Category Archives: 6 Star Games

Joy Mech Fight Review

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So I like a good fighting game as much as the next guy. This one even has a plot which is cool so I would have been pretty satisfied if I got this back when it first came out. That being said, it’s a shame that Nintendo didn’t translate this one. Seriously would that have been so hard? The game has an impressive amount of battles in the story and while it will be tough to beat them all in one batch, I appreciate the replay value since you get a decent bang for your buck if you had bought the game.

The basic plot appears to be similar to Mega Man where two doctors have created a bunch of robots but one of them turns evil. So you play as the main character and every time you beat an enemy robot, the heroic scientist mind controls it so it joins your side. You rinse and repeat this until you’ve beaten all 8 robot masters. You then jump to the next planet and do the same thing. You beat all of them…then you go to the 3rd planet. It just keeps on going and going and going. The robots actually do change a bit, some are color swaps while others actually swap parts a bit. They’re mainly similar but I liked how creative the devs were here.

My only issue is that you can’t unlock these robots so that’s a bit of a tease. I beat the first two worlds and stopped at the 3rd one. There appears to be 4 worlds and every fight is a best of 5 set so this actually takes some time. You’re basically looking at 40 battles per world so over 100 in the game. Again, the value here is pretty good. I won’t say the gameplay is extremely polished and everything but it’s fun enough. It should remind you of the old Street Fighter days where you would spam the hadouken to keep on hitting enemies for as long as possible. That would just keep them at bay over and over again.

Well I did that here with my main projectile attack and it was great. I would then use a flying kick and take the win. I never even needed to rewind which was cool although it was starting to get really close in the last world so I was probably pretty close to that point. The game would be a lot more difficult without spamming since the attacks can be hard to dodge. Like you think it’ll hit a certain area but then it hits you somehow instead. The hit boxes may not be perfect but granted it can also just be that the designs are all a bit different and take some getting used to.

The graphics aren’t bad but not super clean. I’d say for NES standards they’re a little below average. They make up for that with the colors and the interesting designs though. You won’t forget some of these robots very quickly so I give the devs credit for that. Again I also give them credit for having an actual story since that’s pretty awesome and you don’t see it very often.

Overall, This is a decent mech fighting game. To be honest there is little reason to play it more nowadays with so many other fighters on the block but it doesn’t take away from the fact that a decent amount of effort was put into this one. Certainly more than I would have expected based on the box art and how the game’s never gotten popular. As long as you have the Switch Online you should play the game. It’s got a multiplayer mode as well so you can definitely play that for a long while before getting bored. It’s yet another game that I would consider a good proof of concept for something that could be a lot grander with a modern remake.

Overall 6/10

F-Zero 99 Review

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Nintendo likes to keep you guessing with new titles appearing out of nowhere and so it was finally F-Zero’s turn. I’d been waiting a long while for this franchise to be revived although admittedly I didn’t picture it in this context. It’s a pretty fun title to be sure but at the same time it’s not exactly the next big thing. It’s worth a quick play. You’ll have some fun here but the limitations quickly start to show themselves as this game becomes repetitive very quickly. I don’t think it lends itself as well to the format as say Mario or Tetris does. Both of those were basically built for the genre!

When you start the game you have to play through 4 tutorial races which feels like a bit much to me because the gameplay isn’t exactly hard to grasp. You’re driving through the course and just have to watch out for the other racers. You do a race where it’s just you, then with 10 people, then with 50 people, and then with 100. So a bit excessive but maybe they really thought people would be a little unsure of what to do afterwards. I won’t fault them for it but I would have definitely lessened this.

Once you finish that there are 3 modes to play from here. Quick race, special race, and grand prix. Grand prix is only active at some points which is 3-5 races in a row against opponents and boosting up your score. The special race can cost you a flag and you get points too. For now I don’t see much incentive to play those instead of normal race but I wouldn’t be surprised if you unlock more collectibles that way. I ended up unlocking 2-3 through level ups but you can check the requirements for each collectible in the shop. Some are about boosting a lot, racing a lot, just playing a lot, etc. Getting all of them should take you a very long time. I saw one that doesn’t unlock until you reach level 90 which is serious stuff.

I do like the collectibles though because it gives you a reason to keep on playing past the initial hour or two. If these weren’t there then there would seriously be no incentive to keep on playing. At the end of the day it will be based on how much you like the gameplay but even then, it’s very limited so that can’t be enough to keep you satisfied forever. Put it this way, there are around 5-6 courses right now. Sure they will probably add more as the game goes on but that means you will be playing on the same maps over and over again very quickly. In my brief time I already played on the same stage 4-5 times and I didn’t play all that long.

Also with the pure craziness of 100 racers on screen at the same time, you can expect a whole lot of bumping and shoving so you are very rarely able to race without interruption. It is fun at first of course since that’s the whole novelty factor but very quickly you will be wishing that you could just race and have fun on your own. That feeling of getting past everyone and just having the skies to yourself? Not going to happen for any period of time in this game since all of the cars are the same speed. Even if you make it to first temporarily, someone will get a super boost and speed away on the road above you.

Your skill is still rewarded of course as saving time around the corners and maximizing your boosts is crucial. You can expect RNG to hurt you sometimes but not enough where it matters. I was averaging spots in the top 40 and I imagine experienced F Zero players will probably be able to reach top 20 consistently. It’s all about learning the ins and outs of the game after all. The controls may be simple to learn but mastering them will be another story.

I am curious to see how long this game lasts. I can’t picture it having the huge success of titles like Fortnite or Among Us but hopefully it does well enough for Nintendo to keep on going for a while. Then we can get the AAA F-Zero game that I’ve been waiting for. So I’m rooting for this title even if I probably won’t be lasting too long on this one. It’s a fun game and the graphics are nice and retro. If I was more hooked on the gameplay then I’d probably be all in but I feel like the most addicting gameplay styles come in later on. For example picture Booksquirm 99 from Mario Party? That would be so much fun.

Overall, F-Zero 99 is a fun game and it’s cool that Nintendo just suddenly dropped it on everyone. That said, I still want a true F-Zero sequel to replace the old one so this better not take that place. There’s so much you could do with a futuristic racer like this after all and I need to see the end result of that. Jump into F-Zero 99 while you can because these 99 games tend to just vanish after a while. If you have the Switch Online there’s no reason not to jump into this free adventure.

Overall 6/10

Fifa 20 Review

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It’s time for another Fifa title but I have to admit that this one doesn’t really have anything super new and exciting. It’s basically the same as Fifa 19 although I suppose you could say that for pretty much any sport game with its sequels. They just don’t innovate much so you either love what they have in store for you or you don’t. I’d still like to see a more dynamic level of gameplay like Mario strikers but a lot of people do like these games so they’re doing something right.

There are a ton of modes here as expected from training to minigames and of course the actual thing. I went right into the main game mode to try my luck and at least I did force a pretty solid 0-0 loss in sudden death, a 3-1 win, and then a 1-5 loss. So the results varied quite a bit, it’s hard for me to recreate any of my goals. I would say I haven’t yet mastered the patterns so I would need some serious training in Blue Lock to actually get to that point. Still, I gotta say that scoring feels pretty good so that’s better than in some of the previous games where I couldn’t score at all.

One thing I definitely do like a lot about the game is how during the loading screens you can practice your shooting and running. It gives you something to do while the actual match is being prepared and absolutely destroys having a traditional loading screen. This is really the way to go without a doubt. Even in the drills I found it hard to score though. I’d say my main issue with the game is it’s very much simulation style but for that reason you can’t turn and move the ball as you would want too. I’d like to be able to turn on a dime and really control where I’ve got the ball.

The older games all feel a lot smoother on this even if perhaps they were less realistic. This one just takes things too far into the other direction. Ah well, there is a lot of depth to the gameplay with the controls so you can absolutely get better and better if you put the time in. Train hard enough and learn all of the moves and you should be in a really good spot. It’s just no walk in the park so you will definitely need to apply yourself if you want to pull this off.

The graphics are naturally very solid. You can tell right away that this is a very modern game with top of the line visuals. There isn’t much of a memorable soundtrack at all but that’s fine for a sports title. You will be totally focused on the match itself anyway. So I would say that EA did not hold back on the technical elements and to their credit, they never really do. They always go all out with the sport titles and in exchange they get tons of sales so it is truly a win/win for all parties involved. That’s the best way to go.

We’ll see if Fifa 21 shakes things up. I’m definitely a few years behind on this franchise but I always like waiting a few years on these compared to Madden which I like to get a lot sooner. There’s just less of a rush and it’s a huge incentive to be able to get a game for around 5-10 bucks instead of 60 right? I suppose in a way I’m supporting these games in churning out more by doing this but ultimately it’s super negligible since I’m really just picking up a used copy which someone else already got. If they ever make a true Mario strikers that plays like the original? Then that would definitely be a different story!

Overall, Fifa 20 may not change anything up but it’s still a fairly high effort soccer game. There’s enough of a foundation here where it probably doesn’t have to add anything for 20 years and it will still be getting tons of sales and recognition. That’s just how big Fifa is as a brand and how effective it is. Nothing is stopping EA at this point. It’s still not super fun for me against computers but I think playing some live games would be entertaining enough even if I would probably get smoked. I like to think I would absorb some good techniques from playing a real opponent as there’s only so much you can learn from a CPU. The game is really cheap so you may as well check it out.

Overall 6/10

Temtem Review

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It’s time for another super long Switch game in Temtem. This one’s basically a Pokemon homage for the modern audience. In some ways it definitely surpasses Pokemon like the fact that the story can get a lot more out there but on the other hand it does have some extra issues like endless battles that do bog it down somewhat. So it’s a good game but not nearly as good as it could have been.

The game starts off simply enough with your character getting his first Temtem. He can finally travel the world and fight all of the Dojo Masters. Unfortunately his journey is interrupted by the fact that a big terrorist organization is making a move on the planet. They are building some kind of super Temtem to take over the world. The lead will have to stop these guys while also improving his skills, but what can one kid do?

Basically this is like the plot of the original Pokemon game but with a few additions and twists. Additionally the game definitely has fun being really self aware about the whole thing. You are often given 3 dialogue options, usually a nice one, a mean one, and a random one. I certainly had fun playing around with the responses. Note that this doesn’t actually change the story or anything like that but at the same time it does give the lead some personality. Also the characters do actually react to what you’re saying which is nice. In Harvestella this didn’t really happen as the two options were almost always pretty much identical.

I wouldn’t say that most of the characters are all that memorable but I did like the final boss because of how insane he got and I also enjoyed the general. The rival Max started out good but basically fell off a cliff. Where the game gets a bit dicey is it tries to be as edgy and modern as possible which works in some ways like this game having a body count and you getting to fight unwinnable battles. Where it doesn’t work is with the game getting rather PC and shoving a bunch of iffy romances at your face. The game constantly trying to ship me with the rival was pretty awful. At least there’s always an option for you to tell him to back off or just be really mean to keep it from happening but making that a main plot point was definitely not a good idea. A ton of the NPCs you beat up also have romance drama going on, at least two being story plots you can’t skip so the game wanted you to absolutely know where it stood on the gender politics. It’d be nice if all of that could have been sidelined so I can focus on the actual game!

To the rest of the plot, at least the lead actually has real character and can talk. That’s a big departure from the classic Pokemon games where this was absolutely not the case. Even now Pokemon doesn’t really do that and I think it will be years before it’s ready to be more of a full RPG the way this one was. The game doesn’t want to invite too many comparisons to Pokemon beyond all of the inevitable ones so it does go and switch all of the type advantages. Because of this it took me forever to learn them and even by the end I was mostly working off of memory from when I fought the Temtems. I still couldn’t tell you most of the types.

As this is one of those games where you are always online, the game is constantly saving. That’s good because the game crashed several times where I definitely would have lost some data but fortunately in this game when you restart it takes you to the exact point where it crashed. Literally if you’re mid battle you will respawn on the same turn within the same battle. So that was definitely cool. You also have a portable Pokemon center of sorts which you can use to recover all of your health once after every poke center visit. This is huge because otherwise I would have to be going there constantly.

As I mentioned earlier there are tons and tons of fights and they generally keep really close pace with your Temtem. So you can probably beat maybe 2 of them before you have to go and heal. So with this item you can do 4 fights before you have to reset. There is no EXP share or anything like that so most likely by the end of the game you will have 2 super powerful Temtem and the other 4 would be fodders. I basically resorted to just catching my last ones in the wild since they would at least be level 70 that way but my main two were both over level 90. This made the final fight tough since there’s a timer and I had to keep on reviving the main two but it worked out.

You need to watch out for the fact that money is hard to come by from Pokemon encounters though. In fact I think you don’t get any money from those so you need to fight with trainers a lot and that money goes really quickly. It makes losing really high stakes since the game saves so often and then you don’t have enough cash to buy more revives. You can always grind out more levels of course if it gets to be too much though. Fortunately I didn’t have to much after the first chunk of the game, for the most part it stays manageable. Just pick your main two Temtem carefully so that you have a balanced form of attack. I used a thunder type and a bug type which covers most matchups.

The soundtrack is a bit more on the forgettable side so you likely won’t be remembering too many themes. The graphics are also not super impressive, they do the job but ultimately I wouldn’t say that they’re high tier or anything. This could pass for a much older game than on the Switch but it feels like it’s an indie title to an extent so this isn’t exactly coming with a Mario budget or anything like that. It could have probably put some more effort into it, but it’s not bad at least.

One thing this game really lacked was a better fast travel system. There are large parts of the game where you’re running from place to place and it just takes a very long time. Being able to teleport to a town once you have been there would be huge. The main Pokemon games have always done this so Temtem deciding not to bring that feature along was a big mistake. Maybe they thought it would feel too similar but there are tons of ways around that and most RPGs have fast travel so it shouldn’t have been a big deal. In short, this game’s biggest weakness is easily that it is missing a ton of quality of life features. It feels a lot grindier than it needs to be with all of the constant fighting and that means there is less time to just enjoy the story even if the story could have also been better. There are a lot of elements that I liked but also things left on the table. For example the climax is a huge missed opportunity. Lets just say that you’re expecting one more huge battle at the end the whole time and then it just doesn’t happen. I was really surprised about that. It may have also been a budget thing but it was absolutely not a good idea.

Overall, Temtem is a good game. It’s held back a bit by how hard the game is being drawn out towards the end though. There are just so many battles. They may not be super tough but you still have to go back to the healing station each time after fighting them and this gets old quick. Especially because the minion spawn rate is rather high too so you have to be running away a lot. This is a game where you will need to have a book or something with you while you are playing for all of the dead time. It’s a turn based combat game after all so there are a lot of animations and the battles tend to be a little on the long side. It could use some Asdivine Hearts quality of life features to cut out animations and speed things up if you ask me. Still if you want a Pokemon type game with a story that can go a bit harder than the main games then this should be right up your alley. It’s not like there are a ton of Pokemon type games out there either so you need to grab each one that you see.

Overall 6/10

Mission Impossible: Operation Surma Review

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It’s time for a quick look at a Mission Impossible game. You may be wondering why you’ve never heard of this one before right? I guess it sort of just got swept under the rug. It’s actually a decent game but to be honest I wouldn’t call it much more than that. The game is fairly short and some of the mechanics aren’t explained very well so you will have to take a while to get used to them. Throw in more of a story and this could have turned the corner a little better. Still, for a few bucks you could do worse and it’s fun while you’re playing through it.

The game starts off with an evil group causing mayhem and you have to stop them! Ethan will be relying on his support staff to get him through but can they really save the world? Honestly the story’s super forgettable. The main villain here is your average suit and can’t really fight. With only 5 levels it’s not like there’s a lot of time for a big story anyway right? It’s for the GBA so I have to give the game some leeway on the lack of cutscenes but I do think they could have been more imaginative with the character portraits and such.

As for the gameplay, this is mainly an overhead shooter. You run through the levels and blast anyone who gets in your way. Each stage has several objectives for you to complete like hacking a computer or protecting someone. So you have to shoot your way through the levels but also while keeping in mind that sometimes you need stealth. If you hide in the shadows then the guards will often forget about you. They have no peripheral vision either so you can run at them from just out of eyesight and karate chop them into the ground. All stealth moves are 1 hit KO techniques after all.

Then you have gadgets which is where the game gets a bit rough. You can deactivate cameras and mines but I never figured out how to even detect the mines. Felt a bit random the whole time. For the cameras, you had to turn the scanner off and on while running around a lot to get it to work. I suspect this is not the intended method but I couldn’t figure out how to make this work so eh….that’ll do. I got the cameras off which is the important thing. If you don’t do that then you end up being attacked by a whole squad of elite soldiers who are incredibly hard to fight off. Trust me it’s not a situation you want to find yourself in.

With enough experimentation and dying you will eventually get the hang of the game. Because of no tutorials and how the mechanics don’t make sense, the first level will by far be the toughest one you encounter. It also feels like the longest by far. The game is only a few hours long and I want to say level 1 out of 5 probably took about half of the runtime. Yes, level 1 was that serious! One pro tip that the game won’t tell you is that to use the grenades, sniper, and other ranged abilities like the tracker you have to hold R and then aim them out. I died quite a few times while trying to figure that out.

If the game had more polish then I think this really would have gone a long way. Trust me a little dab of polish really does help in every area from graphics to gameplay. This game felt like it was thrown together rather quickly. It doesn’t take away from the fact that the actual shooting part of the gameplay is fun and there are a lot of other positives but you know there are much better games in the same genre. This game just didn’t try to surpass its limits and was content just being good.

There isn’t really any replay value so what you see is what you get. I am glad that the levels had save points so you didn’t have to start from scratch though. That would have been absolutely brutal. Although as a lack of quality of life there is no save point when starting a level so you have to go through level select instead of clicking load game which is a little rough. It doesn’t really make sense but hey it’s not a big deal.

Overall, Mission Impossible definitely deserves better as far as video games go. I think you could really make some incredible titles based on the franchise with the right studio. A mix of action, stealth, and adventure? Yes this would really be a hit. In the meantime if you really want to see how the games go then it’s not a bad idea to jump in and check this one out. The low price helps a lot and I do think you will have some fun here. It just won’t last long and you will be ready for the next adventure in a flash.

Overall 6/10

Fifa 19 Review

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Fifa is hardly my favorite sports game by EA but it is impressive how long this one has gone for. At this point it’s definitely here to stay and I’ll continue to pick up the games. I just wish it would go for more of an arcade feel over simulation since scoring is a lot of fun. More high scoring games would equal more excitement all around right? A end score of 2-1 may be fairly realistic to the real game but it’s just not explosive enough. Of course the bigger a fan you are of real soccer, the more you will appreciate this game.

The graphics are on point as always. The game looks really nice and there are a lot of tunes but none that really stand out. You’re here more for the gameplay anyway so that’s fine. As for the gameplay, well it’s very smooth which is good. The controls and rules all mirror the real game and the goalie doesn’t play around. You absolutely cannot just run up to the goal and score, even on easy mode. So I appreciate that as it forces you to use your teammates but I dare say the field doesn’t feel wide enough. Whenever you approach the goal is feels like you are completely stuck and either have to pass back or wait and buy some time until the goal is open.

This is where the game’s pacing ends up dying out because nothing’s really going on. The games would feel rather long as a result and while I wouldn’t want them to add super powers or items to the game, I think it couldn’t hurt to either expand the field or make less players be on the field at once. I want to be able to really test my skills of manipulating the ball in the open field and see what kind of shot I can make.

Part of this is a simple skill issue of course but I’ve seen soccer done masterfully like in Mario Strikers. Now there was a top tier soccer game that really got me pumped about the sport. I could play that game all day and it was always super satisfying. On the bright side you can get this game for cheap and it basically has unlimited replay value. You can keep on playing this game over and over and over again without any issues.

There are online modes, practice, exhibition, franchise, etc. There are quite a lot of modes here so I have to give the game kudos there. Sport games are also built for replay value with how you can challenge someone locally or online and have a lot of fun. It’s one of the great strengths of the genre. While I have my issues with the scoring, I can still see how you would sink in hundreds of hours with this as you learn through the game.

By the same token there isn’t a whole lot to say about this one so my review’s going to be a bit shorter than usual. There are only so many ways you can describe the game of soccer so feel free to check out my reviews of the previous years for a more detailed summary. I’ll just begin to wrap this up by saying that passing is something you should be doing a whole lot of. Trust me, it opens up the goal and generally makes things much easier. If you try scoring on your own…well I doubt you’ll be doing any scoring. The goalie is much too tricky for that and you’ll have the ball stolen real quick if you just try to run for a while.

Overall, Fifa 19 is more of the same just like how each NBA and Madden title are basically the same game over and over. You either like the game by now or you don’t but it’s not introducing any crazy mechanics or anything like that. This is a very straight forward game that knows exactly what it is. It’s not trying to pull the wool over your eyes or be too tricky for its own good. I’d like a fun cinematic story mode about saving the world in one of these titles but I’m not exactly the target audience here. If you want to play some good soccer there aren’t many alternatives right now so I’d say you should pick up this Fifa title.

Overall 6/10

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Review

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It’s time to sit down and have a difficult discussion about Tears of the Kingdom. I know that you’ve heard from just about every source how this is the game of the year, one of the best games of all time, etc. Well I’m here to let you down gently because it did not reach those heights. I would argue that the first game actually defeats it overall. Tears of the Kingdom ultimately tried to be too ambitious and tried too many things with a lot of them not working out. That’s the big problem here and I say this as someone who has always been a big Legend of Zelda fan. It just wasn’t ready for this and I think the series should go back to the really big story based titles like Skyward Sword. The open world format is cool but it needs extensive fixes.

Well first off the story starts with Zelda and Link exploring some ruins. Unfortunately this does go very well and Zelda goes missing, lost into the winds. Link wakes up on the sky islands and needs to find a way to get going. He must save Princess Zelda from Ganondorf who has returned to destroy the world. Link will need to meet up with various friends and allies as he reawakens the Master Sword and saves the day but can he do this?

Lets talk about some of my issues with the game. First up, they kept the whole breakable weapons mechanic. So every few swings your weapons are going to keep on shattering. Over and over and over again. Yes you now have the ability to fuse weapons with objects which is a new mechanic to the game but this only delays the inevitable as they will both be destroyed before long. The only exception is the Master Sword which still breaks but it will eventually regenerate. This is a mechanic that should have been removed by now because all it really does is force some extra length into the game instead of just letting you have fun. I don’t know about you but I want to have fun and I want to have fun now!!

Then there is the new Ultrahand mechanic to which a large part of the game is built around. With this you can lift up almost any object in the game. This helps a lot with puzzles and such as you jump from platform to platform. The thing is, it’s not a mechanic that is super fun to use. I think it could have been in small doses like using it once in a while but having to do it constantly is something else. Building objects and such is good fun at time but the game is too focused on having you do it all the time. As it is you don’t have much time to just play the game.

You maybe fight someone once every few hours but for the mot part you’re doing a lot of running and map exploring. I managed to scope out almost the whole Depths can a fairly early period in the game and likewise opened up the lighthouses. It is really good to be able to see the map at least and they didn’t exaggerate about the overall size of the kingdom. The game is absolutely massive and it would take forever to run from one side to the other. It is absolutely impressive and I’ll give the egame credit there. They just should have skipped the overall gimmicks so all of the different styles would be gone and you’re just having fun with combat.

The actual combat is smooth but it feels like that is rarely something you need to do. Aside from the occasional boss you don’t have much incentive to take down the minions. You can get some material for beating them but not much. So you’re just going to be doing a lot of running instead and probably getting stuck at some point by those puzzles. I certainly got stuck plenty of times. In the end it took me 55 hours to complete the game and I feel like a good chunk of that was running around in circles because I didn’t know where to go.

There are a ton of sidequests and bonus content to access but most of them are behind puzzles as well so get ready to try and figure those out. Additionally don’t forget that you have to complete a bunch of shrines to get the stars needed to level up your health and stamina. The game may try to present itself as a rue open world where you can make any choices you want but that isn’t always the case. For example there is one boss that you can’t reach unless you get past a stamina door and to do that you had to buy at least 5 stamina upgrades. I wanted to max out hearts and that’s what I had been doing but this forced me to change gears.

Also I believe the open world is to blame for this game not having much in the story. After each temple they play the same cutscene over and over again and just zoom in on a different character depending on the temple. It means that the game froze the progression right here and that’s no good. By the time you get to the end of the game it really doesn’t feel like there was a ton of story that you got through.

At least the climax was a lot of fun though. Lin’s battle stance where he gets ready and the Master Sword lights up was brilliant. That was a great moment all around and is exactly what you like to see in a AAA title. Link has been through a lot but when the going gets tough he is always ready to hang in there. The battle involves a lot of dodging and parrying so you do need to really be on point here. Especially since I had used up all of my hearts earlier thanks to the gloom. I had to beat the final boss and the various phases without taking any hits to my hearts. It took me over 2 hours of trying over and over again but eventually I did manage to succeed.

That was easily the highlight of the game for me because I did feel good in conquering that challenge. I’d argue that the game design wasn’t the best to put you in such a rough circumstance since I feel like most wouldn’t be able to pull that off. Of course there is extra gear and food that you could have gotten to avoid that which is worth noting. The game really wants you to stick around and try all of the content so you can go into the final boss well prepared. It’s a noble goal and I know there is a lot to the game but at the end of the day there just isn’t enough to keep you here. Once you complete the game then you are likely out.

The soundtrack is definitely more on the forgettable side but I suppose I wouldn’t say that it’s bad. You just don’t feel like you will need to Youtube the themes afterwards. The graphics are definitely great here. I would have liked to have had Link’s classic green tunic throughout the game though. Lately it feels like that costume doesn’t appear enough even though it’s the best one. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere in the mode but I was hoping I would get it for the final boss.

Nobody can say that the game is short though. 55 hours just to complete the campaign is really impressive and in terms of overall content I wouldn’t be surprised if this is around 100-150 hours. There is so much to do here. The game can also be fun when you are just relaxing and not having to do anything. The problem is that the game reminds you of what’s coming all the time. Just when you’re unwinding the game throws another puzzle at you or some kind of cryptic clue. You simply can’t escape it.

This all sounds pretty negative so just for the record the reason why I would still call the game good is because the gameplay itself is good. The combat is on point and I enjoy the parrying system. The characters are good and the story is solid when it appears with a cinematic once in a while. You will get real annoyed on many occasions and will need to put the game down for a while since long batches can hurt the experience but at the end of the day it’s a game that you won’t regret buying.

Overall, Tears of the Kingdom is one of the weaker Legend of Zelda games for me but I will applaud it on really trying to be as ambitious as possible. It is a huge game but the gimmicks just ended up bringing the experience down. Sometimes less is more and just letting me fight the enemies without having to worry about things would have been great. I want more story and more action next time. Throw those things into the game and I would enjoy it a whole lot more. I would still recommend the game if you want to travel through the kingdom and have fun. I’m confident that you will have a good time here but you will also get irritated at times so definitely keep that in mind. The game is very much a rollercoaster.

Overall 6/10

The Lego Movie 2 Review

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It’s time to dive into the Lego Movie game. I haven’t played a whole lot of Lego games. They’re fairly safe platformers that don’t try to be too ambitious and give you a good time but at the same time they never seem to really be able to match the big titles. There are so many of them that it could make for a good theme someday but as it is this would be the weakest one that I’ve played. It’s not bad by any means, but as I said it’s just rather basic.

The game starts off with the Lego world being invaded by all kinds of crazy enemies. Only the two main characters from the first movie can try to save the day since Batman and the rest of the heroes have all been scattered to different planets. They must be found and assembled before taking the fight to the villains but it won’t be easy. Do they really have what it takes this time? The game doesn’t go much more into the plot than that though and most of the story only appears very suddenly during the final cutscene which was an interesting move. I can tell you that I had not seen this before but ultimately it felt a bit lazy. They could have easily tried to throw in some more cinematics and a plot to this. The main character doesn’t even get to speak outside of grunts because there isn’t much to say although the heroine talks a lot.

Let me jump into my first main issue with the game which are the unskippable cutscenes. Right when you boot up the game you are greeted with a very long intro that can not be skipped and this happens every time you turn the game on. Then during the game whenever there is a tutorial you have to listen to a full speech and there are a lot of tutorials. This is an easy quality of life miss for the game since in this day and age there should never be so many moments that are unskippable. You should always give the player some way to get around that because if you don’t then that’s just going to be annoying.

It was a rough first impression. When it comes to the gameplay I can’t say that I have very many issues though. You use the legos to create objects and move through the stage. It’s all rather easy to understand and there are less characters with specific abilities than in other Lego games so that helps in keeping track of things. There are even some boss fights here which can be fun as you have to create specific objects to defeat them. They don’t always explain everything so get ready for some guessing but on the whole it’s handled well. I would have liked more bosses though.

The game is very short. You should be able to beat it in a few hours, maybe 4-5. There is some replay value in trying to get the Platinum trophy though. I’m not sure exactly what that entails just yet but I think I’m going to aim for that one. It seems like it would be a fun little thing to do that wouldn’t take very long. It does help to make the game a bit more worth it and the price is fairly low so you also have that to consider. If this was full price then I would be a little harsher but for the price it’s a decent value.

It’s hard to really gauge the graphics since the Lego style will never look amazing or anything like that but it’s clear enough. I was able to always know what was going on and keep moving from there. The soundtrack is more on the generic side and I don’t think that you will really love any of the tracks or even remember them to be honest. It’s very by the numbers in that respect and you can tell that the game is just playing it safe on every turn. Nothing wrong with that but you’ll never be a great game by doing that. You have to go a little farther and try something dynamic.

That sums up the game in a nutshell. You’ll have a good amount of fun the whole time if you just want a fun little platformer to play but there are so many better ones out there that you will never quite feel like this one is a title you would search out. For some things the game does well, I like the map/compass. It always tells you where you should be going and I appreciate that. The collectibles are clearly labeled and all of the menus are very easy to understand. You could put this game down for years and I bet you would still understand exactly what was going on after that. This is absolutely one of those games and some of the level designs are also decent. I actually liked the DC world where it’s just a bunch of houses and roads. It felt like something out of a classic Gamecube game which was great but other levels were more on the generic side.

Overall, The Lego Movie 2 is a decent game but it just doesn’t do anything special enough for me to call it very good. It ends up being stuck right on the edge instead of really going anywhere. If you’re looking for a little game to keep you entertained then you can’t go wrong here. That being said, you can do better so keep that in mind. Buying one of the main Lego games like Batman or Star Wars would also end up giving you a lot more content but hey maybe you should go and check them all out. The prices for the Lego games actually aren’t that bad nowadays.

Overall 6/10

Nickelodeon Kart Racers Review

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I got this game almost for free thanks to some Gamestop points and a gift card so now I finally get to see what Nick is up to in the racing circuit. Unfortunately I can confirm that they weren’t up to a whole lot because the game is really not as impressive as you would expect. There just isn’t a whole lot to this game so it ends up feeling rather barren the whole time. There isn’t any real personality and it’s lacking in proper sound effects and replay value. Ultimately it doesn’t seem like it was quite ready for the challenge of trying to be the next Mario Kart but there is potential for sequel games.

When you jump in you’ve really just got two main options, free racing and the grand prixs. The gameplay is your classic 3D racing environment and it’s very much like Mario. You can drift with the R2 and L2 buttons and you pick up items along the track. Use them to smash up the competition and get to the goal. Of course the objective is to finish the race first and then you get the maximum amount of points. There are 4 races per cup but the final ones go up to 8. Each race is fairly quick though so you should blast through them. The difficulty level is also fairly basic. There is a lot of rubberbanding here though so when you’re ahead of the opponents be prepared for them to suddenly make a historic comeback to reach you.

I recommend keeping a boosting item on hand but don’t actually use it until you are close to the goal. That’s the best way to make sure that everything works out. It will work against any sudden surprises. The items have a decent amount of variety so I’ll give the game credit for having a ton of different items at the ready. It would have been real easy to have just had a few items so I appreciate their going the extra mile. I will also say that there are a reasonable amount of different stages here although they do tend to blend together a whole lot. I think it’s because of the slime that hits you in every level, it’s easy for the stages to start all looking the same once they’re covered in slime like that.

In terms of replay value I would say there is a good amount here because aside from the cups you also have unlockables in the form of each car part. You can get engines, wheels, tires, etc. There are a whole lot to buy and it takes a while to earn any money. The easiest way is to level up by winning a lot of races and I imagine that this will get more difficult the more you do it as well. So I expect this would be a fairly long grind by the end of it but it is nice to equip the parts and really feel the boost by the end. Each speed part definitely makes a difference when going up against the computers.

What this game is really lacking though are character voices, more cars, and more content in general. Customizing parts is nice but how about just giving us brand new cars each time instead? I think that would end up feeling a lot more fulfilling. Additionally I would also be on board with some kind of minigame mode similar to Mario Kart where you have another objective besides just the race. That could be do a lot to just make the game feel a little more expansive. Of course another big one is having more than 12 characters. That’s just not a big roster, particularly for a PS4 game. You feel like they could have done a whole lot more with this. I’d say Spongebob and TMNT individually could easily have way more than 12 characters when you think about it.

I think that would really be enough. At its core a racing game doesn’t have to be super fancy after all. Just put some wheels on the car and get us moving. That’ll be enough to do the trick in the end and everything else is about making it stand out. As a developer you want to be able to answer the question of: “Why should I play this instead of another racing game?” with some kind of definitive mechanic. It can be characters, fun levels, etc but you have to have something and right now I don’t think this one does have much of anything. I’ve played car games on the computer that felt like they had more depth but of course that could be my nostalgia goggles.

Overall, This was a good racing game but a bit more basic than I expected. It’s closer to the level of M&M Racing than Mario Kart which is a bit odd since you would expect this to be a big AAA title. That being said, I still did have fun. It’s just the kind of game that you would be having a lot of fun in short term rather than long term. If I bought this one day 1 then I’d probably have been far less pleased with the end result. For a few bucks though you can race as your favorite characters and earn a few trophies. I know there are 1-2 sequels out there so at some point I’ll grab them to see how they go. Who knows, if one of those adds a story mode it could really end up being the next big thing and that would be a lot of fun. Give me a quality story!

Overall 6/10

Street Fighter Duel Review

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Street Fighter came out with a new mobile game recently so I jumped in right away to give it a go. This is the only idle game I’ve played since that first Godzilla mobile game which I’d say nailed the concept a little better. Ultimately I don’t think idle games are for me or rather you would need it to either be an incredible franchise that I’m invested in or also have a big story mode to back it up. I think idle games will generally be decently fun and certainly super addicting but the ceiling is way lower than with most other genres. I wouldn’t call this game better than good but it’s still not bad. I’m actually writing this review in part so I can finally delete the game because otherwise it does eat up time and there’s only so many hours in a day.

The story is the minimum you need for this to be called a story and you can tell that there isn’t a focus on it. Basically mecha versions of various characters have appeared and we need to take them down asap! This also leads to a tournament being set up for some reason. Every 40 levels you will get a quick cutscene as you beat up a character who appears and that’s about it. I cleared close to 200 levels and the format never changed except for the chapters getting a little longer each time. At first they were around 36 levels and by the end they were 40 levels and more. It is really impressive that the game launched with more than 1600 levels though, I have to give the devs credit there.

Additionally I want to underscore that the game is not lazy by any means. Yes the story is but the rest of the game has a lot of content and various modes which is what people are playing it for. That is the impressive part to the point where there are so many modes that it is hard to keep track. I was still unlocking new modes as I went through the 5th chapter. There are so many areas to keep track of and I think the intent is for you to be a little overwhelmed. It can be tempting to spend some money so the game runs itself to an even higher degree but resist the urge! By definition an idle game will eventually give you the resources that you need in order to complete it, you just have to be patient.

Let me go into more detail on this. Remember those facebook gardening game? That’s the best example. As you go to sleep and keep the game off, your fighters are training and beating enemies constantly. This gives you EXP, orbs, money, and every other resource in the game. It caps out at 19 hours so make sure you at least log in once every 19 hours to collect the points so they start up again. Of course then you’re tempted to do the daily log ins, check each of the many modes to get those logins, etc. That’s where the game gets you. Yes you don’t have to do those things but it’s sort of hard not to while you’re there since each individual task only takes a few seconds, maybe 2-3 minutes max. But by the time you’ve done this for every single menu and mode suddenly you’ve been playing for 40 minutes. Then there are the levels. You can turn on “consecutive challenge” which will have all the levels keep breezing by but it still takes some time as you watch the characters take down the enemies.

You don’t really have to “play” the game at all and just watch the computers take care of business. You can take direct control to click on the special moves but the computers handle all the movement and normal attacks. You are basically the coach here and that’s not a bad thing but it is an acquired taste. I don’t think this kind of game will be for everyone. Hey, I found it addicting so I would say that it is doing something right but in general I love stats so seeing all the numbers going up and everything is great. You have to know when to cut out early though and after beating so many levels I figured I have the game a fair shake.

The graphics are on point and while the soundtrack is forgettable you can just turn on some background music. It’s not like you really need the game’s actual audio for checking in on your characters and materials. Ultimately you can do that in complete silence if you want although I feel like it’s always a bit comforting to have some kind of music on. I usually talk about replay value but it goes without saying that it is basically infinite here. You can keep playing for as long as you have time and if you opt to just log in once every 19 hours for a few minutes that is a valid strategy. Honestly they give you so many resources for free that you will be rich if you can just hold out for a few days without using it. You should be able to dominate all of the single player content the game gives you as long as you just give it some time.

Overall, I can tell you right now that the extent to which I covered the menus, modes, and overall game can’t possibly do the title justice to the sheer amount of content here. So if you are looking for a good idle game then this is a good bet. It will take you hours just to understand all of the mechanics and there are so many items to re-roll and develop that you should be busy for a very long time. This is definitely not a title that you pick up and master in an instant. I would just say to watch out just because I feel the risk of getting addicted here is much greater than any ordinary game. There’s something about it that just feels really aggressive but as long as your strength of will is good then you will have a good time here. I see this game being quite profitable so I expect it should be around for a long while. Maybe it will help fund a new Street Fighter anime or movie at some point.

Overall 6/10