CARRYOVER - Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen [PC] EmP
3/1 odds on Rob forgetting.
THIRD - ACA NeoGeo: Crossed Swords [PS4] PIckhut
Pick continues to find relevant ways to talk about old games, and does an excellent job ordering his thoughts on this one. He starts by talking about the hook; an atypical design choice in a very common genre. I thought the Punch Out comparison seemed very apt. He then talks about how this approach is interesting and how it mostly succeeds, but is downtrodden by the lack of variety and easily abused specials. It’s a descriptive enough piece that I find myself informed enough about an interesting sounding game, and persuasive enough that I’ll never feel the need to seek it out for myself. A service has been done.
SECOND - Darksiders [360] Overdrive
The intro was this review’s strongest part, briefly running down the games that Darksiders draws inspiration from before saying that it doesn’t match up to the subject material, but isn’t an awful base copy job. It’s a clever way to start, because it means you can close things out with the worst example of mechanic borrowing with the awful sounding last dungeon. You lose a bit of momentum in the middle, including a pretty tepid combat paragraph and a few overlong, overloaded sentences. But it’s good stuff! I’ve been meaning to play this game for a while now, and got an hour or so in on the 360, but have since misplaced the disk. I could just jump straight to the second game, but it feels all kinds of wrong. There’s countless games I’ve never started because of this...
FIRST - S.U.M. Slay Uncool Monsters [SWH] Jason
I don’t think many will blame me if I admit I had written off what is essentially maths homework as a challenger for this week’s crown. I figured I’d make another glib comment like that time Jason reviewed a clock and be on my way, but this is an excellently produced review that absolutely understands its niche subject. SUM is a game about doing math. As such, Jason has to establish himself as being interested in math because if he can establish that he’s not the cause of the complaints he’s about to make, then it only leaves the game itself to blame. But even then, he’s self deprecating enough to ensure the topic isn’t all about him. Then the complaints come and the groundwork is already complete; this is bad game design, not the mental folly of the reviewer.
This review wins this week because it’s taken an extremely difficult game to talk about engagingly and made it look very, very easy.
For us. For them. For you.
