that were creative in that sense. i might be cynical and harsh, but i just can't feel that passionate or enthusiastic about a game that gave me such a "been there, done that" feeling.

i think some of this could've been remedied if i really liked the presentation of the game, but it's just... it doesn't do anything for me. the art style isn't bad, i just struggle to describe it in any meaningful way. and the music is very forgettable. maybe that's the risk you take when you go with a heavily orchestral soundtrack, but i could not for the life of me tell you any song from this game outside of the autorunner music ones (which overstay their welcome).

there were passionate people behind this project, i can definitely feel that, but none of it translates for me. i am the minority in that this game did gangbusters in reviews but i just feel left out in the cold. i'd rather play a game that's more focused and concise, something with tighter creativity and more unique ideas. when i think of the 2D platformers i love, i think of something like Donkey Kong Country or Wario Land 4 or VVVVVV. all of those games had such fun and unique ideas and outstanding presentation to match. i can't say the same about this game. it makes me a bit sad to end this review on such a "i don't GET IT" note, but there has to be someone out there who had this same reaction, right?

right?

I was going to wait until the last DLC fighter was announced first, but since I'm just finishing up 100% of the achievement screen I feel like I might as well throw my hat in the Smash Ultimate pile.

It's alright. This is a 'quick review' but I'm going to have to take this step by step so there's some categorization here.

Spirits: This mode in particular isn't very good. It's pretty much an AI stomping ground fit for mostly weakish fanservice respective to every spirit. I guess for a fighting game campaign it's not too bad but I feel like I wasted a lot of my time bothering with it.

Fanservice/Party: As a party game Ultimate is pretty good, there's a lot of item combinations and the stages are all fun to play on. There's a shitton of fanservice for so many franchises that I don't know how the game is going to look when it finally goes golden with its roster after all the new additions. Just the music remixes and character reps alone give so much power to the game's legacy.

Gameplay: It's mediocre pure and simple. It's certainly stronger than Smash 4 but neutral game here is still a very safe endeavor and foxtrots are a ridiculously gutted dashdance. I don't like the movement while fighting and I certainly don't like playing as most of the fighters. Combo game is very restricted, thanks in no small part to them removing a shitton of grab combos and giving a big Fuck You to SDI which is a design decision I still don't get at all. Ultimate wants people to play by turns which is all good and fine but I didn't enjoy 90% of the roster's toolset due to how restrictive they all play. Compared to the likes of really any modern fg on the market it's incredibly lacking. There are exceptions ofc, I really like Ryu/Ken's special canceling taken over from SF, especially Terry's toolset. I also approve of Link's bomb zoning and spacing setups. I'm just far more a fan of slower paced fighting games that make up for its lack of APM with strong mindgames and decisionmaking but Ultimate seems to be very limited in scope of both due to the more streamlined options.

Overall I think it's a good party game and a mediocre fighting game. I think it's alright after spending roughly 200 hours trying to fashion out how I feel about it. If you're looking for a party game that plays well at a competitive level I highly suggest playing Duck Game instead

So I fancied playing this again after playing it on the DS at launch years ago. I saw it was £2.50 in a PSN sale so I went for it and boy has this aged badly.

Let's get the big part out the way, this is a port of the PS2 version. It's a low effort port at absolute best. The volume quality is so bad I played 90% of the game with my headphones on listening to music because it was sharp, crackly and fiddling with the settings did absolutely nothing.

The rest of the game is just way worse than I remember it. The battles are done using a match 3 type puzzle mode and I still love the idea but the computer is ridiculous constantly making perfect moves chaining things together to take multiple turns in a row. It's really frustrating yet despite that I would win almost every time. The balancing feels terrible.

Added to that is this is a pseudo RPG, you get level ups, equipment and skills. The level ups are so pointless for how little they effect your stats you may as well not bother, I was level 50 by the end of the game and did very little more damage than at level 1. Equipment is pretty much the same throughout the game, I just barely felt like I was making any real impact to my character.

The game is pretty long, like 30 hours? The problem is it's pretty much the same from start to end and some battles become long and tedious. The narrative just isn't that interesting and by the final boss I was just happy for it to be over.

Some games hold up really well through time, others, like this one should stay in the past through rose tinted glasses.

+ The idea is still great.

- Terrible port.
- Unbalanced fights.
- Boring equipment and progression system.
- Too long for it's mechanics.