Recent reviews by Kritigri

Can't recommend buying this, as there's a decent chance the servers won't be up when you want to play it.

Shame there's no offline / peer-to-peer multiplayer mode.

This is going to sound like the most ridiculous nitpick, but honestly...

I can't stand how this game has no sound. Nothing at all. No soundtrack, no button press noises, no level up sound effects. It takes me completely out of the game. Maybe it's because I have a funky brain or whatever, but it seems like such a massive oversight.

As a RuneScape player since 2007, this has left a rock solid first impression on me. The world, the visual style, the HUD, the music, the sound effects, it all feels so polished already. I particularly love the way exploration is rewarded with discovering new tiles and profession nodes within those tiles. The story seems like it has some interesting ideas, retaining that Gower charm from the old days in a mix of goofy dialogue and intriguing lore. And for an MMO launch from an indie company, it's been surprisingly solid. Chat servers were down for a bit but beyond that, no crashes, no disconnects. Very few bugs, too.

I don't know how this will be received by an audience that hasn't played RuneScape, but hey, if you like MMOs, point-and-click adventure games and idle games, chances are this is worth a try! The free tier is generous and the Premium membership is only £5 a month.

First impressions:

All I've heard about this game is what it's not. It isn't as big of an open world as the previous games. It isn't Forza Horizon, but it really wants to be. So on and so forth.

I enjoyed previous two games in this series a lot, and I agree, it's definitely moving away from an identity of its own to be more of a rival to Forza Horizon (which I also enjoy a lot). This started with the previous game, but it's more apparent here. In some ways it's shameless; this game is trying to not only evoke that Forza Horizon festival feeling and its smorgasbord of activities to pursue. But it's also trying to capitalise on other elements of the open world racing genre that Forza Horizon fans have been crying out for. The game is set in a genre-favourite location famous from Test Drive Unlimited, and the very first playlist of events offered to you is all about Japanese car culture where they do a surprisingly good job of immersing you in a neon cityscape despite the game's setting being very much otherwise.

And I guess that's the thing. I've seen this game labelled as Aldi brand Forza Horizon, and it has perhaps earned that snark in chasing that game's success too obviously. But if it delivers fan-requested features and does it well... shouldn't that be celebrated? I can't speak to the endgame / live service aspect to this title yet, but if it's anything like The Crew 2, I'll be playing it just as much as I played Forza Horizon. Horizon remains the better game, probably, but this one is well worth playing too. They've much improved on the car handling from previous games, the open world feels more detailed for being smaller, and I'm a big fan of their events playlist system. I didn't even find the voiced characters all that cringeworthy... though the AI assistant could be toned down a bit.

Grabbed this on sale and I'm plenty happy with it.

Besides Worms Forts Under Siege as a kid, I'd never played a 3D Worms game. It's surprisingly good! Even got random map generation and terrain deformation, which I was not expecting.

Anyone who has played the Switch version will understand how much of a tremendous upgrade this is in terms of visuals and performance. It no longer looks like you're playing a PS3 game at 15fps! Words cannot overstate how much of a boon this is for the game. And at a very reasonable price, too. The base game is £50 on Switch, £35 here. The base game here includes all DLC, which on Switch would run you can extra £21.50 (although from what I've seen the DLC shouldn't really have been sold separately to begin with). That makes this version very much worth it!

(I've not yet reached later zones, if I run into performance issues I'll update the review, but I'd be surprised.)

This is one of my favourite Need for Speed entries, so I thought I'd pick it up on sale for £2.69. A few immediate things:

- I was shocked to discover that it kept my progress from the PS3 days. The single player save is new, but I have all my Speedpoints (or whatever they're called in this game) from before, all my Speedlist times, and all my cars in multiplayer, if not their mods.
- Multiplayer is still alive, as of August 16th 2024. It took me under a minute to find and be connected to an online lobby. Was not expecting that!

A few points of friction though:

- The options menu is ♥♥♥♥. The game launches in Windowed mode by default, and there's no option to change it to Fullscreen mode. Also, you have to mute people individually in multiplayer, and there's no option to mute yourself so I have to assume I'm transmitting from my mic too.

All in all though I'm glad I decided to grab this.

This is a first impressions review, which I may update later as I play more.

Firstly, the visuals are gorgeous. The game is perhaps a little more intensive to run than I anticipated (I have a 3060, it runs fine but with the odd framerate hitch), but the game's visual fidelity and design sufficiently justify that. The opening town and surrounding environments are well detailed and bustling with vibrant characters and motifs.

The opening story, sadly, is a little lacking in my opinion, though not for want of trying. Wayfinder is one of those games that has an earnest vision, one which requires teaching the player a lot: Nouns, magic systems, a looming unknowable threat, factions and races. But they come together in a way that feels overly busy and in a way that lacks a relatable, grounded foundation. Perhaps my opinion on this will change as I play more, but starting out, I felt overloaded with information and alienated by a saturation of overly complex lore.

The game has an unlockable character system where each functions as a sort of class. I chose to start out as Niss, who wields twin blades by default, but can also wield guns, or a sword and shield, the default weapons of the other two starting characters. Sticking with the twin blades, combat feels frenetic and fun, a hack-and-slash that feels rewarding when dodges and ability usage is timed correctly. That being said, I have some nitpicks. It feels like the lock-on system is fickle in whether it decides to jump to a new enemy when the current has been defeated, and could use a better visual indicator as to which enemy you are locked on to. The camera can make it a little difficult to tell what's going on when dashing through an enemy. I would also appreciate a stronger visual indicator for when best to parry, though these requests could be put down to a lack of experience in the game on my part.

While I'm still fairly early in the game and am still getting an understanding of the structure of it, I feel safe in simplifying that the game has two core environment styles so far: Diablo 3 style semi-randomised dungeons, and more traditional RPG style overworld zones with sidequests. So far, I've really enjoyed working my way through the dungeons, though the overworld zones feel a little sparse in narrative content so far despite being rich in environmental design.

Finally, this game's past as a free-to-play title is evident amongst its over-designed currency and crafting systems. While I'm delighted to see a rare story of a failing online free to play game being retrofitted into a solid offline co-op ARPG, some of the previous monetary trappings are evident in the sheer breadth of monster droppings. I'm a big fan of the gear system as presented to me so far, but as for the various coloured orbs and materials I'm picking up as I go, it's hard to feel rewarded in the sense that I don't have a tangible grasp in what they all do. Again, limited experience so far, and I'm sure familiarity will lessen the issue, but as a first impression, it's certainly a little much. The upside of this is receiving a ton of cosmetic items as discovereable or bonus loot, such as house furnishings and transmog, though there are also plenty of sprays, emotes and titles which feel a little superfluous.

Overall though, I'm more than happy to recommend Wayfinder to anyone who likes the sound of a once-online F2P gacha game gone offline-single-cost-CO-OP-ARPG. It's colourful, it feels good to play, and I'm excited to see more. Especially for the asking price, it's worth a look and worth supporting!

I'm more a fan of the lesser-known sequel to this game, RC Revenge. Port that to Steam and I'll be genuinely ecstatic.

I'll settle for Re-Volt though! I discovered this game about a decade ago when I saw someone I follow on YouTube post a video about it. I was floored. "This looks like RC Revenge??" One quick Google later and I had my answer. Nice!

Beware, though. The physics in this game are WILD. Even on "Console" mode, I spent most of my time fighting with random spinouts at the slightest contact with the environment. I've yet to get past the first race in Championship mode...

Do you enjoy WipEout and its sequels for the PlayStation One?

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