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Slipstream is very much a love letter to the classic game Outrun, but instead of just being a carbon copy it adds in a very satisfying Tokyo Drift style umm drift system so corners become these spectacles and the corners become a hot spot for creativity. With many game modes, you can do a more story-based race through events, the usual single races and time trials are here with a spin on Battle Royale which let’s face it is just the last car standing with a new name but anyway, Cannonball adds a string of events together and over Slipstream offers a lot of variety. It is however such a shame that the variety of events is not so forthcoming in the actual courses for these all feel the same but with a different backgrounds, I put the automatic drift option on, and all of a sudden I went into a weird trance where I just instinctively pull off drifts because it felt very Deja Vu on every location courses. Online racing is available but not online leaderboards so that’s a weird one. Overall Slipstream is perfectly fine in small doses and does mix up the racing nostalgia somewhat but the course design is repetitive and the music wasn’t for me.

This game is one that I just couldn’t get on with or even understand half the time. It started off alright, had tutorial text and a bit of action playing like a 3rd person brawler in a way as you play a character with a big robotic arm. Cracks began to show once you got out of the tutorial style opener, all interactions were just text which is fine it’s a choice but the characters would make this groan or moan sound every so often and when you add in that it has no music, it made the characters seem bored and that drained enthusiasm slowly but surely. The gameplay started to break as you would get an objective but have no knowledge of what to do, where to go. A move you learned in the starting area now didn’t exist in the game and it all culminated in me losing patience with a game that clearly didn’t want to help me or even entice me to care. I couldn’t get past the many obstacles thrown at me and I can only take so much before it’s not worth the hassle. Maybe watch some videos first but for me, it’s a firm no thank you.

I cannot deny that Cris Tales is one of the most beautiful games I have seen in a long time, it maintains its beauty with how it animates the characters and the vast world they inhabit. Cris Tales is a JRPG and with that comes a lot of turn-based combat and mission variety. The combat is very familiar and has a Persona style to it in terms of presentation but the combat does add to it all by having the time element in play. You can kick an enemy into the past, present, or future which can set up combos or expose a weak point on an enemy. It’s a mechanic that is refreshing but also limiting with not a lot of things you can do outside of the cookie-cutter combos. Time is the name of the game here as outside of combat you will see the screen is split into three, each segment represents a space in time them being passed, present, and future. In real-time you can see people and the world change, you can even time hop and become your loving campaign Matias who happens to be an “I can’t speak to people or do a lot” Frog. Again it’s a cool mechanic but it always feels like a scripted event as using it outside of the predetermined areas results in nothing notable. I came away from Cris Tales never sure if I liked it or not, it would have good highs and crushing lows, it never seems to stay at a set pace, and that caused the story to get a bit messy and horrible fetch style quests aplenty. I don’t hate Cris Tales and I don’t love it, it’s a visually stunning game with cool time mechanics that are never fully realized.

Popslinger is an action shooter game that tries to marry a Rythm action game with a shooter, not all marriages work out it sucks but it’s true, if both parties are not willing to be equal then it will cause problems. PopSlinger wants you to kill a group of enemies of the same color and that gives you the chance to mix and match the streaks to get abilities like health, shields, and turrets. What actually happens is you play a very basic shooter that wants you to dodge enemies and shoot particular colors so you get the difficulty and skill. It’s not fun to play in any way, the aiming of shots is bad, the fact that every time you get hit you get momentarily stunned is frustrating. Level design is just going right and every few screens you do a pointless wave-based attack. You have two ways to play PopSlinger, do the mixing and matching of enemy kills and get basic abilities and frustrated with enemy spawns, or play it like a shooter and avoid the fancy mechanics and get bored with some of the most basic entry-level shooting. Overall I don’t quite get what PopSlinger was going for and it falls at so many obstacles that it never actually gets going.

Doomed to Hell is right on the money except hell is the constant game loop that hardly ever changes. The game is a twin-stick shooter but the areas are small and the enemies are huge and it all makes for a tedious, not fun experience. I just don’t get why you put a lot of time into the game because it is just the same thing over and over and boredom sunk in way before any other emotion could be emitted. I just wouldn’t bother if I was you.

Our No Place For Bravery Review has us in a world where peril awaits on every path through Dewr, a harsh world of ruined beauty and violent tribes. In this game, you must contend with fast-paced battles filled with dodges, parries, and counterattacks. Making mistakes will be punishing and you’ll experience a lingering sense of fragility while facing the dangers of Dewr. Thorn, a retired warrior plagued by nightmares, stumbles on an opportunity for redemption after finding clues to his daughter’s disappearance from long ago. Survive rampant and violent battles in this 2D top-down action RPG, and discover the bone-chilling tale behind Thorn’s odyssey.

Josh Journey is a beat ’em up side scroller in the vein of Final Fight or Streets of Rage, you can move around it and enemies come from either side. You have four playable characters who you can hot-swap between at any time including combat which pulls off huge combos and air juggles. Despite its cartoonish look and basic combat, the game does open and become a lot deeper in terms of customisation of combat. Put it this way, you buy Josh Journey Darkness Totems for a bit of button-mashing goodness or as a good local co-op romp. It gets in entertains you and then leaves.

OK, so the Flat Kingdom looks cool with its papercraft-style graphics and Cutesy characters. You play as 3 people at once, you hotswap between them and each one is a unique shape with its own actions, triangle is fast, the circle double jumps and the square does heavy slams, it makes for a rock paper scissors style combat system and injects a small number of puzzle elements to proceedings. All the ideas make for a very mediocre experience, I never felt like the game got going or felt cohesive. It’s a game that just never really gels it all together and instead makes simple tasks a pain on the ass, the combat is one that you constantly forget about so you just mash through the shapes every fight. Even if you get past that and just get going with it the boss fights are so confusing and bullet spongy that the journey generally ends up in a swear-laden fit of rage. Flat Kingdom Papers Cut Edition is an attempt at a fun unique platform romp but never sticks the landing.

Not a bad strategy game, Legends Of Kingdom is less tower defense and more a hexagonal turn-based battler. It’s all presented like a cartoon in-game with comic book-style cutscenes which is all really nice and pleasant on the eye, it helps engage you and keep you playing. I like the general loop and it’s fine in short bursts but to be honest it never feels like it changes or mixes it up. Yeah alright it has random multiple choice encounters with dice but that always feels rigged, the combat just turns into ranged battles and it all just gets too samey that I soon tire of it all. It is funny as it looks like a mobile game and would actually be a good mobile game due to the gameplay loop and encounter times. Overall Legend of Kingdom is a strategy game that starts off strong but never changes gears making it a cruise rather than a road trip.

Evil Wizard is an action RPG that has a dollop of Metroidvania smothered over the top. Going for a fast-paced combat-heavy affair Evil Wizard plays a lot like other games in the series but it then adds in the elements like fire and electricity and with this you get a new stable of attacks and ways to navigate the world. You have a central hub that allows you to plot your own course through the world whilst also displaying all found rubber ducks. It’s a fast-paced enslaught that does delight but it also frustrates with its limited variety and over-the-top humor and in your faces way too many easter eggs and references.

A Tiny Sticker Tale is a puzzle adventure game that offers a unique gameplay experience. You play on a screen-by-screen basis, placing stickers in your album to use on other screens. The game features an opening tutorial section, in-game cutscenes, and a powerful soundtrack.

Overall, Raccoo Venture is a great introductory experience into the genre of 3rd action games, with memorable characters and a world map level select where you can freely walk around the map and get a general feel as to how these games play.

A Contra-like experience that offers a solid difficult experience. Swapping color palettes on the fly is an excellent way to mix it up and cater to all gamers as they can have their favorite. The controls are tight but most importantly familiar. With explosions and Gunfire everywhere, the game is a non-stop arcade-like experience. Boss battles are not that varied and very clear cut but the levels leading up to them shine. It’s a game you put on to have a Contra fix bit not play Contra in the traditional sense as you have shmup and Vehicle sections to keep it different. Brilliant little game.

Steel Racer is a love letter to racing games of the past. It has the look of OutRun and the control scheme of the old racers. The goal here is to jump into one of the fifty races and win the race, as you drive around you can pick up nitro charges, boosts, and cash to buy new upgrades and paint jobs for your car. Changing your car color is cool as the paint pots are lined up in the garage and you just jump and touch the paint to change the car color. Back to the gameplay and depending on your traction settings depend on how much you Drift and turn the corners but either way, it’s surprisingly satisfying. Hitting opponents slow you down but not as much as other games like to, there are day, night, and other weather effects to race in, and generally, it always plays well. The game is very repetitive but somehow relaxing with its accessible and simple path to progress. I was never wowed but I never stopped playing either so that says a lot. You can replay races and build up cash as the later upgrades do get a bit grundy but honestly, it’s harmless. Overall I found Steel Racers to be a good love letter to older racing games and despite its repetition, it’s a very chilled-out addictive racer.

This game did truly surprise me with its depth and creativity. For the first hour, it feels like a Pokemon-style game but without the freedom of catching as many creatures as you want. After that initial hour, the game really starts to open up, you have so much to upgrade from runes to adding new abilities to your creatures, the levels are split up into small event runs and you can choose what to do and where to go whenever you want, each will say the type of enemy and loot you can find so it does help with crafting, etc. It’s still hard to get my head around the fact your actual character doesn’t do any attacks and the way in which you capture is unique but very fiddly and stressful. All said it’s a game that has you thinking you have seen it all but you really haven’t and you get another dollop of content. I found myself doing run after run just to build up fragments, cash, and exp. Honestly, don’t let the visuals or general descriptions put you off, Adore is an adventure game like no other and whilst it takes some time and work to get the most out of it, the gameplay more than holds up.

I like the old hit ball with stick games, sending a pitch-perfect throw never ceases to please me, hitting a home run so hard I can’t see the ball is the stuff of legends. Anyway, that’s my experience of all the Baseball games I played before this one! This one is actually one of the worst titles I have played in a while, they are going for an arcade approach and there is no problem there, it’s the poor Ai that controls the lack of features and general crapness of each and every player. Your team will randomly swap out players or change positions and this affects the pitcher speed mini-game that aggregates but its the fielding that makes it more apparent as in one minute your guy can catch an 80-mile ball in the air with one hand while banging a drum with the other, then next minute the ball is literally allergic to you and your player will run like its a deadly disease set out to destroy him and all of his bloodline. Talking of catches, you have to do stupid quick-time events where just one wrong breath could fuck it up let alone a button press out of step. I just couldn’t wait for each innings to be over, the levels of skanks the CPU has is incredible and with so few features I honestly never see myself going back to it. Overall I found the game to be lacking with bad Ai and just no fun to be had.