Russell Archey
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Gaming Nexus Latest Reviews
Lynked: Banner of the Spark is a great game for fans of dungeon crawlers and roguelikes. The combat can be a little tricky to get the hang of as you’ll have to learn how to time your attacks and dodge when necessary to avoid taking huge chunks of damage. The town building aspects provide a lot of ways to customize your home base between missions and show them off to your friends in co-op. If you’re looking for a dungeon crawler where you can customize your town between missions, Lynked: Banner of the Spark is well worth the price.
Star Overdrive is an enjoyable open world experience, but it can become a bit tedious, specifically when it comes to upgrading the hoverboard. While you're shown the recommended stats for each area, they do change depending on the area you're in and if you waste your materials, it can be time consuming to get more. That said though, I still enjoyed my time with Star Overdrive and if you enjoy open world games similar to the Legend of Zelda on the Switch, Star Overdrive might be right up your alley.
I enjoyed Astral Ascent when it was in Early Access and I still enjoy it after it's official release. Multiple characters, spells, and abilities along with procedurally generated areas and some fun and interesting boss fights against the Zodiacs give Astral Ascent plenty of replayability. If these kinds of games are up your alley, you'll get plenty of gameplay out of Astral Ascent.
Slay the Princess is my first visual novel in my roughly thirty-five years as a gamer and I enjoyed every minute of it. With so many dialogue options to choose from, no two runs of the story are the same, and even when you get to the story's finale there are still a few different ways it can ultimately end. The voice acting and soundtrack ties everything together beautifully and for someone who never got into visual novels, I can't recommend this one enough. If you're looking for a psychological horror story with quite a bit of comedic dialogue thrown in, then definitely prepare to Slay the Princess…that kind of came out weird.
30XX is a marked improvement over its predecessor. Beyond the permadeath Standard Mode, you can check out Mega Mode if you'd rather choose your level order and can also create and upload your own levels or chunks of levels. The ability to play as either Nina or Ace and can switch between runs in Standard mode, or play co-op, means you can choose whoever better suits your playstyle. Make no mistake though - even if you're a fan of Mega Man (specifically Mega Man X) you'll still find plenty of challenges as you make your way through, but for it's a challenge I definitely recommend checking out.
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is a great game that really goes deep into each of its cases to prove who the real culprit is, sometimes to a fault. The Mystery Labyrinths can tend to go on for a bit despite knowing who the real culprit is halfway through and Shinigami's sense of humor can get a tad annoying at times. It also doesn't help that after going through a few hours of how the crime was committed, you then basically get to relive the entire crime two more times which at that point just feels like the game is padding itself. Overall though, if you're up for solving some mysteries with a purple ghost sidekick, Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is definitely worth checking out.
A fantastic Metroidvania. The graphics and animation are great and the music is nice and relaxing, provided the occasional difficulty spike isn't stressing you out. There are performance stutters on the Switch version, and a couple of trial-and-error areas that can get annoying, but overall they didn't really sway my overall opinion on the game. If you're a fan of Metroidvania-style games, definitely give Unbound: Worlds Apart a shot.
Sword of the Necromancer is by no means a perfect game, but it's still enjoyable with a few issues here and there. Tama never feels like she's getting stronger and the monsters you summon are hit and miss as to whether they'll actually be effective in a fight or just randomly run around the room going nowhere near where you want them to. The bosses are also hit and miss when it comes to those that require strategy and those that just have you run away for a bit before getting in one or two hits and repeating. However, the story is great and well voice-acted and the soundtrack has a lot of nice tracks to listen to.
Torchlight III is an enjoyable game but is also a bit more simplified than the previous entry in the series. While the Relic system brings some new ways to customize your character, the lack of a regular flowing of skill trees and spending stat points makes it seem like you can't quite customize your character as much as you'd like with stats being tied into your gear. The new fort system is nice but I really only found myself using it to stash gear I wanted to keep and to swap out pets. Overall while I did enjoy my time with Torchlight III, it felt like a downgrade from Torchlight II and fans of the series might want to wait a bit before picking this one up.
It's been over 20 years since the last Battletoads game-and it was worth the wait. Battletoads is an enjoyable game that brings back the fun beat-em-up aspects of the originals, as well as humorous cutscenes, and minigame stages that show just what happens after the Toads realize their glory days are over.