Recent reviews by CubicVirtuoso

Turok 3 Remastered is a competent remake by the masters of retro remakes, Nightdive Studios. However, it suffers from being a mediocre game to begin with. As far as retro FPS's go, Turok 3 is middle of the road. Sure it has some stand out features, but those are more remnants of the original two games than anything else. The environments, to start, are good, but soon get boring and bland. The enemies are varied enough to cause you to think a bit, but in the end you just blast them all with the RPG anyway. There is a bit of replayability, with the ability to play through the campaign as either Dani or her brother, but aside from that there isn't much going for it. Top it all off that the game can be completed in under 5 hours and I'd recommend getting it on sale if you're a huge nightdive fan.

It's Jet Set Radio 2023 and awesome. Anyone who grew up with JSR should play this game.

Ghostrunner 2 has some of the best traversal mechanics I've seen in the past couple of years. Imagine, wall running, then jumping into a rail grind, dashing to land on top of a drone to ride it down towards a fan, then deploying your wing suit, flying through gaps in walls, dashing towards another wall while freezing time, crashing through a wall, then stunning an enemy grapple hook towards them for an insta-kill all without touching the ground. Plus there is a mother ♥♥♥♥♥♥ cyber-motorcycle mid game. This game will have your heart pumping and you'll enter a flow state. The story is mid, voice acting terrible, upgrade system sub-par, but the moment to moment gameplay, movement, combat all make this game soar above the rest.

Certainly influenced by Max Payne, El Paso Elsewhere is a run and gun arcady bullet time shooter with massive amounts of atmosphere. Dark, gritty and just the way I like it you play as James who has to stop his partner, Draculae from ending the world. It's as much of a love story as it is an action set piece where the world pulls from your memories with her and reflects on struggles in a toxic relationship. Had a lot of fun playing through this one, plus the game gives you the ability to add modifiers to your playthrough which can change up the gameplay drastically from run to run. It's a good sub 15 hour game with an amazing story.

Pizza Tower is a love letter to an old retro game mechanic: Get out of the level as quickly as possible. The developers double down on this and what we are left with is a frantic, high energy, blood pressure increasing, excellently styled platformer. Main game can be completed in around 6 hours, but if you strive for perfection this game has a lot to offer. Specifically designed for speedrunners and perfectionists this game can easily offer hundreds of hours of entertainment. Pizza tower is unique, fun, and exhilarating. BRB while I take more blood pressure meds....

A simple choose your own adventure game with a staggering amount of endings and possiblities. In Slay the Princess you have one job, kill the princess, but your choices matter. There are countless endings and countless ways to get there, which each permutation unique and exciting to play out. The ending of each "run" is a bit abstract for my liking, but seeing all the different ways to interact with the princess kept me going. Ended up 100%ing this one just to see all the different outcomes. Good weekend game, but strap yourself in for lots of dialog.

I wasn't expecting greatness out of Blasphemous 2. It wasn't talked about much last year, but I'd personally put it up there with other metroidvania greats such as Hollow Knight and Ori. This game has the perfect blend of atmosphere and gameplay, I love every enemy type and design, I love the upgrade system, I love the map exploration, the secrets, the collectables. Every aspect of this game is absolutely amazing and a must play for any metroidvania fan. Couple this with a souls like experience makes a perfect pairing of game design. I didn't play Blasphemous 1, but I'll certainly go back to play it after this run.

Sprawl is a modern day sytlized FPS posing as a boomer shooter. When I went into this game I was expecting a story driven atmospheric FPS with lots of cool set pieces and interesting enemy types and weapon types. What I actually got was an arena shooter similiar to Doom 2016 with frantic fast paced movement. That's not to say it was bad, just that my expectations didn't quite align which threw me off. One thing I love about classic retro inspired FPS games is character and atmosphere. Drop me into a shopping mall with aliens, or a theme park with weird ways to ride the rides and I'm in love. Sprawl has opportunity to deliver on some of these feelings, but instead opts for blocky arenas where you're presented with lots of opportunity to wall run, but not a lot of opportunity to stop and take stock in the environment around you. Instead, it all just blends together. And again, that's usually fine if it does the arena shooter side of things well, and this is.... mediocre. Compared to Doom 2016 which operates like a puzzle game, every enemy has it's own specific weapon, Sprawl is a bit more generic. For the most part I simply used the shotgun close range, energy rifle long range and rocket launcher against larger enemy types. The game is short and easy, with difficulty selection. The secrets, or hidden objects are simply text logs, often abstract or giving a bit of lore behind the world you're in. The biggest positive, for me, was the soundtrack. An excellent blend of Ghost in the Shell orchestra cyberpunk mixed with pure drum and bass. I plan on listening to this OST over the next couple of weeks. Get this game on sale, finish it over a weekend and move on.

Powerslave Exhumed is a unique genre shifting retro FPS. One I've never played so I was glad to dive in after nightdive did a modern day remaster. Powerslave plays starts off as a run of the mil retro FPS, pretty stripped down compared to classics like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, but where it differs from those entries is the way it handles level backtracking. About midway through the game it plays more like a metroidvania, where you're tasked with finding special abilities that will help you progress further in early levels unlocking alternate exists that lead you further into the desert. Enemy variety, and weapon variety isn't anything too special, but the special abilities really unlock interesting ways to play through the levels. Much later in the game you're tasked with flying through a lava field while killing magma dragons from above, feeling like you're playing the level with a noclip mode enabled. This was a nice surprise and a welcome change from other nightdive studio entries. Highly recommend for anyone who has a fondness for retro FPS.

An abstract anime-adjacent adventure game featuring themes of anxiety and finding one's place. Heavily character driven with playful adventure game mechanics. ASFTU has a bit of a slow start, but that's forgiven by the immense amount of character building required to tell this story. Where the actual meat of the game exists is during Act 2 where you're whimsically "space-diving" into people's hearts to attempt to repair emotional issues, such as mental anguish, anxiety, depression, overwhelming feelings etc. The game lost my attention a bit in Act 3 where it tries to tie up all the story elements in an extended walk and talk session. The themes towards the end fell flat with me and my own personal experiences, but I can see how it might resonate more with other people. My attention seemed to drift as the extremely heavy dialogue driven third act seemed to drone on. Expect your typical JRPG trope where every character needs to comment on every little thing with plenty of "..." speech bubbles throughout conversation. Overall though, ASFTU bravely tackles complex themes and emotions that are typically unaddressed in video games or interactive media.