Jesse Galena
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The Escapist Latest Reviews
Due to the tedium, I wouldn’t recommend the game to any category of folks. While the gameplay is basic enough for children and new players, it’s not engaging enough for either of them. Ultimately, it’s a slow burn that takes a long time to go nowhere interesting. For folks who want an easy and repetitive game to play while watching or listening to something, there are far better options.
The most egregious tension killer for me was the game’s lack of direction. Often, I’d find myself finishing a task or starting a level with no clues on where to go or what to do next. It seems like the game wants you to explore until you stumble onto a ghost or check every room for new encounters or changes. Also, the map doesn’t distinguish between locked doors, unlocked doors, and doors you can’t currently interact with. So if you have an unlabeled key, you may have to try literally every door on a map to know which it goes to.
When it sticks to its themes, Fashion Police Squad is as fun and outlandish as its premise. However, when it runs out of relevant topics and relies on jokes and references beyond fashion, the story begins to fray. The gameplay is frantic and the weapons are clever, but it eventually gets worn out as the last quarter of the game relies on throwing more at you rather than tailoring a fitting challenge. If you’re interested in a new boomer shooter, it’s worth a look. If you want more than that, its patchwork of ridiculous plot and characters might be enough to keep you invested throughout.
Fobia isn’t bad, but I found it rudimentary to the point of being mostly boring. While it has some fun puzzles and a few good scares, the majority of my ten-and-a-half-hour playthrough was dull. Every new story reveal failed to pay off in an interesting way, monster encounters felt basic, and wandering through the environment was disorienting. But if you’re interested in a new game trying to recapture the bizarre logic, unpredictability, and difficulty of old survival horror games, it might scratch that itch.
Taking just over three hours to beat, it’s a fun distraction that ultimately doesn’t leave a lasting impression. If you’re looking for an action-packed shooter with lots of enemies to mow down in attractive environments, then it’s worthy of your time. If not, then there isn’t much more to dig into. Bright Memory: Infinite is available starting today for $19.99 on PC with releases on first Xbox Series X | S and then PlayStation 5 scheduled for the future.
The gameplay is almost exclusively shooting. Thankfully, it feels fantastic. Enemies can come from many locations and have a few types, including ones with ranged attacks, extra armor, and grappling abilities. While more enemy types with different abilities — such as being able to grab a marine and drag them away — would be nice, the hordes of xenomorphs were fun to blast. Though the lack of boss fights is a travesty. While objectives have different contexts, such as welding a door or overloading a power grid, it always amounts to you holding a button at a location. The path forward is obvious with only dead ends and small corners to explore.
While aspects of the game lack closure and its six-hour runtime sags in spots, the majority of the story is engaging and enjoyable. If you’re into story-driven games and don’t mind limited interactions, or you prefer story-focused games with simple and forgiving controls, Last Stop has moments of depth mixed in with mediocrity.
As a casual fan of the first Chivalry game, I was hoping for more clarity and polish in the sequel. While the chaotic bloodbath is fun and will keep me popping back in for a game or two, functionally similar objectives, limited game types, and the lack of certainty that my inputs will register is frustrating enough to keep Chivalry 2 from becoming something I’d play for more than a few rounds at a time.
Playing with one-to-three other people online on its 15-hour campaign would have smoothed over some of its issues, but it wouldn’t have changed the fundamental problems that dragged down my enjoyment. As a single-player experience, it has bright moments but is quickly overshadowed by a dull story, unresponsive controls, repetitive level design, and lifeless encounters.