Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World does exactly what it sets out to do. It recreates the original game in high definition, 3D style. But if you stack it up next to the other contemporary Wonder Boy titles, the inadequacies stack up quickly.
There’s a cool game in here somewhere, but Within the Blade feels like it tries to do too much and cram it all into a small space. If this were a more focused sort of action game there could be a bunch of cool stuff surrounding its fast and weighty physics. But with trying to have it all, Within the Blade only manages to be a cool throwback to older, better games.
Even the cool opening sequence, in which the world literally bends itself into a new state as you swap vehicles, doesn't carry over to the game. You just press a button and morph to the other type, and perhaps fall with a big clunk from the air before driving off as if nothing happens. It's like banging hot wheels together, if the rest of the cars in the box you aren't playing with hate you. I was kinda hoping for a more mature Diddy Kong Racing with some more hardcore trappings. Instead, I got a headache from squinting ahead for turn arrows and playing with loot boxes.
Metal Gear Survive feels like a prototype, an idea on paper that was quickly turned into a game and strapped to a retail rocket without proper consideration of what the Metal Gear name means to people. Konami has every right to use the IP and FOX Engine tool of course, and frankly there's no reason not to. Kojima didn't make all the Metal Gear games by himself. But this feels like the team dumped a bunch of menu-based systems on top of the mechanics, without figuring out why and how they should all work together. It is like they were looking to other games in the genre for ideas, then adding extra complexity for the sake of standing out a bit. It's part dull, part frustrating, and part utterly confusing. In short, Metal Gear Survive is just another middling survival game, with a name-drop that doesn't do it any favors.
Ultimately, I doubt I'll remember Prey much after I stop playing it. There's too much else going on in games in 2017, and Prey does not stand out amongst its peers. Its fiction is self-serious, despite being so derivative, and its systems are frustrating and constantly in conflict with each other. It feels like dozens of other games I've played already, but enjoyed more.
South Park: The Fractured but Whole feels dated, shallow, and lacking in the purpose or self-awareness needed for a work of satire to hit its mark. It feels like it's trying too hard to recapture that edge. It is as if it believes that if it makes fun of black and queer people enough, it'll stir up those old headlines and controversies that made South Park feel like something more than another multi-million-dollar intellectual property pushed through a corporate conveyor belt.
There's a decent game in here somewhere, but Mass Effect: Andromeda feels like a collaboration from Mass Effect fans rather than a group of known and established developers.
While the visuals are well-drawn and the series’ trademark gamer humor is alive and well, everything about the way Super Neptunia RPG moves and feels to play is a real drag.
There’s a time and a place for that stuff, but as a reward for tenacious grinding, I’m not buying what Zanki Zero is selling.
Ultimately, Override: Mech City Brawl has high aims, but feels a bit clumsy in its execution. It wants to be both a big arena fighter with giant robots and destructible buildings, but it also has designs for real competition. There's even a story mode in there with stat-building, customization, and bonuses like a goofy co-op mode. There's a lot going on in terms of foundation, but not enough polish and care in the core of it, which makes actually playing Override: Mech City Brawl feel bland and same-y no matter what you're doing. Frankly, many of the modes outside of 1v1 competition do more to expose problems, when you'd think they'd mask them. I appreciate that this game is making a callback to a genre that has been missing in action for a long time, but instead of embracing what that means, it tries to hard to make it fit inside a contemporary box. And that box is far too small for giant robots.
Déraciné is an intriguing PlayStation VR experience that definitely feels like a FromSoftware title. From its air of whimsical mystery to its hard reliance on theme rather than detail for its narrative delivery, well, I could make a Dark Souls joke here, but I figure that ship has sailed elsewhere. However, while Déraciné is worth playing and figuring out for yourself, it's hard to recommend with enthusiasm. While intriguing and mysterious, the storytelling does have fundamental issues that make the overall mystery feel unearned and the tension intangible. The player's “powers” are more scripted than play-oriented, and the play itself is bogged down in searching for objects and placing them where they need to go to move things forward. There are neat ideas here and plenty of VR-flavored awe to be had, but Déraciné won't be standing out like one may have hoped.
With environmental puzzle mysteries like Blind, one of the biggest hurdles is motivation. Sure, arbitrary puzzles rooms can be inherently fun, but if you're fighting an uphill battle, such as wrestling with not being able to see, there's a bit more needed to keep you going. Blind attempts this with a mystery narrative, along with giving you the stick to lean on, but the latter makes it all seem arbitrary, and the former isn't strong enough to make uncovering answers the true motivator. Blind banks a lot on, well, the blindness being the big draw, but I don't think using it as simply an extra hurdle on top of familiar puzzle-solving elements does much to elevate the experience as a whole.
As someone who generally enjoys mindless grinding, there was some comfort in making my way through Black Desert’s massive landscape. But when there are other options that feel more polished, thoughtful, and creative, it’s hard to recommend Black Desert unless the absence of a subscription fee is a key factor.
Ultimately my time with Broken Roads didn’t light up any of the parts of my brain that video games typically do on some level or another. There’s some promise at first with its distinct, all-encompassing cultural flavor. But the scenario holding up the setting only struggled to capture my interest. Combat was a similar vibe, feeling like doing chores in the middle of reading a middle of the road novel in a crowded genre. While cool on paper the morality system did more harm than good, overloading the dialogue and getting in the way of character and personality. Nothing in Broken Roads felt bad or, well, broken. But whenever I played it, unless I was chuckling at the slang translator doing something weird I was always thinking of other things I would rather be doing.
Honestly, unless you’re a big fan of Hot Wheels themselves, and derive a lot of joy from unlocking the different digitized versions of real-world toys, you can do better. Cruisin’ Blast came out the same year the first Unleashed did, and that game captured the essence of banging toy cars together in over the top racing environments perfectly. In comparison, Turbocharged is more scattershot, trying to be a Jack of All Trades and only hitting the bullseye with the IP’s aesthetic.
There are lots of ideas in Amnesia: The Bunker that are truly intriguing. I love the World War 1 setting as a backdrop for a horror story, especially the way it intersects with technology of the era. But the way gameplay elements are introduced as friction meant to induce tension simply feel overtuned. I often felt like I was fighting the game just to get around, which was frustrating in a software kind of way rather than an atmospheric enhancement. I wasn’t scared because I was too busy squinting or yanking on the flashlight’s pull cord just so I could pull on doors and latches. No amount of spooky ambiance in the background could bring me back into the experience.
If you have kids interested in things like fantasy storytelling and adventure games, but titles like the recent Legend of Zelda feel like too much for them, Ravenlok is an easy suggestion. And if you’re just looking for something breezy that’s visually enticing but not much of an investment otherwise, you can do a lot worse than this. It may be a little monotonous and unambitious, but the adventure is over well before it can overstay its welcome. Ravenlok feels like a nice piece of fluff that’s polished and genre-heavy enough to be fun, but won’t address any cravings for the next big game in your stack.
As the credits rolled I didn’t feel satisfied or accomplished at all, which is pretty messed up considering how much of a feat completing a 20-plus hour video game is for an adult these days.
If being screamed at by giant crows appeals to you, then boy howdy here’s a videogame for you specifically.
This is as much a compelling, mysterious videogame adventure as it is a janky, flawed game not always able to nail its ambitions. If Tormented Souls was a PS2 game we’d be seeing $100+ online listings, just like many of its inspirations. It fits that space like a torn, bloody glove.