Comprehensive Game Reviews

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From AAA titles to indie games, we cover it all. Our comprehensive reviews provide detailed insights to help you find your next favorite game.

Review: HoloVillage: Our Cozy Days Is a Bug-ridden Holo IndieAt launch, HoloVillage: Our Cozy Days is too broken and limited to recommend to folks looking for a Hololive Animal Crossing experience. The post Review: HoloVillage: Our Cozy Days Is a Bug-ridden Holo Indie appeared first on Siliconera .

Reviews Articles and News - SiliconeraMay 1

Vampire Crawlers Review – Dazzling Dungeons Reviewed on: Switch Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC, iOS, Android Publisher: Poncle Developer: Poncle Rating: Everyone 10+ History has shown that we humans like the movement of light – babies, children, teenagers, adults, and even the elderly are drawn to flashing colors with matching rhythmic sounds. It’s why slot machines, televisions, phones, and yes, video games, keep us glued to their presentation. Poncle’s latest game, a first-person dungeon crawler aptly titled Vampire Crawlers , uses these sensations to bring to life its simple but effective deckbuilding roguelite in a way as idiosyncratic as its parallel predecessor, Vampire Survivors . And though I find my enjoyment crossing back and forth between a TikTok-like compulsion (derogatory) and a genuine craving for its one-more-run gameplay (complimentary), there’s no denying the mechanical fun. Selecting cards, routing through dungeons, and killing hundreds of skeletons, zombies, witches, and more from stage to stage is a consistent indulgence. Booting up Vampire Crawlers is not dissimilar to taking a step into a casino. A barrage of lights, sounds, and tactical buttons and triggers to press and pull demands your attention. Every card, enemy, step (even the bumps into surrounding walls), every thing you do is harmonized into the congratulatory orchestra of sensation that is Vampire Crawlers. And as it ramps up, distinct shimmers of the experience gems you earn and the rhythmic bouncing of the runetracer card attack grow into a cacophony. It’s a discordance I relished in as the notes of destruction I bring to the rows of enemies before me, but it’s an annoying one without the context of my on-screen actions (just ask my wife, who endured a lot of it next to me on the couch). After 20 hours, though, I’ve had enough of these retro tingles, and I prefer Vampire Crawlers with its volume down while watching TV or listening to a podcast. Perhaps to the dismay of Poncle, playing on mute is a perfectly fine way to enjoy Vampire Crawlers due to its laid-back, almost automechanical nature of engagement. There is strategy involved, especially in the latter stages that test your card combo prowess, but at its most difficult, I’m monitoring the game to ensure what I want to happen does happen, rather than feeling a need to actively participate. Of course, I do take part in every action, in that I must press the buttons to select cards and hit the d-pad to maneuver through libraries, forests, dairy plants, and magical castles, but the thought required to succeed is a far cry from the brain power I used while learning its rules. By design, Vampire Crawlers is incredibly easy to break. There are a lot of crawlers, which are the player-characters with unique perks and ability triggers, to collect, cards to find and enhance at the blacksmith, Arcana to discover that add new rules to how your on-the-fly deck works, and persistent power-ups to purchase to enhance your dungeon performance. All of these work in tandem to keep each run fresh, interesting, and varied. Sometimes, my crawler-card-arcana-power-up combination fails within minutes. Other times, I clear a stage after an hour of ruthless beatdowns, and in my favorite (but admittedly least engaging) runs, I steamroll through everything thanks to a near-infinite card build that doesn’t let enemy turns happen or another that ensures certain cards fire off dozens of projectiles at once instead of a few. Once you understand how the various pieces work in tandem, putting together a nigh-indestructible build takes very little, losing some engagement in the process. There’s no real narrative tying everything together beyond taking the fight to the bad guys in some medieval land, but the game doesn’t suffer because of it. If anything, it gets you back into the dungeons sooner, dropping any pretense that you’re here for something beyond making numbers go up so you can see the nice lights and hear the nice sounds again. Vampire Crawlers elevates an otherwise simple but highly entertaining card game with sensations more reminiscent of a casino (or Vampire Survivors ) or the blinding blue light of doomscrolling late at night to create a retro-inspired diversion that’s hard to put down. Its pull is less powerful with its dozen or so stages complete and behind me, but it’s clear that desire to return will never quite let up, lingering, waiting in the gothic wings for one more run. Score: 8 About Game Informer's review system

Game Informer ReviewsMay 1

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City ReviewThis empty shell of an adventure falls short of realizing the awesome potential of being the turtle bros in VR.

IGN PC ReviewsApr 30

Invincible VS ReviewA gust of fresh air for those who miss the two-way interactable combo system of Killer Instinct.

IGN PC ReviewsApr 30

Review: Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth Is A DelightA very grand adventure for our little Moomin. The post Review: Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth Is A Delight appeared first on Siliconera .

Reviews Articles and News - SiliconeraApr 30

Invincible VS Review - Punching Above Its Weight Reviewed on: PlayStation 5 Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Skybound Games Developer: Quarter Up Rating: Mature The 2D fighting genre, once thought to be a dying category, now flourishes thanks to major franchises and underground hits. Invincible VS straddles the line of those two classifications, bringing a red-hot IP into the space by way of a new studio made up of fighting-game veterans. The result is a 3v3 tag fighter with rock-solid mechanics, strong production values, and a fun, if flawed, story mode, enabling Invincible VS to go blow-for-blow with many of its contemporaries right out of the gate. Invincible VS Video Review:   True to its source material, Invincible VS includes fistfights that often result in multiple characters drenched in blood and a superpowered roster chock-full of larger-than-life personalities. This is further accentuated by some of the show’s star-studded voice cast, including J.K. Simmons, reprising their roles for the game, or soundalikes doing admirable impressions. And that goes a long way, as each character has specific verbal interactions with other fighters on the roster, lending to the overarching cinematic feel of the matches. Though many of the characters – particularly the suite of Viltrumites – possess similar powers, developer Quarter Up excelled at making each fighter on the roster feel unique. Invincible and Dupli-Kate’s speedy, in-your-face rushdown style is great for dealing with big bodies like Conquest or Lucan. However, mid-range characters like Thula gave me fits until I swapped to a bully character like Battle Beast. As you build a team of three, this game of counters and contrasts ably encourages you to bring a well-rounded squad into every battle. As a Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat player of three decades, I initially struggled to grasp Invincible VS’s brand of combo-focused, tag-based fighting. Thankfully, after spending time in the helpful tutorial mode, I was rattling off combos, landing Heroic Strikes, chaining through Active Tags, and sending characters across the world with Arena Shifts. Thanks to a modern approach to its control scheme, which emphasizes strategy over input commands, improvising combos (or using the light attack’s auto-combo system) and landing devastating, cinematic ultimates foster an incredibly approachable fighting experience. And the ability to break combos through tags is a novel evolution of the stellar Killer Instinct-inspired formula. However, the Counter Tag system can feel inconsistent (unless you’re the AI), and certain characters sometimes miss during combos, creating small annoyances when locked into tense battles. Arcade-style ladders let you fight through multiple opponents across various difficulties, with the reward of brief, largely underwhelming endings for each character. Despite that, I enjoyed fighting through these towers with different teams to hone my skills and strategies for when I jumped online. I love the online lobby system, which lets several players join a room, jump in and out of matchups, and even spectate other fights. And during my online matches on pre-release servers, I only experienced minor hitches during play.   Though I love playing one-off matches, climbing the arcade ladders, and hanging out in a lobby, my favorite part of any modern fighter is its story mode. And with my love for the Invincible franchise, I was highly anticipating what Quarter Up was pitching as essentially a bonus episode of the show. Even after playing through the story mode twice, I’m still blown away by the production values of the awe-inspiring cutscenes. Large-scale action scenes consisting of the full 18-character roster are wildly entertaining. However, like many of the genre’s story modes, the narrative is simply a flimsily disguised mechanism to provide justification for why you’re mashing your various action figures into each other. The story falls short of being a compelling adventure, and I soon felt like I was simply going through the motions to see the next spectacle cutscene rather than caring about where the story was going. And without spoiling too much, the extremely short campaign ends in an unsatisfying fashion. With plans for post-launch content already announced, Invincible VS is likely to only improve as its lifespan progresses, which could certainly address some of the current shortcomings. However, with an already solid foundation built upon approachability and personality, Invincible VS is easy to recommend to both seasoned fighting games fans and Invincible enthusiasts. Score: 8.5 About Game Informer's review system

Game Informer ReviewsApr 30

Review: Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient MonsterKingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster is one of the most bland and tedious Inti Creates games, and that’s a shame. The post Review: Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster appeared first on Siliconera .

Reviews Articles and News - SiliconeraApr 29

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era Early Access ReviewAn good starting point that can already satisfy both returning fans and newbies alike.

IGN PC ReviewsApr 28

Stalking Other Players Is The Best Part Of This Consequence-Driven Game | Tides Of Tomorrow ReviewTides of Tomorrow is the first single-player game I've played that desperately wanted me to stalk other human-controlled characters, and that sentiment alone was a compelling enough gimmick for me to jump into its consequence-driven story. While that story stumbles in a few places, and the gameplay never quite rises to anything beyond serviceable, Tides of Tomorrow does a great job of incentivizing you to participate in its "we're all in this together" apocalyptic fantasy and care about the ramifications of your choices and actions beyond how they impact you. If you're looking for a game that makes you feel good about helping others and being helped by others, there aren't many options that hit that sense of community like Tides of Tomorrow. In Tides of Tomorrow, you play as a Tidewalker, an individual who can see glimpses of the past. These visions always involve the actions of other Tidewalkers, creating a network of individuals who can all learn from each other. Fished from the ocean, you find yourself in a world that's been flooded, restricting civilization to makeshift island towns and repurposed oil rigs. A sickness is also worming its way through the population, slowly causing people to transform into plastic. You count yourself among the infected, quickly learning that only the regular consumption of a medicine known as ozen keeps you from turning completely into plastic and dying. You play through the game in first-person as a largely silent individual who only speaks when prompted to with a dialogue option. Other than your supernatural sight, you move through the world simply--running, crouching, jumping. In certain locations, you can open your sight to see what a Tidewalker--who, like your Tidewalker, is also controlled by another human player--did there, allowing you to lean on the knowledge you glean to better move through the world. A bouncer who welcomed in a Tidewalker the previous day will allow you inside the club if you also offer up to them the same alias, for example, and seeing a Tidewalker hide some ozen in a grate lets you then nab it for yourself. Continue Reading at GameSpot

GameSpot - Game ReviewsApr 27

Review: Magical Princess Leans Into the Family ElementMagical Princess is a daughter-raising and stat management game where it feels like Neotro and Magi learned from the example Princess Maker set. The post Review: Magical Princess Leans Into the Family Element appeared first on Siliconera .

Reviews Articles and News - SiliconeraApr 27