TheYeti
BACKER
2020
The speed at which Cherry can run left/right on the screen in contrast with how excruciatingly slow you move up and down the screen is a great analogy for the conflicting feelings of playing Street of Rage 4. At times, this game pops. The music is great, the visuals are fantastic, and getting some combos off is fun and quite satisfying. Other times, I’m reminded that I’m playing a game from the year 2020 that is a painfully accurate recreation of a 90s arcade game. And my question to that is - why?
Gaming has come far since 1991, why put so much work into making a new game that feels identical to an old game in every way? The fact that you can jump left and right but can’t jump up/down the screen kills me. Please give me some way of moving around faster. A dodge button? A roll button? Anything. Please. Also, for the life of me, I could never figure out where I was vertically on the screen with respect to enemies. A good 1/4 of my attempted attacks were either just above or just below an enemy.
At the end of this day, Streets of Rage 4 is nothing more than an old arcade beat-em-up with modern visuals and a rad soundtrack. If that’s your jam, great. Personally, if I’m playing a beat-em-up, I’d rather play a modern take on the genre like Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim.
+ Mostly fun soundtrack.
+ Incredibly good and clean visuals.
- It controls like an old arcade game and completely ignores 30 years of improvements in video games.
- Movement is so slow. Why does everyone casually walk everywhere?
- Gauging vertical screen position with respect to enemies was a struggle
- You’ve played this game already. It just didn’t look as pretty before.
Gaming has come far since 1991, why put so much work into making a new game that feels identical to an old game in every way? The fact that you can jump left and right but can’t jump up/down the screen kills me. Please give me some way of moving around faster. A dodge button? A roll button? Anything. Please. Also, for the life of me, I could never figure out where I was vertically on the screen with respect to enemies. A good 1/4 of my attempted attacks were either just above or just below an enemy.
At the end of this day, Streets of Rage 4 is nothing more than an old arcade beat-em-up with modern visuals and a rad soundtrack. If that’s your jam, great. Personally, if I’m playing a beat-em-up, I’d rather play a modern take on the genre like Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim.
+ Mostly fun soundtrack.
+ Incredibly good and clean visuals.
- It controls like an old arcade game and completely ignores 30 years of improvements in video games.
- Movement is so slow. Why does everyone casually walk everywhere?
- Gauging vertical screen position with respect to enemies was a struggle
- You’ve played this game already. It just didn’t look as pretty before.
2020
Fun game we used to scratch our Diablo itch but pales in comparison to the game it attempts to emulate.
Still, my wife and I had some fun playing through this together despite the shallow systems at play.
Still, my wife and I had some fun playing through this together despite the shallow systems at play.
2016
It's TRON tennis. Not much more to do than play a couple rounds and go "oh neat" and then move on,
2015
An incredibly cool and inventive magic system in a pretty mediocre package.
The magic system in Magicka 2 is seriously rad. You have 8 different elements that can all be combined in various ways to create spells that you can cast as a projectile, in an area, on yourself, or on your weapon. Most of the fun was seeing how you can combine elements to create spells, and then how you can combine spells with another player to create explosions or other interesting effects. It almost reminds me of having to memorize fighting game combos so you can quickly execute your favorite spell when you’re unexpectedly swarmed by enemies.
But that need to memorize any cool spell combos you’ve discovered means, more often than not, you just end up casting the same couple of spells over and over again in a panic.
Friendly fire is always on, which makes 4 player online gameplay complete mayhem. Usually I don’t enjoy friendly fire, but it definitely made for some fun antics when playing this online with friends.
Unfortunately, the game itself ain’t great. When you boot up the game for the first time, the tutorial bombards you with paragraphs of text explaining how the complex magic system works. One of the worst game tutorials in memory. The voice acting and story is so bad that we would skip most cut scenes. While the magic system is cool, the game itself never challenges you to use your spells in interesting ways outside of one or two horrible boss fights and maybe three puzzles.
Honestly’, it’s really just not a very good game. It gets 3 stars because the magic system is cool and it was a fun multiplayer experience. Ultimately, killing your friends is more fun than actually playing the game.
+ Inventive magic system
+ Fun multiplayer.
- Very poorly made overall
- Terrible story and voice acting
- Awful tutorial
The magic system in Magicka 2 is seriously rad. You have 8 different elements that can all be combined in various ways to create spells that you can cast as a projectile, in an area, on yourself, or on your weapon. Most of the fun was seeing how you can combine elements to create spells, and then how you can combine spells with another player to create explosions or other interesting effects. It almost reminds me of having to memorize fighting game combos so you can quickly execute your favorite spell when you’re unexpectedly swarmed by enemies.
But that need to memorize any cool spell combos you’ve discovered means, more often than not, you just end up casting the same couple of spells over and over again in a panic.
Friendly fire is always on, which makes 4 player online gameplay complete mayhem. Usually I don’t enjoy friendly fire, but it definitely made for some fun antics when playing this online with friends.
Unfortunately, the game itself ain’t great. When you boot up the game for the first time, the tutorial bombards you with paragraphs of text explaining how the complex magic system works. One of the worst game tutorials in memory. The voice acting and story is so bad that we would skip most cut scenes. While the magic system is cool, the game itself never challenges you to use your spells in interesting ways outside of one or two horrible boss fights and maybe three puzzles.
Honestly’, it’s really just not a very good game. It gets 3 stars because the magic system is cool and it was a fun multiplayer experience. Ultimately, killing your friends is more fun than actually playing the game.
+ Inventive magic system
+ Fun multiplayer.
- Very poorly made overall
- Terrible story and voice acting
- Awful tutorial
2015
Not a fighting game fan but I played this for the goofy campaign. It was fun even though I know nothing about most of these characters.
2021
A fun puzzle game that messes with scale in an interesting way. I remember feeling like it was neat when I played it but it's only been about 2 years and I've completely forgotten it even existed.
2016
I played this game even before a lot of the major revamps and I genuinely had a good time with it. It wasn't everything people wanted it to be at launch but it was still a remarkably cool game platform that they've only expanded on over the years. I would love to go back to this game at some point to check out all the insane improvements they've made.
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
A neat little playable graphic novel. I enjoyed the story but this one felt like one where the user interaction did not feel necessary.
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
2020
My wife and I started played this together and it seemed kind of promising but it ultimately just wasn't very fun. Controls felt bad and the story wasn't all that interesting,.
2016
I played this because I am a massive Tron fan.
I did not finish it because the game is not particularly good.
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
I did not finish it because the game is not particularly good.
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
2021
An interesting idea with poor execution and terrible progression.
How's this for a game pitch - the survival and crafting elements of Don't Starve, with the building of Fortnite, and the combat/loot of Diablo. Sounds like a rad game, huh?
Yeah too bad Tribes of Midgard botches literally every single one of those components. The "survival" aspect is dry, the building is barely functional, and the combat is clumsy at best.
The survival aspects of the game basically equate to having to keep a tree well-fed with energy while you survive nightly attacks from enemies that end up being more tedious than fun. And then every few nights a spongey giant will show up and absolutely wreck everything. The jump in difficulty from "you're killing these little guys" to "now this giant is walking through your base and oops it's game over" is wild.
But even if you can get past all that and you can somehow still enjoy the gameplay, the game itself gives you absolutely nothing to work toward beyond a single currency that lets you buy some frankly horrible cosmetics for your character.
Nothing to make your character play different, nothing to vary the runs, nothing to really change any aspect of the gameplay loop. What's more is if the giant kills you before you can race to the Bifrost to escape the realm, you don't get any of that cosmetic. You get nothing.
The game also has a Survival mode which thankfully lets your customize the run a bit by scaling the difficulties of various aspects of the game down to enemy spawns, tree health, etc. It's great. The problem is that Survival mode has zero objectives. You can't even get the cosmetic currency.
Not only that, but you strangely can't even fight any of the special bosses. So why even play this mode?
+ Interesting idea
- No meaningful progression
- Clumsy combat
- Terrible building
- Poor balance resulting in wild difficulty spikes
- Boring
How's this for a game pitch - the survival and crafting elements of Don't Starve, with the building of Fortnite, and the combat/loot of Diablo. Sounds like a rad game, huh?
Yeah too bad Tribes of Midgard botches literally every single one of those components. The "survival" aspect is dry, the building is barely functional, and the combat is clumsy at best.
The survival aspects of the game basically equate to having to keep a tree well-fed with energy while you survive nightly attacks from enemies that end up being more tedious than fun. And then every few nights a spongey giant will show up and absolutely wreck everything. The jump in difficulty from "you're killing these little guys" to "now this giant is walking through your base and oops it's game over" is wild.
But even if you can get past all that and you can somehow still enjoy the gameplay, the game itself gives you absolutely nothing to work toward beyond a single currency that lets you buy some frankly horrible cosmetics for your character.
Nothing to make your character play different, nothing to vary the runs, nothing to really change any aspect of the gameplay loop. What's more is if the giant kills you before you can race to the Bifrost to escape the realm, you don't get any of that cosmetic. You get nothing.
The game also has a Survival mode which thankfully lets your customize the run a bit by scaling the difficulties of various aspects of the game down to enemy spawns, tree health, etc. It's great. The problem is that Survival mode has zero objectives. You can't even get the cosmetic currency.
Not only that, but you strangely can't even fight any of the special bosses. So why even play this mode?
+ Interesting idea
- No meaningful progression
- Clumsy combat
- Terrible building
- Poor balance resulting in wild difficulty spikes
- Boring
In this spin-off of the main series from an entirely different game studio, somehow Telltale tells a better Borderlands story than any of the other Borderlands games do. This is one of my favorite Telltale games and is a fantastic entry in the Borderlands universe.
2016
Probably the best single-player FPS campaign I've ever played. Not only is the story decent, but the level variety and mechanics are incredibly fun. Sadly it doesn't reach that point until about the mid-way point in the campaign. Everything before that feels pretty slow and generic.
A golf game that is equal parts silly fun and frustrating unpredictability. Golf With Your Friends is at its best and the easiest to enjoy if you are playing with friends (as the title suggests) and not taking the game too seriously. The moment you actually feel the need to do well, you will be firmly reminded that this game doesn’t care about your score.
The courses prioritize wackiness over being functional minigolf courses which is fine because it’s a video game, but it still expects you to get to the hole in 3 shots by ricocheting the ball off of 7 different moving obstacles you have to time perfectly. There’s only one single course in the game that is normal and simple; every other course is full of batshit crazy stuff. While playing with friends, the game quickly went from “let’s see how well we can all do!” to “OK which one of us can do the least terribly”. Which I guess is a fun experience with buddies when everyone is doing awful, but that doesn’t make for a very fun video game.
While this game is called “Golf With Your Friends”, you’ll all be golfing at the exact same time. The benefit of simultaneous golfing is it makes for much quicker matches, but it’s far less interactive than actually watching your friends golf. I was so focused on getting to the end before the time limit, that I never had any idea how my friends were doing aside from their occasional swearing or grunts of frustration. The only form of progression in the game is unlocking random cosmetics at unpredictable intervals every few games, which can also be frustrating when the game seemingly wants you to invest dozens of hours into it just to maybe get a fun hat you want after your 30th course. I played about 20 courses over the course of 10 hours and only unlocked 5 out of the maybe 80 different cosmetic items. Wild.
Golf With Your Friends is fun for a bit but between the frustrating course difficulty, unpredictable holes, lack of player engagement, and poor progression hooks, there’s not much of a draw to keep playing this game after one or two friendly golf sessions.
+ A fun time with friends
+ The wackiness can be fun if you accept doing poorly
+ Some cool mechanic ideas
- Opaque cosmetic unlock system
- Occasional bugs like clipping through a level
- Only one easy, straight-forward course
- Massive difficulty swing from the relative easy holes to bonkers, overly-complex holes
- Making good shots requires more trial-and-error and luck than actual skill
- Simultaneous golfing makes for quicker matches, but is far less interactive than watching your friends golf.
The courses prioritize wackiness over being functional minigolf courses which is fine because it’s a video game, but it still expects you to get to the hole in 3 shots by ricocheting the ball off of 7 different moving obstacles you have to time perfectly. There’s only one single course in the game that is normal and simple; every other course is full of batshit crazy stuff. While playing with friends, the game quickly went from “let’s see how well we can all do!” to “OK which one of us can do the least terribly”. Which I guess is a fun experience with buddies when everyone is doing awful, but that doesn’t make for a very fun video game.
While this game is called “Golf With Your Friends”, you’ll all be golfing at the exact same time. The benefit of simultaneous golfing is it makes for much quicker matches, but it’s far less interactive than actually watching your friends golf. I was so focused on getting to the end before the time limit, that I never had any idea how my friends were doing aside from their occasional swearing or grunts of frustration. The only form of progression in the game is unlocking random cosmetics at unpredictable intervals every few games, which can also be frustrating when the game seemingly wants you to invest dozens of hours into it just to maybe get a fun hat you want after your 30th course. I played about 20 courses over the course of 10 hours and only unlocked 5 out of the maybe 80 different cosmetic items. Wild.
Golf With Your Friends is fun for a bit but between the frustrating course difficulty, unpredictable holes, lack of player engagement, and poor progression hooks, there’s not much of a draw to keep playing this game after one or two friendly golf sessions.
+ A fun time with friends
+ The wackiness can be fun if you accept doing poorly
+ Some cool mechanic ideas
- Opaque cosmetic unlock system
- Occasional bugs like clipping through a level
- Only one easy, straight-forward course
- Massive difficulty swing from the relative easy holes to bonkers, overly-complex holes
- Making good shots requires more trial-and-error and luck than actual skill
- Simultaneous golfing makes for quicker matches, but is far less interactive than watching your friends golf.
2018
I don't actually know how good this game is but it was a fun game to play with a friend. The multiplayer story experience where you're seeing both characters points of view as the story progresses for both of them at the same time is a really cool idea.