Brandon Howard's Reviews
Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom doesn't particularly succeed at anything it puts its hand to. It isn't funny, with its generically off-colour humour and a bad sense of comedic timing. It's not particularly responsive, with stiff controls and awkward level design. It's repetitive, tedious, frustrating, and completely lacking in the elements that make for a good action game, or for a good comedy game. Between its crushing lack of self-awareness and bland gameplay, it's one circus that's even unfit for the sideshow.
Moero Chronicle is just straight up disappointing. It's a lacklustre dungeon crawler, with time consuming, wasteful mechanics that pad out dungeons. It's a subpar ecchi game far too invested in its own subpar story to excel at the fanservice it offers, and it does all of this with creepy undertones, frustrating interfaces, and an overall aggravating vibe. There might still be a niche Compile Heart fanbase that gets something out of this, but even then, it's a stretch.
Dragon Sinker is almost laughable in some aspects.
Collateral Thinking doesn't suffer from a lack of variety so much as it suffers from its excess. The goals in each level are constantly changing, and with only 30 seconds per level, it feels like a mad rush to get moving, which is counterintuitive to how the sticky controls dictate the pace of play. The levels sort of work when confined to one specific design, but the constant jumping between objectives is annoying at best and frustrating at worst.
While Infinite Dunamis does have the familiar, comfortable feel a lot of mobile RPGs have, it's saddled itself with a number of issues that really make it a chore to play. It's badly optimised for the hardware, and suffers from multiple issues during regular gameplay. The characters are bland and honestly annoying, and there's very little to make Infinite Dunamis stand out in a long line of already lacklustre titles.
Frankly, nothing about Sayonara Umihara Kawase makes it a welcoming experience. The controls might be tight, but a platformer where the physics are a constant battle, and the levels restart so slowly, make for an extremely aggravating adventure. While the mechanics might make it work better at a puzzle platformer, this still demands cat-like reflexes so often that this simply isn't an option. As far as challenging platformers go, this definitely sets the bar high, but even the most devoted fan of the genre will have trouble looking past the glaring issues present here.
It's hard to imagine exactly who the target audience of Gunscape would end up being. Given the messy nature of the controls and physics, it's hard to see FPS fans of any rank eager to hop on board. While the level creator does make building levels more accessible than the modding community of more polished shooters, these tools don't really make up for the lack of reward implicit in playing through the levels a player will build. For all its good ideas, solid level building, and robust variety, this ultimately fails to deliver on its core mechanics, and that alone makes it a really challenging sell.
Little Dragons Café is an extremely tedious exercise in repetition. There's kind of an initial thrill to the idea of managing a café and picking out the recipes that it'll use, but eventually you realize that you don't do much to help out other than providing the basic ingredients and occasionally bussing tables. The only real reward for slogging it out day-to-day is a handful of character focused cutscenes that don't really feel like a meaningful accomplishment. Add in some truly awful field controls and a constantly skipping framerate, and you've got a true recipe for disaster.
Despite all its exterior polish, TurtlePop: Journey to Freedom is a bit of a mess. It's trying to pull elements from multiple different genres, but it does it in a chaotic way that leaves the player little time to process what's happening on-screen. It's a constant battle with the controls to switch between the various turtles you need to control, and to also manage the genie, all while various on-screen hazards endanger the player's shot at a perfect score. The co-op mode slightly alleviates some of these issues, but it doesn't do enough to fix the fundamental issues with this quirky puzzle-platformer.
While the threat level system theoretically makes for some interesting moment to moment choices, it makes the campaign feel woefully unbalanced at times. Combat also lacks the smoothness one would hope for from the genre, with movement and aiming feeling choppy and imprecise. Between monotonous gameplay and a generally uninteresting story, Solstice Chronicles: MIA lacks the qualities that help shape a successful single-player campaign, and the co-op changes feel like a strict downgrade from its predecessor.
Monster Monpiece has a couple of interesting takes on the digital CCG genre, but it's completely hampered by the horrendous controls and its tasteless and aggravating upgrade system. There's understandably some issues with porting a title that utilised a touchscreen for many in-game actions, but the hybrid mouse/keyboard setup feels awful, and the deckbuilding interface is so clunky that it's pure trial and error to navigate the first few times. With so many amazing digital CCGs out there, there's few good reasons to play this one.
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters: Daybreak Special Gigs has some neat ideas, but they end up getting lost between the lacklustre delivery. The visual novel elements are poorly explained, and the control setup in both sections of the game leaves a lot to be desired. The battle system is definitely unique, but it feels tacked on and actually detracts from the overall story. The visuals are certainly breath-taking, but there are enough issues that make it a tough sell for even the most devout of visual novel fans.
MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies suffers from the same problems as its predecessors, with a clunky battle system and convoluted storytelling. It's gratuitous fan service for Neptunia fans in the form of a rough and unpolished hack and slash, but it amounts to little else. The robust cast of characters doesn't do much to mask the bigger issues with the combat, and while there are differences between the characters, there are few meaningful choices to be made when selecting one. Even the most devoted Neptunia fans will have a hard time swallowing this one.
Ultimately, Cutie Pets Pick Berries feels grossly unsuited for its platform, largely through an input method that doesn't suit its fast pace. While there is some fun to be had by creating perfectly constructed combos of fancy fruits, the lack of direction and explanation behind the mechanics make it hard to pick up. While it might (and that's a big might) be hard to put down after that initial stage, the eventual aggravation behind a lack of endgame and its painful controls make it an outing best left out in the woods.
Rainbow Skies is not only uninspired, it feels almost like a cheap nostalgia cash-in for JRPG enthusiasts. The characters are generally annoying and mostly one-dimensional, and the writing is quite poor and riddled with syntax issues. The explorative nature of the game is something that players might be drawn to, but that's not enough to carry the significantly weaker portions of the game. The combat system is sort of cute in its simplicity, but it's not unique enough to keep players invested throughout all the annoying little quirks that fill up the majority of Rainbow Skies
The PC version of Dynasty Warriors 9 is frustrating, more for its wasted potential than anything else. The game is difficult to control on PC, and that significantly hinders a lot of the fun, fast-paced combat, which is all-too scarce at times. Additionally, while the open-world approach is a great direction for the series, it doesn't capture the epic battles that the series is known for in the same way. Maps are either too crowded, or frightfully empty. It's nice to see Omega Force taking the series in a new direction, but this entry hasn't quite found its footing.
InnerSpace falls more than a bit short of the heights it aspires to. The levels feel hard to navigate and they aren't helped by the laggy controls and constant motion of the Cartographer. It feels poorly optimised for Nintendo Switch, with frequent camera stutters and choppy frame-rates. It's overall a very unsatisfying experience, which is made all the more frustrating by the sheer potential InnerSpace has. The beautiful environments and quietly haunting atmosphere are still enchanting, but everything else just feels empty.
Curse of Osiris doesn't really do anything to enhance the Destiny 2 experience, aside from the new raid and some nice quality of life upgrades.
Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two fails to capture both the creative freedom of Minecraft, and the meaningful storytelling of a Telltale Games series. While there's definitely some niche appeal for those who are extremely invested in the world and lore of Minecraft, the story and characters don't stand out enough to make this a super compelling title. If Minecraft is something people love playing, they're better off just sticking to it.
Guilty Gear 2: Overture blends strategy and action in a way that ultimately diminishes both aspects. While the base mechanics of both systems are solid, neither really comes across as defining, making the entire experience feel a bit half-baked. A serious push to take the game in either direction might have yielded better results, but as it stands, it's hard to imagine an audience that would really enjoy the experience this title provides.