Reviews
280
Overall, Twelve Minutes is an excellent game with an interesting concept and story. It’s filled with great talent, but its rigid structure and stale gameplay hold it back from being a must-play.
Overall, Cris Tales is a beautiful indie RPG that is held back by various issues, keeping it from being one of the greats. Incredible story, filled with exciting characters, areas and interesting time powers, makes it worth the play. However, held back by an uninteresting battle system that becomes stale and too easy, a horrible third act of the game slows it down to a crawl.
It’s lucky for Backbone then that it’s story and characters manage to carry it through the dirges of disappointment. While the gameplay is generally underwhelming, the visualisation of this weird iteration of Vancouver and the sad, hopeless folks that inhabit it kept me pushing forward to eventually see the conclusion.
Guilty Gear’s latest chapter is its most accessible one yet, a righteous display of power and attitude that unleashes the sickest of heavy metal guitar licks and unrelenting style.
Given its simplicity, and the fact it was developed in just a few months, it’s surprising just how good Overboard! is. A couple of disjointed transitions aside, the game is exhilarating, frequently funny, and addictive thanks to its all-round style (text and visual), and insistence that players embrace deliciously, strategic wickedness.
DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power succeeds in not feeling like a simple cash-grab. Much like its source material, it has genuine heart, plenty of activities to take part in, and a cast of characters who are simply adorable. Some of its more social open-world gameplay may feel a touch slapdash, but its colourful and explosive action more than makes up for it by being a blast of addictive and easy-to-grasp fun.
Ninja Gaiden: The Master Collection is a fascinatingly violent time capsule that shows off the best and the worst of Koei Tecmo's fan favourite shinobi. It's as barebones a collection as can be, packing all three games together with a sprinkling of DLC, but it's still a fine showcase of brutal difficulty and white-knuckle thrill power that is inimitable by anything else on the market. Just don't expect anything more than that.
Boring narrative aside, Sniper Elite Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is superb at delivering its bread and ballistics gameplay. Focused purely on the art of the kill, CI Games has crafted numerous detailed sandboxes to become the ultimate long-distance predator inside of, resulting in a game that forges ahead and doubles down on its own unique brand of hold-your-breath gunplay. Pure cathartic and exhilarating action with every squeeze of the trigger.
A beefy shotgun has more subtle layers of resistance to help you decide whether you want to unleash or or all barrels of destruction, a mini-gun that spews tiny black holes sends the controller into a vibrating fit, and a grenade launcher allows you to use the aiming trigger resistance to gauge how far you want to hurl an explosive. It’s just pure haptic bliss, right there in your hands.
It’s beautiful, it’s charming and its insights are given greater punch by exceptional voice acting. Yet, despite ticking so many boxes, The Magnificent Trufflepigs never manages to find the sweet spot of player satisfaction due to some odd, clashing design choices.