Diego Escala
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MonsterVineLatest Reviews
Between stages, the game’s got some minor distractions to keep your attention. During levels, you may spot some conspicuously hidden collectibles strewn about; manage to grab them and you’ll be able to view them at the Angel Grove Youth Center. You can hang out there between missions to chat up characters like Bulk & Skull, Ernie, or other characters from the show that you rescue during missions. You’ll also be able to fix some arcade machines to play. Additionally, there’s also a speed-run mode available to you and some combat training if you need to refresh your ranger skills.
When not in a mission, there’s a surprising amount of customization you can do for each of the nine characters you can acquire in the game. Everyone has their own distinct playstyle and weapon toolset, along with a series of loadouts you can unlock for each character. On top of that, you’ll be able to customize each character’s weapons with a variety of modifiers like changing the shape of a grenade’s AOE splash, to ignoring an enemy’s cover and also add new active or passive abilities on a character. This is all to say that there’s a lot of ways to kit out your squad when you take them on a run.
For the high-score addicts, Anger Foot does feature a leaderboard that you can climb your way up, but most importantly are the challenges featured in each level. Each level has three challenges to attempt that range from the mundane like “Finish level in ____ secs” to more challenging puzzles like finishing the level without jumping. Some of these really make you go back and rethink a level’s structure, such as trying to figure out how to not jump when there are sections that require you to clear a gap. Getting the “Only use your feet” challenge in a gun heavy stage in particular will have you mentally plotting out the most efficient route to take, making sure you can survive it using only your feet. Doing these will reward stars that you can then use to unlock new sneakers that offer a variety of game changing effects like door kicks becoming explosive, a second life, or even nonsensical effects like making yourself and all the enemies drunk. With the dozens of shoes to try out and leaderboard options, there’s some decent stuff to keep you playing even after you’ve finished the game’s campaign.
Iffy platforming aside, reveling in cat mischief is incredibly cathartic, as you can climb up balconies to knock over potted plants and watch them shatter, or trip up pedestrians and run off with their phones or lunch. You’ll also be able to dress your cat up in a variety of adorable hats, from a watermelon head to a wizard hat, which are found scattered around the game’s world or collected randomly through the various capsule machines you can find in the city. It’s a great way to encourage you to explore every inch of the city to see what new hat you might find. This is a game that was made by a person who loves and understands cats, and it’s apparent in every aspect of the game.
Something that can’t be understated is Aggro Crab’s effort to bring newcomers to the genre into the space with some really friendly accessibility options here. There’s everything from being able to reduce damage taken by varying degrees to extra health for yourself or less for enemies. You can even adjust invincibility frames on dodges, parry window timing, and even turn off the feature of losing your XP/currency upon your death. Hilariously enough, you can even flip a setting that gives Kril a massive gun that can one-shot anything in the game, including bosses. It’s a lot of nice settings to allow someone new to finetune their experience as they slowly get accustomed to things and I think will go a long way in making new fans of the genre.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown genuinely wants you to explore every inch of its world, and that camera feature is part of it encouraging you to not sweat a spot you’re stumped at and to think back on it when you’re ready. It can be a difficult game at times, but it never wants to frustrate you and honestly has some of the best accessibility options I’ve seen in a Metroidvania. Besides that, you can also go into the difficulty settings and adjust practically every setting you can possibly think of; it even lets you drop portals to help you during platforming sections if one is giving you too much trouble. It’s refreshing to see and hopefully gets more people into the genre who might’ve avoided it thus far.
The game features every weapon you’d likely hope to see from a Warhammer 40k shooter, from your mainstays like the bolter or plasma gun to things like the vengeance launcher and they all feel great to abuse demons with. Something particularly impressive about W40k: Boltgun is how well Auroch Digital managed to capture the feeling of being a space marine. Your character feels nimble, but also hefty enough that he pushes anything unfortunate enough to get in his way, kind of like a prime Shaq. Jumping from high points causes your marine to absolutely crush anyone below him, and a dedicated charge button lets you push your way out of a group, killing anyone who’s weak enough.
One thought that kept coming to my mind in my thirty or so hours with the game was that I just wished there was more to fully invest myself in the game’s world. Besides the puzzles in the testing stations, there’s no real reason to go out exploring. And the only company you have to keep is your AI glove and the surprisingly chatty dead bodies littered throughout (it makes sense trust me). It would have been fun to see how regular folk are reacting to a robot revolt instead of just your character’s singular view on things.
Getting into Darktide’s performance, we’re well over a month since release and the game’s performance is still incredibly rough which is shocking considering how much better it was during its pre-release beta in November. Something broke in the day between the beta and the full release and it hasn’t quite recovered since. You’ll see game crashes, memory leaks, visual glitches, and more. I’ll say, some of it has gotten a bit better since then but it’s still distractingly broken. And it’s not an especially good look when your game is running this poorly, but you made sure to include a manipulative cash shop at launch while the game was still missing features it was advertised to have.
The game is even littered with really silly extras to discover that were treated with as much effort as the rest of the game. There’s an “achievement” system that’s dressed up as a bounty hunter forum board. You can read posts from other bounty hunters, unlocking new replies by doing things like killing a certain amount of a particular enemy or getting enough knife kills, and each of these forum posters are given as much thought into their character as the main cast. Getting to read the latest replies I unlocked was always a treat, hoping to see what some of my favorite posters in the forum were going to chime in with next. High On Life even features four full length movies you can literally sit there and watch; some of which features commentary by members of Red Letter Media. Again, every aspect of this game was given full effort with their commitment to the game’s premise and it really shows.