Jesse Galena
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The EscapistLatest Reviews
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.
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.
Arise: A Simple Story is a story-driven, atmospheric 3D platformer by Piccolo Studio. You play as a man who recently died, traversing environments that symbolize meaningful moments in his life. For example, sometimes you’re as small as a bug, jumping across lily pads and hitching rides on bees. Statues in the environment represent other people he knew and help tell the story since it largely has no words. As you traverse, you find pickups called memories, which depict an exact moment in his life. The placement of these memories ranges from obvious to hidden, but even if you only grab the obvious memories, you’ll understand the story.
Unfortunately, GreedFall fails to deliver a living world or an epic, engaging story. The dialog is boring and repetitive, and few characters have a unique voice or vocabulary. The story is simplistic, predictable, and dull. The multitude of flaws even overshadows the thrill of combat. GreedFall has a lot of heart, but that doesn’t make the result any less sloppy. While it’s not a disaster, the game’s highlights aren’t enough to justify the amount of time it demands.
Ultimately, Children of Morta is not a bad game, but the story is the only thing that really stands out as being good. Couch co-op better illustrates how the family works together and adds some life to trudging through the dungeons. However, the gameplay doesn’t have enough variety or surprises to be a good roguelike, and the progression is too shallow and sparse to work as an RPG.
While the game’s story has a few loose ends, the pacing is strong, regularly answering questions while offering new ones to uncover. Compelling characters and truly captivating ideas sell every part of the world and give it a unique charm. Add the varied, enjoyable combat, and Control is an easy game to recommend to anyone looking for solid action or an intriguing story.