John Farrell
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GamingTrend Latest Reviews
Wrath of the Righteous is a deep, engaging, faithful recreation of the tabletop campaign with only minor flaws. Its Crusade system is imperfect and the learning curve is more of a mountain, but the reward for getting through both is a long experience with incredible replay value. I know I will be replaying a few times soon, and I invite you to do the same.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister may become one of my favorite CRPGs ever, though it isn’t there yet. Its adaptation of D&D 5th edition is as impressive as it is incomplete. Its campaign is as mechanically creative as it is narratively uninspired. I had a great time playing through this game, and I look forward to doing so again with a new party composition, but it’s unmistakable that this game is not finished cooking yet.
Ring of Pain shows creativity and promise, but all to little depth to carry those qualities through. The choices presented by the game are interesting in principle, but in practice your success or failure are determined by luck more than anything else. The result is a game defined by repetition, which struggles to justify the time it asks of you. That said, for a minor price and a fun few runs, you could do far worse as a distraction.
Neverending Nightmares is suffused with dread, from its haunting soundtrack to its (mostly) stylistic artistry, but it fails to deliver a compelling experience. Despite its short run-time, the game often feels like it is dragging, tense buildups of tension becoming overladen with monotony. A true horror fan will thank themselves for looking this title up, but when comparing its price point to its quality, it’s difficult to think of who would be thankful they played through the game.
Warhammer 40k Mechanicus contains a bevy of interesting narrative and mechanical decisions, but this tactics game is also marred by questionable implementations of those decisions. This Switch port often feels poorly thought out, but if you can make your way past its annoyances, you will find an engaging experience, filled with love for 40k lore. I hope to see more from this team, as their creativity and skill shows through with charm, even if this entry was not ultimately without flaws.
For a small asking price, Rad will reliably give you a few hours of novelty, as you explore the wasted punk-dystopia and mutate yourself to better clear the land of its inhabitants. Beyond that initial entry point, you will find yourself dogged by an experience that has little to offer in the way of depth or surprises. The core mechanics make for tense, hectic combat, but also encourage you not to engage in it.
Tesla vs. Lovecraft is imbued with a frenetic, bold energy that I only wish its designers had committed to more strongly. While there is fun in the premise of knocking back waves of Lovecraftian horrors while teleporting around them and maximizing Tesla’s devices, none of these concepts ever truly hits the mark. The result is a distracting but ultimately mindless exercise in repetition, which fails to ever become truly interesting.
Shu is a game plagued by its own potential. With tight platforming and shifting abilities, this bite sized game could have been a real treat. Instead, you find yourself constantly bogged down in small frustrations and game breaking crashes. I like the game Shu is trying to be, but not the game it is.