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This review contains spoilers.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is an ambitious project that succeeds in revitalizing the franchise and bringing it back to its 2D roots: with great synergy between its combat and platform challenges, and brilliant art direction, the game only falters when it comes to its half-baked story, which seems almost unfinished.
We play as Sargon, the youngest member of an elite force of Persian warriors called the Immortals. The introduction focuses on their battle prowess, showing them repelling an invasion force and reversing the course of a lost battle almost on their own. The Immortals will appear often during the fight to assist Sargon, [...]
Metroid Fusion is a game designed around secrets: as Samus explores a dangerous space station, finding secret passageways and items, she is also uncovering the truth about the place, shedding new light on the hidden agenda of her employer. It’s a tense, suspenseful adventure, packed full of dark corridors, somber music, and a scary double with piercing, empty white eyes that hunts Samus down relentlessly.
Fusion begins with the protagonist, bounty hunter Samus Aran, recounting the general events of the previous games. The Galactic Federation hired her to commit genocide on SR388, killing all surviving metroids on the planet, since they’re dangerous creatures that suck the [...]
The road to Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 was a short, but still bumpy one. The first game was an uneven adventure that set up the plot of its sequel with a post-credits twist that made absolutely no sense, while Mirror of Fate made poor use of its classic Metroidvania format and told its story with a disastrous structure. And here we are, with the last game of the trilogy, Lords of Shadow 2, which manages to be worse than its predecessors: although it still shares most of their problems, it also displays an alarming lack of creativity and direction.
The premise was already set. Dracula is alive in the twenty-first century and Zobek warns him that Lucifer is about to free [...]
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is an outstanding – if too safe – sequel to the already great Blind Forest, boasting the same mesmerizing aesthetic, haunting soundtrack, and engaging platformer mechanics. It’s an impressive adventure that, despite all its strengths, still doesn’t do much to evolve the series: it develops more the combat aspect of the game and introduce some sidequests and characters to help flesh out the world, but these elements pale in comparison with the others.
The story in Will of the Wisps revolves around the search for a cute baby owl called Ku. She was frustrated that she wasn’t able to fly, so after Ori helps her do it, they are caught in a fierce storm [...]
Indivisible is a mix of RPG and Metroidvania that boasts great art direction, building a colorful and vibrant fantasy world, but is also marred by some questionable design choices that take the fun out of exploration.
The story follows Ajna’s quest to avenge her father, who was murdered in front of her by a soldier named Dhar. The problem is that, when Ajna – who is just 16 years old – tries to fight Dhar, she ends up absorbing him instead – and now she has to deal with her father’s killer talking inside her head. With the help of some friends – who she absorbs as well – Ajna travels to Mount Sumeru to fight the vile warlord Ravannavar, who intends to destroy the world because [...]
Metroid: Samus Returns, the 3DS remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus, seeks to reimagine certain elements of the original, but focuses on all the wrong elements: instead of improving the original’s linear structure or doubling down on its foreboding atmosphere, Samus Returns decides to revamp the combat and visuals, making them flashier and more complex. The result is a disappointing game that misses what worked in Metroid II without adding much in return.
The plot is fairly straightforward. Bounty hunter Samus Aran is hired to go to the alien planet SR388 and commit, well, genocide: she’s to kill all Metroids in the planet, ridding the universe of the species.
Killing [...]