#review
#review
by Amr (@siegarettes)
There’s nothing more primal and fun than running and jumping. No matter how many games I play I doubt I’ll get tired of the feeling of leaping past obstacles and learning a stage. Understanding that groove, playing into that rhythm, there’s an almost musical satisfaction to it. Runner 3, the latest of the spinoffs from Choice Provisions’ Bit Trip series, aims to combine both those feelings. Complex strings of movements combine together to bounce you across the environment, as musical cues accompany your actions to give the impression of a choreographed performance. Which should be a perfect harmony. Instead its a painful exercise in increasing frustration.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Roof Rage has a strong pitch. It brings the aesthetics of Asian martial arts films and melds them with the acrobatic combat of platform fighters. It feels almost obvious. It helps that each of the genres have become so culturally ingrained. The flow of the game feels familiar thanks to my time with games like Smash Bros and Rivals of Aether, and each character front loaded a lot about how they play through the use of martial arts archetypes. It’s mostly successful, though it stumbles at times, failing to interrogate certain aspects, or communicating its ideas inconsistently.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Omensight begins at the end. The world has come to calamity, the sacred priestess is dead, and a terrifying beast has come to consume to the world in her absence. Now, as the Harbringer, you must revisit the final days of several characters, learning about them and trying to influence their final moments enough to learn new connections that will slowly lead to revelations.
And I do mean slowly. Omensight is built on the branching path structure of Spearhead Games’ previous title, Stories: The Path of Destinies. Much like Omensight, Stories relied on its serviceable combat, art direction, and the promise of new narrative details to keep you playing. It was straightforward, but worked well enough. Omensight complicates this, but it doesn’t quite work out.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Compared to other shooters, HellStar Squadron is almost…chill. Screenshots might give you the impression that of an aggressive, intense shooter, but HellStar Squadron rarely reaches that point. Bullets and enemies move at an almost languid pace. Shooting is straightforward–there’s a wide firing gun, a concentrated laser, and a screen clearing bomb, standard stuff. There’s definitely a few aesthetic touches from its bullet-hell cousins, but for the most part HellStar Squadron is about being patient and keeping a cool head. I died quite a few times but it rarely felt as if it tested me. It demanded just enough attention from me that I couldn’t zone out and play automatically.
Combining elements of adventure games and dating sims, Monster Prom focuses on the experience of collaborative storytelling. Along with Moon Hunters, it follows the legacy of The Yahwg, which drew the blueprint for the intimate style of story told here. Unlike the other two, Monster Prom isn’t concerned with the coming disaster of a fantasy world, but a high school prom. This sets up Monster Prom up as a comedy game, with an irreverent tone that pokes fun at high school archetypes, movie monster mythology, and prep school institutions. It’s a fun synthesis, and when it hits it had me laughing in disbelief, but it also becomes a source of wild tonal shifts that break its stride.
When Dragon’s Crown originally released it was packed with esoteric design decisions. There was plenty of classic brawler legacy within it, but those decisions almost felt out of place. Strangely, time has only served to make those eccentricities feel more at home.
Cursor based interactions and menus have become much more common on consoles, and the addition of a touchpad on the PS4 has only made that more natural. The online integration feels normalized too–the death messages that litter a stage have plenty of precedent, and seeing a party automatically populate with AI based on other players feels smart. And the heavy focus on multiplayer feels obvious now, especially with the popularity of RPG systems and loot based progression. Weirdly, even the bizarre structural turn in the second half, where you’re tasked with backtracking to do new objectives in the same areas, makes a lot more sense given the popularization of MMO style loops of repeated content. Despite being an entry in a genre a lot of people dismiss as being regressive, Dragon’s Crown ended up being rather prescient.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
A lot of action games suffer from a lack of feedback. Copy Kitty isn’t one of them. Its got the type of feedback you get when you stick your microphone in front of your speakers, crank the volume, and fill the room with distortion. Its colors are overwhelming and obnoxious, garish in delivery, with several competing styles and guaranteed to compete for your attention with things get chaotic. I ended up playing it more by feeling than by sight.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
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A throwback platformer emulating games like Commander Keen and Duke Nukem, Rad Rogers follows the Rise of the Triad reboot and Bombshell as one of Interceptor Entertainment’s attempts to bring back the spirit of classic PC gaming.
For the first hour or two, I was on board for Rad Rogers. The opening was embarrassing to watch, but the platforming and gunplay had enough to them to make running around a level and collecting all the trinkets entertaining. But before the first world was even done Rad Rogers wore out its welcome.