At a near-premium price of $40, Last Labyrinth suggests a polished product, crafted by experienced designers and generous of content. In truth, almost nothing about Last Labyrinth is fun or rewarding.
I’ve played dozens of survival action games and MMORPGs but Chimeraland rests on one of the lowest rungs of the ladder. It looks primitive, with tons of technical problems. Nothing about its moment-to-moment gameplay hasn’t been done before and much, much better. The big, open world is a land of blocky textures and monsters that aren’t fun to fight. The goofy character creator and pet system can’t redeem Chimeraland. Even they’re not worth the price of admission. And the game is free.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum tries to be a respectful homage to Tolkien’s masterpiece. Unfortunately, it’s expressed through buggy, unpolished, and not very interesting or enjoyable gameplay. Gollum is a fascinating and complex character, but makes a poor protagonist for an action game. Only ravenous fans of Tolkien will want to come near this game, and then only if they have a very high tolerance for crashes, bugs, and disappointment.
Despite its intriguing, creative premise, playing Of Bird and Cage is a depressing experience. Its humorless, bleak story is coupled with subpar gameplay mechanics and low-quality production values. Whatever thematic chances the game wants to take are undercut by its lackluster presentation. The music alone might be a decent album’s worth of tunes, but it can’t save the pretty terrible game it has to support. It would be hard to recommend Of Bird and Cage to anyone, especially fans of music-based games. Just go listen to your favorite metal band, and make up a story in your head.
When it comes to humor, satire and pretend violence, I have endlessly high tolerance. Art and entertainment should be free to push buttons and push the limits of what’s acceptable. I have far less patience for lazy, sloppy and tired humor that masquerades as edgy, and no patience at all for developers that waste my time with games that barely run. With Postal 3, Running With Scissors blamed it on the Russians. With Postal 4, they have no one to blame but themselves.
I want games to be good. Hell, I want them to be great. No game is perfect and even the biggest blockbuster has flaws. There are even games we love that are mostly broken, because they went big and couldn’t quite deliver. Claustrophobia doesn’t go big. It takes time-worn ideas and still manages to fall flat. It looks, sounds and plays like a game that wasn’t ready to leave the drawing board, much less be released. Claustrophobia will make you feel trapped, for sure. Maybe just not the way the developer intended.
Listen up: your parents, grandparents and other elders you might know are almost certainly a little lonely, insecure, potentially afraid of sickness and death, haunted by memories and beset by many of the same demons as you are. If that sounds depressing, remember they are also quite possibly wise and focused on making the most of their remaining time on the planet. Given the ticking clock, they’d probably never waste their precious moments playing Retired Men’s Nude Beach Volleyball League. Learn from them, and remember that the most wildly ironic or intentionally bad game might succeed in meeting its goals without coming close to giving the player the respect of a good time.
I can’t imagine anyone so desperate for content that they would find value in this only marginally improved ten-year-old game. Akiba’s Trip: Hellbound & Debriefed is and has always been, awful and no HD remaster will fix its terrible story, lackluster combat, primitive graphics, and creepy tone. Some games are broken or bad in a kind of fun way, but Akiba’s Trip: Hellbound & Debriefed isn’t broken, it’s just bad and decidedly, aggressively not fun at all.
It's hard to recommend FIVE: Guardians of David to anyone. Fans of action RPGs have literally dozens of better games to choose from. Even gamers who would like to play an RPG without being assaulted by bloodshed have some excellent choices, such as the Torchlight games. Aside from the novelty of the Biblical theme and story, FIVE: Guardians of David's gameplay ignores a lot of what recent action games have added to the genre: strategic groups, tactics, character development, customization — FIVE has none of these things. Its heroes are bland and its enemies even duller.
Bombshell is a broken, boring action game with a tin ear for humour and action that rarely rises above tedium.
I guess I can imagine a group of friends spending a few moments — and even fewer brain cells — blasting through a few levels of Perish. I can’t conceive of a solo player doing anything but bouncing off the game’s repetitive and unsatisfying combat. Aside from some sharp visuals and a nonsensical blend of mythologies, Perish is just too rooted in outdated FPS tropes and bland design to spend much time with.
Quantum Error desperately wants to just be a dystopian sci-fi CGI film, without any pesky gameplay to kill its momentum. Alas, there is a clunky, antiquated, and unrefined shooter wedged between the game’s Unreal Engine 5 cinematics. Love and attention was poured into the cutscenes, but the shooter is malnourished and not very much fun. Next time, just make a movie.
Wanderjahr is hard to recommend. There isn't much to it other than its combat, and unfortunately its combat is repetitive and uninteresting. In general, taking control away from the player — even in boss battles — is not a way to make the experience engaging. The sloppy translations and awkward English are not what brings the game down, but rather the structure of the missions, the lack of character development, and most critically, the uninteresting, spectator sport combat.
Death by Game Show is not an incompetently made game, but as a collection of design decisions the sum and its individual parts are annoying, disappointing or frustrating.
Ultimately, what's disappointing about Herding Dog is that its aspirations, demands, tasks and ideas are simply too small scale.
Whether you can enjoy Chivalry: Medieval Warfare depends on how low you are willing to lower your expectations for what a current-gen console game should look and feel like.
Thanks to these problems, a visually charming and potentially enjoyable - if thoroughly unoriginal - tower defense game becomes much harder to recommend. Of course, grinding to earn upgrade points is always an option, but the levels aren't that charming. Tower defense games aren't exactly gaming junk food, but their secret is in rapid pace and a steady forward progression. Get that wrong and not much else matters.
There’s probably an audience for Payday 3, as there was for the previous game. A jank-tolerant group of friends might have fun killing some time and causing mayhem. They’d have to have a pretty low bar for shooter mechanics, graphics, and story, though. Apart from that. there’s really no reason to spend money or time with Payday 3.
For every infrequent good idea, Crime Boss: Rockay City seems determined to undermine it. First-person roguelike mechanics in a narrative-focused game is an intriguing concept, but between bugs, bland performances, and rote action, the killer concept is dead on arrival.
Bleak Faith Forsaken’s screenshots are impressive. The game’s art direction and atmosphere suggest an oppressive future world, but Bleak Faith Forsaken is all window dressing. Behind the façade, a seriously unpolished Soulslike filled with broken dreams awaits.