Showing posts with label 8.5/10. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 8.5/10. Show all posts

29 Nov 2024

Taito Milestones 3 Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 "A Glorious Collection of Classics" πŸ‘Ύ @TAITO @TaitoCorp #Retrogaming

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Taito Milestones 3 Nintendo Switch Review
The third entry in Taito’s ‘Milestone’ series, this selection of solid gold feels the strongest overall in terms of the games included here.

The ten games included are Bubble Bobble (1986), Rainbow Islands (1987), Rastan Saga (1987), Rastan Saga 2 (1988), Dead Connection (1992), Cadash (1989), Champion Wrestler (1989), Runark (1990), Warrior Blade (1991), and Thunder Fox (1990).

8 Nov 2024

Gori: Cuddly Carnage Xbox Review 8.5/10 "Gory, gruesome, and great fun!" πŸ˜ΌπŸ›Ή @GoriCarnage @AngryDemonGames @wiredp #IndieGame #GameDev

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Gori: Cuddly Carnage Xbox Review
I’d been following the development of Gori: Cuddly Carnage for a while, and was hoping that the promised blend of cutesy innocence and uber-violence, combined with the neon, graphic-novel visuals would scratch my turbo-arcade itch...and yes, yes it has.

1 Nov 2024

Nikoderiko: The Magical World Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 "A highlight reel of classic late ‘90s platformers" 🐲 @GamesVea #IndieGame #GameDev

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Nikoderiko: The Magical World
I’d never heard of Nikoderiko: The Magical World before receiving it for review, but within seconds of playing, I knew exactly what treats I was in for. This is very much a game that tips its hat to titles such as Donkey Kong Country, and Crash Bandicoot, as we follow the adventurous mongoose duo Niko and Luna as they try to retrieve a magical artefact from the devious Grimbald and his army of ‘Cobrings’. 

3 Sept 2024

Lakeview Cabin Collection PS5 Review 8.5/10 “A Love Letter To Classic Horror” πŸ”ͺ🏚️ #indieGame #IndieGameDev #GameDev

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Lakeview Cabin Collection PS5 Review
Friday the 13th, Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all giant staples of the slasher genre. Large, masked angry men on a mission to gut mostly teenagers - but they are happy to brutalise pretty much anyone. 

Whilst watching one of these films we've all thought, ‘what a stupid man, don’t drop your weapon, and then go into the basement blindfolded after just having sex while telling everyone “I’ll be right back’, that's a great way to get killed! 

I would definitely know what to do if a hulking, masked, machete-wielding maniac appeared suddenly in my house, I’m super smart and would not panic, or give into my fear, I would 100 percent survive, and would wipe the floor with those stupid hulking maniacs.

25 Jul 2024

Abathor Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 "A golden throwback to 16-bit co-op classics" ⚔️ @Abathor_Game @JanduSoft

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Abathor Nintendo Switch Review
I’ve covered hundreds of games during my time at The Might GF, and some can pop up seemingly out of nowhere and blow me away, some can be stewing for months and months, as I hungrily follow every dev post on social media, my appetite whetting ever further...and then the final game gets slopped on the floor in front of me in a steaming mess, leaving me smoking enigmatically up at the night sky, wondering what could have been as Bohren & Der Club of Gore play sexily in the background, the minimalist jazz soundtrack to my burgeoning disappointment.

Sometimes, though – I’ll stumble across a game that looks funky – like Abathor – and each tease or online trailer will have me adjusting my tie as steam comically toots through my collar. Good. 

From the early days of its inception, developer Pow Pixel Games promised to deliver us a throwback platformer, and by Jove, did they ever!

24 May 2024

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 “Quack the case!” πŸ¦† @happybroccgames #GameDev #IndieGame

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Duck Detective The Secret Salami Review
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of short adventures that can be enjoyed of an evening, and, being a bit burned out on huge games at present, the case files of Eugene McQuacklin, duck detective extraordinaire was of huge appeal to me, I’m also a keen salami fan, so there was no way that Duck Detective: The Secret Salami couldn’t NOT be amazing, quite frankly.

18 Mar 2024

Gloomhaven XSX Review 8.5/10 "How Deep is Your (board gaming) Love?" πŸ§™‍♂️ @GloomhavenGame #IndieGame #GameDev

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Gloomhaven XSX Review
Although Gloomhaven was originally released on PC back in 2021, I wanted to cover it here on GF (on Xbox) in 2024 because I had such a rich experience with the boardgame on which it is based at one of our regular nerdy weekends away a few weeks ago. At said weekends, we tend to have several smaller, briefer games, and then a hefty one to tuck into for a good portion of each day. In this way we’ve played some pretty heavy hitters...but Gloomhaven always lurked at the back of our minds. 

6 Mar 2024

A Void Hope Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 "An enchantingly melancholic game with a world class soundtrack" πŸŒ²πŸ‘»πŸŒ³ @EldenPixels #IndieGame #GameDev

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The team that brought us Alwa’s Legacy and Alwa’s Awakening has returned with A Void Hope, a 2D narrative adventure with a soundtrack provided courtesy of the monolithic skills of Waveshaper.

The game begins with a short prologue that sets the scene; a couple exist in a world where people are becoming ‘empty’, which is to say they slowly lose their memories, before becoming ghostly, wandering figures that ‘haunt’ the city. Whilst the female is the main character of the prologue, the narrative soon focuses on the male, who begins in a forest cabin and must make his way through the city to find out what has happened to his partner, before his memories completely elude him and he becomes one of the empty.

26 Feb 2024

Persona 5 Tactica Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 “Let me in your heart again” πŸ‘¦πŸ‘§ @Atlus_West #Persona5 @TransvaalGF

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I have a very strong attachment to Persona 5, it was released at a time that I would comfortably describe as one of the worst periods of my life. Everything had fallen apart, and for a while, everything seemed a bit hopeless.

Luckily, I have been a huge fan of Persona and the Megami Tensei series as a whole since the PlayStation 2 era, so, just as everything seemed bleak - enter Persona 5, a game I had pre-ordered the special edition for, and it made me feel good. I spent 128 hours playing it with nothing but joy in my heart, it was the thing I needed - it wasn't just a distraction, it really felt like an old friend, and the story and the cast of characters really resonated with me, so every time this universe gets expanded, I’m always hopeful that special feeling will still be there.

19 Dec 2023

ASTLIBRA Revision Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 ⚔️ @_KElZO #IndieGame #GameDev

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ASTLIBRA Revision Nintendo Switch Review
ASTILIBRA Revision is a 2D action JRPG, with fantastic hack-and-slash combat and various
other elements to keep you engaged. You play as a young blonde boy who lost a dear friend
during an attack on his village, the last he saw of her was when she was near the demon that attacked, just before we cut to a block screen. He wakes up with no memory of his past or who he is, but he is greeted by a crow who eventually names itself Karon, this is the beginning of a long journey in search of answers.

31 Aug 2023

Virtua Fighter 5 --The Ultimate Showdown PS4 Review 8.5/10 "does not fail to deliver hours of button-bashing gameplay..." 🀜πŸ’₯πŸ€›

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The Fifth World Fighting Tournament has arrived, and it does not disappoint. 

Virtua Fighter 5 returns with its all-out action and fast-paced - fighting that any arcade beat em’ up fan would be proud of...

This arcade (turned-console) beat 'em' up classic harnesses all of the features you would expect from its predecessors and finds more in this all-enhanced re-master. All new downloadable content is available, such as costumes and themes, updated graphic interfaces and most of all its alternate life bar User interface graphics. If you have loved all the others, then you will enjoy this!

24 Jul 2023

Stay Out of The House PS5 Review 8.5/10 “The home of sleaze, gore, madmen, slashers, and maniacs” πŸ”ͺ🩸 @PuppetCombo #IndieGames #GameDev

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Stay Out of the House is the new game from developer Puppet Combo, now I must admit that I’m not familiar with any of their work, although when I went on to their website it pretty much told me all I need to know, this is a quote from the website –

“PUPPET COMBO is the home of sleaze, gore, madmen, slashers, and maniacs.”

Stay Out of the House is split into four sections; the first act is named Night Shift, whereby you go to your character’s night shift at a gas station. Things start out pretty normally, you clean up, deal with customers etc. the store also has an arcade cabinet in the corner which you can play when the store is quiet - oddly enough the arcade game is about a killer chasing you, and you must collect things in order to escape. I really liked this introduction it was a nice build-up of suspense, and even though you can see what’s coming, it still made me jump.

10 Jul 2023

Circuit Superstars Nintendo Switch Review 8.5 /10 "Leading The Pack" 🏎️ #IndieGames #GameDev @CircuitSUP

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As someone who has grown up enjoying the best of top-down racers through the decades, the sheer quality and depth of Original Fire Games’ Circuit Superstars completely leave a lot of others in the dust when it comes to blending seemingly superficial gameplay with incredible depth, without feeling alienating in its design and accessibility.

9 Jun 2023

Dark Quest 3 XSX Review 8.5/10 "oh go on...one more go..." ⚔️ πŸ§™‍♂️ @brainseal #IndieGames #GameDev

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It has only been over the last few years that I’ve really gotten hips-deep into board games. From diving into breezy games like Dungeon! And Hero Quest to rule-laden slogs like Massive Darkness or Endure the Stars/Rules, I’ve really come to appreciate the wonderful blend of dedication and camaraderie that comes from a day of getting some snacks and drinks in, then settling down for eleven hours of arguing over the results of dice rolls and bafflingly unclear card descriptions.

It was after a recent weekend jaunt to a salubrious part of the country – where the curtains were promptly drawn and daylight not sighted for 48 hours – that I began to yearn for a single-player board game experience… but in the digital realm.


I genuinely spent a few days installing and uninstalling various games on my phone, hunting around for what I was looking for - and it was then that I stumbled across Dark Quest 3, which was due for imminent release, I can’t comment on Brain Seal Ltd’s other games, or even the preceding two titles in this trilogy, but I can certainly say that Dark Quest 3 is exactly what I needed.

13 Apr 2023

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos XSX Review 8.5/10 "Pretty Pugilism" ⚔️ @theACETeam @NaconFR #GameDev #IndieGame

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It was only as I was installing Clash: Artifacts of Chaos that it dawned on me that I’d played the previous games in the series a decade ago - Zeno Clash and Zeno Clash 2 (2009, 2013) – and enjoyed their idiosyncratic take on the 1st person melee fighting genre.

As the installation percentage slowly rose, I cast my mind back to the sessions on my PC with the initial Clash games, they were incredibly unique titles with flawed but fun mechanics that had a narrative style and structure that called to mind Ice-Pick Lodge’s Pathologic – but the Clash series was different in that they actually held up to close scrutiny and were fun to play.

It’s a heady combination when you discover a developer that isn’t afraid to go off-piste with their narrative presentation, whilst also pushing forward a pretty niche genre, in this case, an FPS melee combat / RPG hybrid.

Fast forward to the present and within a couple of hours, I was completely on board with the third title in this long-running series - Clash: Artifacts of Chaos.

27 Mar 2023

Gunman Tales Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 "Moonstone Meets Wild Guns" 🀠 @FobTi #GameDev #IndieGame

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Considering how much I adore the game, I can’t believe that FobTi interactive’s Gunman Tales didn’t set off my inner ‘Moonstone Alarm’ when it was originally released on PC back in 2018. Regardless, am I glad I got a chance to enjoy this Switch port in 2023!

14 Mar 2023

Fight ‘N Rage XSX Review 8.5/10 "A Wonderful Throwback Title With Astonishing Depth" πŸ’₯πŸ‘Š @sebagamesdev #GameDev #IndieGameto

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The side-scrolling brawler genre is such a timeless and wondrous thing when done properly, as one-man Uruguayan studio Seba Games Dev has done here with Fight ‘N Rage.

The natural repetition of the genre is spiced up here by an insane amount of unlockables that make the grinder part of me twitch into action.

There have been some tasty games in the genre over the last year or two – mainly courtesy of DotEmu - (and I know it’s older than that, but I have to mention Mother Russia Bleeds) and Fight ‘N Rage absolutely has to be mentioned in that conversation.

6 Jan 2023

Life on Mars: Genesis Kai Magazine Software SEGA Mega Drive Review 8.5/10 "There’s life in the Mega Drive, as well!" πŸŒ• #SEGA #SegaGenesis #IndieGames #GameDev

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When Life on Mars: Genesis was announced, I was excited due to the fact that there were so few (if any) Metroidvania titles on the Mega Drive. I’m a fan of the genre, especially the shorter, snappier releases such as Shadow Complex. 

I find that a sub-12-hour blast keeps things spicy and fresh, and Life on Mars: Genesis falls into that camp, feeling like a novice entry in the genre, which fits in well with the fact that it is effectively an entry to the genre as a whole on the Mega Drive.

26 Dec 2022

Chained Echoes XSX Review 8.5/10 "I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain" πŸ”— @ChainedEchoes #IndieGames #GameDev

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It’s been a good while since I got hips deep into a turn-based RPG, in fact, I believe the last one to really capture my imagination to this extent was Octopath Traveller a couple of years ago.

A very different beast, Chained Echoes calls to mind 2018’s Crosscode in the visuals and style of traversal in the game world, but the setting and narrative feel more traditional and classic in terms of the delivery.

1 Dec 2022

Shadows Over Loathing PC Review 8.5/10 "Very Little To Loathe" 🧟‍♂️ @asym #IndieGames #GameDev

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Asymmetric’s previous title – West of Loathing – was my 2017 game of the year,  to this day, over five years later – I’ve rarely laughed as heartily as I have at that game. It was reviewed before we integrated our rating system, but it would have honestly been teetering on being the first 10/10 game I’d played.

That’s a pretty hard act to follow, and whilst Shadows over Loathing is a fun and extremely funny game that leans heavily on the template set down by its predecessor, it doesn’t quite have the impact of the original.

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