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Ultimately, Harold Halibut’s abundance of charm doesn’t translate to the game being charming, and in the end, while there’s plenty to see here, there’s just nothing to do.
Jedi: Survivor is a strong entry in the modern Star Wars canon, part of a new subsect of adventures in this universe finding ways to be sci-fi fantasy without ignoring the innate horror and banal evils inherent in the premise. The story paints an impressively dire picture of the new status quo in the galaxy, and it weaves in elegantly with the interactivity of the game, tying it directly into the fact that Cal is still powerful but only one Jedi in a galaxy that fell even when there was an entire army of them.
While Darkest Dungeon II’s emphasis on the interpersonal is apt for a game that’s more road trip than dungeon crawl, it also makes it a decidedly more hopeful experience than the first game, as it leaves the door open for your adventuring party to face seemingly insurmountable odds and come out the other side stronger. There’s also more comedy and just plain joy in knowing that as intimidating as all those monsters may seem, your biggest challenge is getting your ragtag band of rascals to stop bickering and get along.
The more fantastical elements of Redfall fail to impress, but the everyday detail of its setting manages to shine through, surfacing little stories left in the wreckage. The problem is that, even if you’re willing to dig for those moments, they’re still overshadowed by the glimpses of another, larger story: the one that explains how Redfall came to be released in such a state as this.
Carto gets a lot of brain-bending mileage from its central mechanic.
While it's to The Room's credit that the graphics and sound design remain impressive with the transition to PC, and able to compete against other PC titles, the gameplay does not, and without a compelling story the experience ends up being sadly forgettable.
Jackbox Games' Jackbox Party Pack 2 is a disappointingly sophomoric sequel, and in every sense of the word.
The premise and its presentation, along with a generous difficulty curve, ultimately, if barely, saves the game.
At the start of Wanted: Dead, players are given the chance to enter a training simulator that walks them through the basic functionality of combat against holographic foes. It’s revealing when one of the levels in the game is set inside the drab and boxy corridors of that simulator. Apart from your foes now being flesh and blood, there’s functionally no difference in killing them. But, then, nearly every level of Wanted: Dead is practically the same, and no amount of stolen memes, nostalgic riffs, and non sequiturs can hide that depressing fact.
Throughout, Troll and I often raises the question of just how much testing was done to spot and correct mistakes.
It refuses to treat your protagonist's quest seriously, which in turn undermines the serious gameplay.
Any potential for excitement is squandered by the fact that the zombies you encounter are typically unthreatening.
At best, Doors is a game about the illusion of choice, and Weibel's is the only one that matters.
Throughout this cynical gaming experience, the message of the show seems clearer than ever: reject dignity or die.
There's not a shred of innovation or much of a concerted effort to evoke terror in players throughout the entirety of Daylight.
It doesn’t help that House of Ashes tends toward monotony. Much of the game is spent slowly exploring dark caves, sometimes the exact same ones, except with different characters. Too often you may find yourself trying to shake off tedium by trying to interact with something only to inadvertently activate a protagonist’s death. Or a jump scare might shake you out of it, but given how telegraphed they are, the game’s horror ends up being as ineffective as the story, which is given over to Aqua Teen Hunger Force-like levels of deranged non-sequitur plotting. While the prior games in this series never reached the heights of Until Dawn, they didn’t lack for disturbing and memorable imagery. By contrast, this game’s non-human baddies are so over-designed and uninspired that they never jangle the player’s nerves.
Everything about your quest feels dragged out to mask how little substance there is to Blessing in Disguise.
The similarities between SolSeraph and ActRaiser are unmistakable, but it's a joyless facsimile that lacks a single spark of innovation.
Even the few inventive stretches of the game are ultimately driven into the ground by a punishing sense of repetition.
Though it's abundant in hyper-realistic visuals, that isn't enough to disguise its lack of polish in almost every other way.