Sean Halliday
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MonsterVineLatest Reviews
Lords of the Fallen is a successful reboot of a series you never knew needed rebooting. The ability to switch between the realm of the living and dead works as an axis to enhance what is mostly a typical soulslike experience with fantastic art direction. There are flashes of boldness between the familiar. Quality-of-life options such as direct co-op are a great addition, along with the ability to summon AI to aid with bosses. There’s not much wrong with Lords of the Fallen, aside from an erratic camera and restraint in enemy numbers, but there’s not too much great about it.
Lords of the Fallen is a successful reboot of a series you never knew needed rebooting. The ability to switch between the realm of the living and dead works as an axis to enhance what is mostly a typical soulslike experience with fantastic art direction. There are flashes of boldness between the familiar. Quality-of-life options such as direct co-op are a great addition, along with the ability to summon AI to aid with bosses. There’s not much wrong with Lords of the Fallen, aside from an erratic camera and restraint in enemy numbers, but there’s not too much great about it.
With the sum of its parts laid bare, El Paso’s biggest weakness starts to be exposed the longer it goes on. The initial charm and intrigue of the first half of the game begin to wear thin in the later parts of the game. The first five minutes of gameplay are pretty much the same as the last few hours of gameplay. With little variation both in terms of gameplay and level layout, it all becomes repetitive. By the fifth hour seven, the act of playing the game feels like an annoyance getting in the way of the story.
A love letter to a genre and its forefathers. Infernax has plenty to say and plenty to offer outside of nostalgia. Making a neat space for its own brand of gorey metroidvania, Infernax’s mix of challenge, combat and utility produces an undoubtedly satisfying experience. With plenty of flesh to chew on, the explosions of meat between the teeth never fail to deliver.
In an age where every seemingly every game demands your attention for countless hours, Industria comes as a welcomed surprise. A well-crafted package that, despite some flaws, never truly comes off the rails. The plot and solid gameplay carry the experience neatly towards the closing act. Whether or not the climax of the story will be good or not falls more into perspective and how much you value the idea of the unknown.
Depending on how you view it, the longing for more by the time the game ends could be a great thing or an awful thing. For those with an eye for perfection and optimization, re-playing Boomerang X to hit better and better times acts as the replay value. One-shot players may find themselves at a loss when the short campaign closes. Buyer beware.
With a simple, yet fairly deep, combat system at its heart, Chivalry 2 is a great piece of multiplayer mayhem that will surely capture the hearts of many. The lack of any true depth may deter veterans of other similar games, but most will find a hugely enjoyable medieval romp that has plenty of room to grow. The current crop of maps is limited to attack/defend objectives with two arenas thrown in for good measure. Duel servers offer a more honourable way to play, but lack that sense of ‘’anything goes’’ found in the main game modes.
MechWarrior 5, as a package, is robust. A campaign with a healthy amount of meat to it, a sandbox mode that offers plenty of replay options and co-op. On the surface, the game may seem overwhelming. Learning how to handle Mech weights, managing weapon heat and damage control, micro-managing your merc company is all part of the process. It’s not the easiest process to master, but there’s enough support to ease you into it.
By the time your knee is deep in the snow, politics, and blood Wasteland 3’s Colorado is submerged in, there’s an underlying hook firmly under the skin. Consequences to actions and conversations neatly knit together every other aspect of InXiles’s love letter to the golden age of RPGs. In the modern market, the elements of RPGs have been reduced to menial threads to support button-bashing gameplay. Wasteland 3 scales things back, takes its time. There’s no rush, no forced attempts at being profound while falling flat on its face.
But… and it’s a big but. Currently, GTFO offers no in-game matchmaking. In its place, we have an official Discord server in which players can set up games and invite their newfound friends using Steam/lobby codes. The lack of matchmaking can make jumping on and into a game a true challenge. It’s not uncommon to find yourself either running into walls of lobbies filling up or some breakdown in communication. The romantic in me could wax lyrical how this entire process is a reminder of the ‘good old days’ before lobbies matchmaking became the norm, but I’d be telling lies. Sometimes it leads to great experiences and newfound allies, other times its forty minutes down the drain and no game to show for it.