Recent reviews by Katana

Not a spectacularly memorable fighting platformer, with many repeated enemies and frustrating segments. By the end I kinda just wanted it to be done with. The story is very wayward, basically just a chain of being told to talk to different members of wonderland, each of whom asks you to help them, and then welches on their promise to help you in favor of telling you to talk to another.

Continuing the classic trend of using DC comic book characters without mentioning them in the title! (ie, The Dark Knight, vs "Batman: The Dark Knight")

You may consider Injustice to be a sort of spiritual continuation of Nether Realms' Mortal Kombat series, but without needlessly excessive gore, some easier combos to pull off, and some interesting fighting game mechanics I personally like.

- Arena weapons; a button is dedicated to interacting with the 2.5D arena's near-foreground, for instance rebounding off a parked car or throwing an obstacle at your enemy. Additionally, performing a certain attack close to an arena's edge will do a "level transition", which on its own deals quite a lot of damage to your opponent.
- Like with Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, some special abilities can be "powered up", sacrificing a section of your ability meter to have a stronger effect. What makes this different is that you don't need to hit that 12th button at the same time; you're free to press the trigger button about a half-second after your ability starts, to perform a follow-on attack.
- An uncommon difference is that the concept of "rounds" (Round 2. FIGHT!) is replaced with simply a dual health bar. When one's first health bar runs out, the combo ends, characters spread their distance and pose for a moment, but your super meter and health bar remain the same. (So, for instance, winning round 1 with 1 hp left isn't going to leave you much of an advantage)

The game has a story mode that tends to work at a pretty low difficulty, and sometimes breaks up the fighting with quick-time events. It also has a "Challenge tower" in the form of the "STAR Labs", using very simple text-based quick stories to rationalize the teaching of particular techniques. (ie, repeatedly use Superman's heat vision input to protect a civilian)

One of the better fighting games I've played - from the POV of someone who's constantly aggravated by the need to memorize combos. And Green Arrow is the best.

I've played several of the previous Hitman games, and generally if you have some amount of respect for your play, it comes out more like an adventure game than a shooter. Your hero, Guybrush 47wood, must use a variety of items, clever distractions, and disguises to reach and eliminate his target. Nowhere is this more evident, for instance, than in the Chinatown mission(s), in which there are some 400 billion ways to eliminate the king of chinatown, all of them granting a different mark of accomplishment.

One addition I like is the focus shooting mode; essentially allowing you to spend your in-game "stealth stamina" to shoot every single person in the room at once. It's just a little bit broken, but lets you feel like a very deadly assassin; and sometimes it is fun to go through a level with no intentions of getting a good score.

Absolution does have some sections that are nothing more than action and stealth. If you've been playing differently, these make for a nice change of pace, but rest assured that E3 demos containing nothing more than cover-to-cover combat are simply fast-paced attempts to get people excited - all the rest is there.

If you can gather a number of USB controllers and a laptop w/HDMI, this is an EXCELLENT game for multiple people. I've only played 2-player, but I can definitely imagine the fun with more players. While there are singleplayer and co-op modes, the game's main focus is a Versus mode in which all players start on a single-screen arena with a bow, and about 3 arrows. You can shoot them at the other players, which follows some gravity, and occasionally has a slight homing effect to allow for impressive long shots. You can also simply choose to jump on the other player, often ending up the easier choice. Finally, there's a Dodge ability you can use to get away from an explosion, or even to catch arrows. One shot or stomp is all it takes, and when only one player is alive, a round is over and you move on to the next one.

The game offers you other arrow types mid-match, like laser arrows, bomb arrows, bramble arrows, etc. While there's always a little more to learn, it's easy for a new player to pick up the basics.

In terms of graphics or production values, I actually thought DreadOut kind of hit the mark well - no game with AAA graphics has ever really managed to feel tense or unnerving - it's that realm where graphics are hard to recognize or drab in which you can really feel unsure even about walking down a simple dark hallway.

As it is, what puts me off of this game is the complication in figuring out what you're meant to do at times. Being lost and needing to explore is actually very favorable in my opinion - I HATE when a game becomes a simple matter of tracing objective markers. But for a long time, I was going several play sessions not figuring out what I needed to try next in the game, as after a certain point the entire school is available to you, with no hints as to where to go next.

A couple of recommendations for the developers that might be pretty simple ways of improving parts of the experience:
- When a ghost is first encountered, update the Ghostpedia right away. Also, provide a simple button prompt (ie, Tab, or the Y button) to go directly to that ghost's page. If someone's clueless as to the method of defeating it or strategies, that might give them some encouragment. (And after it's beaten, that's useless) To give players some breathing room, have the ghost start out with some "taunt" animation that takes several seconds in which the player can realize the cutscene's over, etc.

- When the player has reached some new area in which there's something they need before leaving, don't let them leave until they have it; for instance, lock them in the left wing of the school until they take the puzzle picture from the crumbled balcony (at this point, I started re-exploring the whole school not sure where to go). This could be accomplished several ways. A) A demonic wall appears behind them and vanishes after they have the item (not great, as players won't think to check the wall again) or B) Have a simple one-way gate like a longer drop, and a normal locked door to escape, from which they need to obtain a key from the same spot. (For instance, maybe after taking the picture, the cat could be holding a key)

- An alternative for my previous problem might be more focus on the Journal. I did follow the game's loading screen tips of looking at it when I didn't know what to do, but there were definitely points in which the top item (There is a locked cupboard, it could be useful) didn't take me anywhere useful, as I had only one guess where the key was, and no guess how to retrieve it. Maybe the top item could be highlighted, to show that that's what you should currently do as other objectives may not be available. For more detail, it could progress like this:
:: With that ghost out of the way, the left wing's second story can now be explored.
:: There are strange markings visible in the lobby from the second story.
:: There's something strange about this picture...

For a first game by a country that does not often do game development, it's a great effort. If you see this on sale under $5 and you enjoy horror games, I'd say go for it. But, currently it's not a lot to offer and can be kind of frustrating with its lack of player-information.

(I will try to remember to update this when the second act comes out)

I haven't quite finished the game just yet, but it's been very enjoyable. Like many rhythm games, some of its mechanics feel a little bit clunky as you pick them up, and you'll definitely stumble trying to learn. Things like the powerups seem a little bit shoehorned early on by requiring multiple button presses. However, later on as you complete more of a song in the "ideal" way, it becomes apparent that they're more of a way of "mixing" the difficulties - so that hitting the half-notes becomes completely optional. (The game does have many different difficulty modes though)

Treating it all as a 3D fighting arena certainly adds a lot of visual flare to the action, and gives some considerable impact to each high-beat and multi-button note you're able to land. The game even has a series of boss fights - How does kicking a barrage of incoming missiles from a helicopter sound? I'm looking forward to trying out my own tracks, and trying the harder difficulties!

Spec Ops: The Line is a decent cover-to-cover war shooter that, gameplay-wise, does nothing too new. Some people are fine with that, myself included.

But that's not what you're here for.
SO:TL easily has one of the most emotion-driven storylines of ANY war-shooter, or maybe even any AAA game to come out recently. It successfully tells its story through gameplay, taking risks you usually only see in indie games. An excellent two-part critique video can be found on the Extra Credits website. Yup, a video series about game design and moving forward the medium devoted TWO episodes entirely to this game.

Be warned it's also not a very "positive" game. You won't reach the credits smiling, but I've often felt many experiences like that are worth it even so. At any rate, hats off to Yager not only for making a game that breaks the norm in so many ways, but disguises it all behind what the marketing and trailers would indicate is "just another shooter".

A very interesting indie puzzle game that, like Braid or Limbo, seems to keep coming up with new ideas for its levels that always build off the old ideas. It all seemed very complex at first, but it's very good at having you learn through doing and observing. The soundtrack and engine are all very cool.