Alex Santa Maria's Reviews
A stylish introduction and grand presentation can't save this slog of a stealth game. Never Stop Sneakin' plays all its cards in the opening hand and then never follows up.
Mutants in Manhattan looks flashy and captures the spirit of the Turtles, but the campaign is over in a flash and the combat is boring and uninteresting.
Bombshell sports impressive shooting and a stylish presentation, but the game's takes on exploration and narrative ultimately drag down the experience.
Small Radios Big Televisions has trippy visuals and an interesting premise but fails to accomplish anything meaningful as an interactive experience. Add that to its ephemeral nature, and it's unfortunate just how forgettable this adventure can be.
Hot Wheels Unleashed feels less like a cohesive racing experience and more like a framework where more and more Hot Wheels branded content can live as the months go on. This comes through not only in the lackluster presentation but in the currency system that robs players of any sense of urgency to complete missions. It doesn't feel satisfying to go through an hour of races and grind up currency to get a single box that contains a duplicate of an already-unlocked car.
There is a great game buried somewhere in The Falconeer, but it's trapped behind an open-world structure that does it no favors. Every choice beyond the aerial combat seems to backfire in one way or another, and while there are numerous unique enemies with interesting details, they all zoom by the player character at 90 miles an hour, so they go unnoticed. Story beats that sometimes defy fantasy tropes would pop up and intrigue, but there's no connective tissue to string players along. Even the combat isn't fun for long when it's shoved into busywork side missions made for the sole purpose of accruing gold.
Stubbs shambles into 2021 as a decrepit mess.
Neon Abyss has perfected the Binding of Isaac formula, but its lack of creative energy and problems with similar locales drag it down considerably.
Above all, Heat feels like subscription filler, another driving game to add value to EA’s Access bundles.
Sparklite is a painfully static game that can’t overcome its inspirations or its ambitions. Whether you’re looking for a retro throwback, a new obsession, or something in-between, there are far better options than this sleepy clunker.
It’s difficult to fault a game for dreaming big as it still enjoyable to hunt for secrets under Stonehenge. However, that might be because these types of forward-thinking gameplay ideas are almost always alluring. We need to see games with a sense of humanity in its characters and games that can teach the socially awkward in the same way that action games teach reflexes.
When the core is a bit rotten, that’s not a good sign.
Double Cross is an up and down ride, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s another dimension out there.
At the end of the day, Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics is perfectly functional. If you’ve got a solid chunk of free time and any interest in the subject matter, this game will fit the bill. However, the little issues stack up so high that it’s hard to really recommend playing this over any other game in the genre.
Need For Speed Unbound is anything but. EA's latest is a bog-standard entry in the racing series with a muddled presentation and a limited feature set.
Dead Rising 4 lacks both the conviction to truly strike out on its own and the features and mechanics that will please franchise fans. As is, it's a game that is bland at its best and downright contemptuous at its worst.
If you dig in and look, you can find a wealth of games, both old and new, trying to be the next Portal. Games like The Spectrum Retreat try for a little more, which makes it all the more devastating when they miss the mark so completely. With a by the numbers story and simplistic puzzles that frustrate rather than fascinate, there’s nothing here worth recommending. This game is competent but unremarkable, and that’s really the nicest thing you can say.
Alchemic Jousts presents a pretty fun logic puzzle in its element combinations. However, it fails at using that as a stepping stone to a full strategy experience, leaving the two systems to fizzle out separately.
Star Wars Battlefront is a graphical tour de force that fails whenever it becomes an interactive experience. There are hints of better games here, but nothing that saves it from mediocrity.
While Hextech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story provides a great experience in short bursts, none of its levels feel as replayable as the best of the developer's past work or the best of the rhythm genre. This is a fatal flaw in a game with gated progression, and there are no supplementary modes or other features to distract from it. As it stands, the game's mix of mobile mechanics makes its release on traditional platforms baffling, and only those who are immediately intrigued by Ziggs in a game outside of League of Legends will get something substantial out of the final product in its current available forms.