Alex Jackson
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GamingBoltLatest Reviews
Two great game genres that play great together, Spellforce 3 isn't anything special in any one area but the combination of the elements adds enough that it should keep players coming back for a long time.
Danganronpa is completely silly, deranged, weird, terrifying, awful, ironic, depressing, hopeful, wonderfully written, emotional and engrossing. It's an experience you absolutely need to try as blind as possible.
The Surge is great, and I say that with only a single qualifier - It’s standing in a genre built by games that did more than great. Which isn’t exactly fair to hold against this game, but if you’ve ended the age of fire, woke from the nightmare and torn through Japan, The Surge is going to scratch, if not satisfy that itch.
STRAFE gets a lot of presentational things right, and even though it undermines and contradicts its own mechanics in some places, the singular sense of style the game exudes is fantastic. Running through the swarmed halls of the dilapidated space station has a lot of appeal for classic shooter fans.
Toukiden 2 takes a core from Kiwami and makes some subtle changes that develop the whole thing from Monster Hunter clone to something unique in the genre. The new, faster combat is a ton of fun and while cramped controls and limited presentation are there and a bother, they aren’t the end of the world and don’t frequently get in the way of the fun.
Atelier Feris: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey is sometimes charming, but frequently feels a bit vapid in execution. The core of Alchemy is done well, but the things around it don’t hold up. I can praise it for telling a more personal journey, but not much else.
Digimon World: Next Order is a different breed of RPG in a pretty stagnant genre, and for what it tries and does to bring this old favourite to modern times, I have to commend it somewhat. But what it does is in places archaic, or not explained well enough to be managed properly without a guide.
I can’t fault Killing Floor 2 that much for focusing on a co-op experience, and it does that very well. The gunplay and gameplay loop is great fun when you have a core group of friends with you, I just don’t see it as having value outside of that setting.
Finally, a game that celebrates a storied series like Final Fantasy. They leveraged both their own classic mechanics and characters to elevate a solid core, and then made it even better by mixing in some elements from other genres. Final Fantasy fans will surely get the most out of it, but I have no problem telling anybody that World of Final Fantasy is a good time.
Atlas Reactor shows that even if there are no new ideas anymore, there are still new ways to use the old ideas and make them interesting again. Continued support and a community will hold it up but we need some serious expansion to really make it great. Even still, what is here is very solid and worth the time of any strategy lover.