Recent reviews by CB20XX

Ghost of Tsushima excels in contrasting scenic awe and brutal, lightning quick encounters.
The environments are gorgeous and carefully crafted to achieve a strong sense of place in each region showcased through some standout action set-pieces and cutscenes.

The core story itself treads familiar ground but is engaging enough, even if unsurprising at times, underlined by an compelling cast of side characters, featured through numerous side-quests that help to flesh them out nicely.
Although the quests themselves can feel somewhat undercooked, noticeably lacking variety.

The swordplay is fast-paced and thoroughly satisfying, with distinct playstyles to choose from that mesh really well with the main story themes of honour and duty.

While the narrative is familiar and the open-world activities rather monotonous, the great combat, stunning scenes, and environments make it a worthwhile, breathtaking experience.

Another really high-quality port!

Legendary story from a legendary artist as relevant as ever 20+ years later.

Sandland's a pretty faithful adaptation, both visually and narratively, oozing with the charm and silliness of it's source material.

The combat and exploration are entertaining and smooth as hell whether on foot or operating heavy machinery although the open world aspect tends to be somewhat formulaic.
The vehicular gameplay is especially dynamic and smooth, underlined by a pretty well implemented customisation and progression system.

A really solid experience.

RIP Toriyama-San

Dr. Fetus' Mean Meat Machine is delving further into the obvious Mario homage that is the Meat Boy franchise. With a title aping another Mario copy (Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine).
So we've already got multiple layers of pastiche / parody before the game even starts.

And then the gameplay starts and it feels like a parody of itself. It's a proven, good puzzle concept that is executed in a brutally difficult, almost anti-fun manner, with a very limited set of solutions per levels and a frustrating inability to create big chain matches due to it's unnecessary complex design.

It's enjoyable for a very niche audience of hardcore freaks but has limited broad appeal.
Still a yes for the attempt and a rather cheap entry fee, but tread carefully if you decide to dive in.

Forbidden West Takes a while to really get going and break out of it's status as a sequel but once it does it delivers a really strong narrative experience peppered with outstanding action set pieces and locations.

It's a lot more of what was very enjoyable in the previous games with bigger, badder machines to hunt and tame along with quite a few more play styles to try out.
Great art direction and character design with a very well developed cast of characters and themes.

The open world content is pretty underwhelming with somewhat lackluster rewards and a distinct lack of uniqueness despite the variety (which are very much copied from the first game).

Overall it's a solid, albeit formulaic, open world game that really shines through it's story, especially if you've enjoyed the first game.

Everything you could look for in a metroidvania rogue-lite. Super smooth and dynamic gameplay, great bossfights and wide ranging arsenal and skills options.
Unlocking everything is a bit tedious but pretty rewarding, especially with all the references and homages to great indie gaming titles (and more) peppered throughout.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is an overt homage to SEGA cult classics that doesn't shy away from it's ambitions as a spiritual successor and packs a trippy, super funky, retro futurist punch.
Great looking cell shaded art-style with a special care around crew designs underlined by a superb soundtrack.
Relatively simple but appreciably polished and straightforward low-stakes gameplay allowing the opportunity to unleash massive combos in flow-like sequences despite a somewhat noticeable shortage of tricks.
Priced a tad on the high side for it's relatively short length but a very solid experience that deliver as much funk as advertised.

Simple concept thoroughly executed. Lightning fast gameplay with a very efficient implementation of roguelike elements
Balatro is an insanely addictive time-sink that cannot be put down

Borderline stupid (in a good way) premise delivered through a mechanically solid, full throttle gameplay and visualy unhinged, bloody, synthwave-y presentation.

A pure slice of throwback, 20th century style murder-machine fun.

Really looking forward to more content!

Palworld's an overly satirical game, with just the right dose of self awareness to make it click.

A very formulaic "open world survival craft" gameplay enhanced by a well balanced, rewarding progression and featuring great automation / management mechanics, taking away some of the usual resource grind and turning it, very successfully, into eager exploration thanks to its satisfying, intense, and utterly fun combat to collect "Pals" even considering the occasional jank / clutter.

And that is in spite of mostly basic, flavourless and empty environments, although there are a handful of standout, uniquely styled areas. This distinct lack of uniqueness is unfortunately present throughout all aspects of the game, from character design (even with its pretty big character roster) to mechanics all the way down to its lexicon.

It's enough to prevent Palworld from over-delivering on its already over the top concept but not enough to stop it from working promisingly well.

Yakuza at home?

Interesting slice of life story and a good beat'em up gameplay that kinda works pretty well despite obvious repetitive and janky mechanics. Unfortunately the game is really short and there are actually so few fights.

The rest of the execution is really really unpolished, especially the presentation.
Troublemaker is over-reliant on mediocre, kinetic novel style cinematics (although some character designs do look good) featuring uninspired voice acting and sometimes laughably bad translation, too focused on inside jokes and memes from an already under-exposed subculture.

A for effort and ambitions but this feels more like a proof of concept than an actual game. Could be a good building block for the future or just a lazy, meme-y cash in spawning an equal or worse sequel or two.