Doug Mercer
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CGMagazine Latest Reviews
The Ascent was originally released as a timed exclusive on Xbox Series X in July 2019 and we loved it then. Now, the timed exclusivity is over and The Ascent is making the trek over to PlayStation 5. While the game is essentially the same game as when it originally launched, there have been some significant updates, additions and patches to the Xbox version over the past year – and all of that content will be available to PlayStation gamers on day one. In some ways, it was probably worth the wait! If you’re looking for a fast and fun twin-stick shooter with gorgeous visuals and some RPG-like elements, The Ascent has got you covered.
In the midst of the panicked scramble to get next gen systems out the door, certain world events have delayed both hardware releases as well as game releases. While the lack of hardware is starting to catch up to demand, the lack of software has seen a greater influx of something every new gen of system encounters, but at a heightened scale: remastered hits from the previous generation! Enter Observer: System Redux, a game that was easily picked up and repackaged for the new generation that is in desperate need of titles to fully utilize its hardware. While Observer doesn’t quite bring the full use of the PS5 hardware to the table, it’s still a solid game that can give you good reason to spend some time on your shiny new system.
The world of racing games is quite expansive and has two camps firmly situated in it. In the one corner, the more of a video game it is with weapons, mods, and gravity-defying stunts, the better. In the other, the gamers who demand hyperrealism. While I am firmly in the former, it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the latter, even if the latter is gruesomely punishing. MotoGP 20 is both beautiful to look at and a lot of fun, and it has a ton of ways to enjoy it but boy, is it ever not for the casual player.
Set in a steampunk world where humanity has been crushed by the zombie hoard that brought about the apocalypse, you start with a command center, four rangers, and a soldier armed with a machine gun as you try to build a colony to help restore the human race. From there, you build your homes, your resource collectors, your barracks, etc. until you become a thriving community. As you work your way through, research trees help grow your colony as you upgrade your troops and buildings. As you work through the tree you can upgrade the buildings you currently have built which is much handier than destroying and rebuilding everything like I did the first two games before I realized this fact…
Citizens of Space is the follow up to Citizens of Earth and it looks to maximize the fun grind of being an ode to old school RPG’s while remedying some of the complaints that players of the first game had. Game makers Eden Industries had clearly listened to its community and worked hard to make the sequel more focused on fun and less on the management of your squad. While they succeed in maximizing the fun, they never really make it out of the woods of repetition and the end result falls somewhere in the middle of a whacky ode to a favorite genre of mine and a grind that loses it quirky appeal pretty fast.
The past few years has seen a boon in all things nostalgic, so much so that it has become a genre unto its own. The 80’s and the 90’s have been mined for all their goodies as the people who grew up in that time frame now have expendable income or children that they wish to show what they grew up with. This brought about a somewhat ill-advised Power Rangers movie trying to capitalize on that and when that failed to seriously ignite the box office, other avenues were sought out. Which brings us to Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, a fighting game that utilizes tried and true gameplay styles, solid and accessible mechanics, and mashes them up with some of our favourite characters to bring us a very enjoyable and very replayable brawler.
The Seven Deadly Sins: Knights of Brittannia is a new game from Bandai Namco, a company who has been producing a lot of content that crosses over into other Japanese media for many years. In case the name of this game doesn’t ring a bell to you, Seven Deadly Sins is a hit manga and anime of the same name – a fact that I had a very little knowledge of when I started this game up. I knew I had seen some of the anime, but that was pretty much where my knowledge stopped, so a little research had to be put in so that I could fully appreciate not just the game, but the tale it was trying to weave at the same time. From the story that I played through in conjunction with what I read up on about the anime plot, it seems that Knights of Britannia adheres quite close to its source material, which is great for fans! Looking strictly at it from a gameplay stance, Sins breaks down to a fighting game at its core and that’s where the trouble starts.
If I was to refer to 2017 as the re-age, I think we could all come to a consensus that it’s a fairly accurate statement. Remaster, reimagining, reboot, remake, however, you want to put it, it’s become the new status quo. Case in point, the movie It, a remake of an adaptation, is currently annihilating box office records. Enter Baja: Edge of Control HD, an HD remaster of a game released way back in 2008 that’s made its way back to consoles. I’ll forgive you if you don’t recall it making a splash nearly 10 years ago because I definitely did not. So, you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to find a solid, big, and pretty fun game dropped into my lap that looks damn good for a game older than my nephew.
There are two types of people reading this Arslan: The Warriors of Legend review. First, there are the people who saw the title and immediately became interested in the game adaptation of the long running novel/manga/anime series. Then, there’s people like me who saw Omega Force and decided to see what the very prolific studio churned out this time. What has been rolled out is yet another Musou from the masters of Musou, but this one at least has a pretty good story – if you can follow it.
It came after a slightly lengthy delay, a lot of speculation and much anticipation. Now, you can ‘Be the Bat’, as the ad campaign promised, and assume the mantle of The Dark Knight in a last ditch effort to save Gotham. This time, it’s not from the recently deceased Joker, but from Scarecrow and his hired gun the Arkham Knight, a man whose hatred for the Bat runs deep and cold.