Recent reviews by jb2097

The original Blasphemous was an excellent entry in the metroidvania genre, with great level design, combat, boss-battles and a weirdly compelling setting. I really enjoyed it and was pretty hyped for the sequel.

Then I saw the reveal trailer....

In the first game you had several grotesque creatures that were screen-filling monstrosities (some kind of giant mutant baby where its crib was a demon that attacked you), or just bizarrely compelling in appearance. In the reveal of the second game they focused on....normal sized, bog-standard human foes.

It was just some dude waffling on about who they are in an overwrought manner (Tim, of the confraternity of spoon benders, Jill, of the confraternity of dyslexic left-handed scarf knitters, Benedicta of the confraternity of lesbian confraternities, and so on. What the eff even is a confraternity?) whilst none of them looked like anything to give a damn about in terms of spectacle.

It was incredibly underwhelming for me, and in the end I just sat on it. No longer was I hyped for it, and it seemed like a cheap, quickly produced release with a piss-poor advertisement accompanying it.

Well, they shot themselves in the foot with that trailer, because I was so unimpressed that I never ended up purchasing it even when it was on sale. Only when it was in Humble Bundle did I get it, and having played it I must say the game is even better than the first. So why they made it look so naff I'll never know, as it should have been a triumphant return, whereas they made it appear to be a wet fart of a game.

The platforming is slick, the combat (although not especially expansive compared to some) is still brutal and fun, and it's lost none of that twisted lore that made it unique. And, yes! There are bosses that are impressive to see, so why the heck they didn't show any of them in the trailer boggles my mind. Since the previous game was awesome because of this you'd think they'd draw attention to at least a few without spoiling any of its magnificence.

Anyhow - everything here is brilliant, with responsive action and a challenge that is tough but fair. It looks gorgeous graphically, has wonderful music and voice-acting, and the writing is compelling. And I must admit that those bosses they did show in the trailer are actually absolutely cracking fights, with razor sharp design to their combat patterns and the timing to dodge their attacks.

Are they spectacular to look at? well, no, but they are easily the best out of the oodles of metroidvanias I have ever played. To the point where it feels stupid ever doubting that the game is pure quality.

You know how *whisper it* Fromsoft and the Dark Souls games / Elden Ring have gotten rather bland and uninspired with their boss-battles, as they just throw a barrage of attacks at you that either wipe off half of your health, or just outright kill you in one hit?

If you can overlook the fact they're not teeth-grindingly difficult in Blasphemous 2, which to my mind is a boon after the tedious formula Elden Ring throws at you time after time, and concentrate on what they are doing instead, this is incredible.

But if you are expecting 100 hours of grinding, you aren't going to get it here. It's a lean, fat-free experience at around under 30 hours to finish (well, almost finish, as the last boss is pretty brutal), and as far as I am concerned it is much better for it.

With engaging combat, great level design, challenging boss-battles, slick platforming, and tricky secrets to find, this is highly recommended!!!

Blind Fate: Edo no Yami is a bland "action" game, with simplistic combat and dull level design, but on the plus side...well, it looks alright.

Graphically its quite pleasant, and it has some nifty camera work as it introduces one of the enemy types by having them leaping from the background into the foreground with a stylish panning movement. Though it's so proud of this that it repeats it over, and over, and overrr again every time this enemy appears, which gets tedious.

It's also a case of style over substance, as this enemy looks stupid and is dull to fight. Combat is also quite limited and stodgy in its execution, with this being nowhere near to the best in the genre (such as Dead Cells, Blasphemous, Dark Light, or even the decades old Castlevanias)

It seems they had a reasonable idea for the story, and some chops technically, but not much else. In a couple of hours of playing it, it had one set-piece, and that was really uninspired. Walk along and get attacked by a tree. Dodge it. Get attacked by another tree, dodge it. Repeat a couple more times with no variation, set-piece ends. How mind-blowing!

I mean, it would be fine if the challenge was super tight and it raised your adrenaline regardless of it being insipid creatively, but it's so easy as to be quite boring. Battles in the game are equally boring, and are a million miles away from the epicly designed boss-fights of Blasphemous 2, or the tricky challenge of Hollow Knight etc etc. Etcetera!

There's just so, so, sooooo many titles in this genre that have raised the bar for this type of game, and Blind Fate feels like it could have been "my first Xbox arcade game" from, what? fifteen years ago? And even then it would have been pretty passe compared to something like Shovel Knight (I think that was Xbox arcade, but even if wasn't, do you know what was? Castlevania symphony of the night, and that was released even before then on playstation 1. You're not doing so well when a thrity year old game is more compelling)

I don't get what they were trying to achieve here. There's an attempt to add an extra layer of mechanics to its basic fighting, and yet..well...the fighting is basic and naff, so what a waste of time. It's not an action packed platformer, and it's not a thrilling slash-em-up either. It doesn't have incredible boss-battles, nor does it have slick set-pieces.

Ina pretty crowded market this brings nothing new or interesting, and this review is being left weeks after I could be last be bothered to play it. Definitely one for the back-log, and highly unlikely I will pick it up anytime soon.

Itorah is a pretty basic "action" platformer, that isn't a "bad" game, it just isn't a great one either. If you haven't played this type of thing recently and aren't fatigued by exposure to the genre, then it's...okay, or if you're relatively new to the genre it's a relatively pleasant (ish) addition.

But having just played Blasphemous 2, and having previously done games like Hollow Knight / Deaths Gambit and the Ori tittles, this feels like "my first bland action platformer" and a step or two back from those games.

I don't mean in terms of the presentation, because this is a graphically appealing game by comparison. I don't mean in the sense of everything making squeaky baby noises, or the tedious "hahs" and "hoos" and "hees" that your character makes every time she attacks, because Ori was just as twee in this regard.

The issue here is that I'm close to three hours into the game and the combat is flimsy and simplistic. The enemies are boring to fight and its getting so mind-numbing that I started just running and jumping past them, rather than engaging them.

The platforming has gone from pretty dull and easy to significantly more challenging. That would be fine, but unfortunately the controls are a bit iffy and this is compounded by the level design. Hey! You've just done a section that went on a tad too long to be engaging, would you like a breather? Well....tough! Here's another bit that just goes on, and on, and on....

I wouldn't mind so much but the music is rather uninteresting and saps any energy from the game. Add this to the irritating sound effects, the boring repetition of the same enemy over and over again throughout three hours of playing it, and the bland combat.

Then add in the shonky platforming and a lack of anything you haven't seen a million times before, and the main thing this has going for it is it's "charm". Now, just because the last game I played before this was super gory doesn't mean this tweeness is an issue. But it's no Ori, and I've played, and finished, both of those games and they are just as twee.

This is missing a certain something to keep my interest. Whilst some elements like the boss-battles are fairly well done, and the set-pieces are..okay, albeit pretty derivative, it's one that's going into the back-log because it's dull and a bit tedious. It needed a bit more creativity and polish being applied (and music that isn't snooze inducing wouldn't hurt either), but, well, it didn't get those things, so......

It's not awful by any stretch, but if I can't be bothered to play it anymore and am highly unlikely to anytime soon, that's tough to recommend.

This is a tough one not to recommend, but various bugs and crashes lessen the experience, and it is woefully unbalanced to the point that combat is barely viable as an option. This is a big problem in a turn-based strategy game.....

Age of decadence has probably the best writing I've witnessed in a long time, and when the game-play works it is intriguing seeing how decisions may or may not come back to bite you later on as the story progresses.

The issue is that fighting seems to be the worst choice you can make when speccing out a character, and time and time again the best solution comes from social skills such as charisma / persuasion etc. I've had to restart four times in the 12 hours that I've played, just so that I can finally find the balance needed to even finish the early quests.

On my best run (the current one) I have ZERO points put into combat skills for the fighter class(!!!), having started with those skills maxed out in the first run. In that first run, with the maximum accuracy bonus available and gear that enhanced the chance to hit, along with enhanced combat stats, my character would miss hits over, and over, and overrrrrrrrr again.

The RNG for your attacks is awful, and yet...it didn't seem to stop the enemies kicking the crap out of me....

So I tried different things to succeed, such as buying bombs and potions that set people on fire. These were great, but they have several issues: they were either (a) expensive to buy and only available in limited numbers, or (b) you can craft them but lacked the necessary stats to do so, or (c) when throwing these items the game would often crash and lock up my computer.

To some extent there is strategy to the combat, as some encounters do have modest choke-points to funnel the enemy through, or ranged attackers shots being blocked by positioning their comrades between you and them. But more often than not it all comes down to whether the RNG is in your favour, and I reached a point where it just wasn't possible to fight my way out of situations.

Here's the kicker....with an emphasis on boosted social skills every single one of those battles was avoidable. What took me several hours trying to figure out as a fighter took about, ooh, half an hour to finish just by talking my way out of them.

Whilst that is pretty cool, I can't say I appreciate wasting about 10 hours finding out how totally borked this is if you pick the wrong choices. And there really is only the one way to approach this game: DO NOT GO FOR COMBAT, plain and simple!!!

But to my mind that's rather contradictory for a game that is about...uh...combat, since you can still find yourself stuck in a fight every now and again, yet aren't then equipped to handle it. As an example: Your first encounter can be side-stepped through persuasion, but if its not high enough at a later point then you may have to threaten a person that you meet during it.

If you do threaten them (simply because you have no other choice) then they will betray you later on and that forces you into combat. The game just seems like a huge puzzle, where if you get something even slightly wrong at the start then it will muck you up later on.

There is only the illusion of choice, and the appearance of being highly replayable, but if only one path leads to success (i.e not combat) then that replayability is bunkum. I've "replayed" the starting area four times now as a Praetor, which is a combat class, and the only way I've succeeded is by....not doing combat. How does that make sense?

It is interesting that your starting point in the story changes if you choose a different class, but then you begin in unfamiliar territory and have to yet again find your way through how to complete these different scenarios. When you add in the crashes, and the graphics freaking out quite often and requiring a restart of your load, it all adds up to something with unfulfilled potential in everything but the story.

I don't not recommend it, but I don't recommend it either. Great narrative, great writing, but overall it's a broken experience.

This is a somewhat cautious recommended. Whilst it can be fun and more engaging than the glut of simplistic but oh so flashy indie shooters that seem to be the norm these days, it is a flawed product that can be irritating in places.

Graven is a first-person mixture of melee and ranged combat, with exploration, platforming and some mild puzzle elements. Generally all of those things are done reasonably well, though it tends to stumble in enough little ways that it lessens the experience.

Your weapons can be enjoyable, particularly when the effects are explosive, but you tend to find there isn't much difference between them. I have four weapons that are all essentially the same: something that looks like a crossbow and can be upgraded to fire explosives, an actual crossbow that...fires explosives, and...uh..a different crossbow that fires...um...explosives. Then a final non-crossbow that fires....*can you guess what?* explosives.

The same can said for a melee staff versus using a sword (though that does let you block projectiles, to be fair), or using a flail. Nothing really differentiates them when it comes to bashing a monsters face in, so even though its fun bashing a monsters face in there is still the disappointment that every "new" weapon is rarely exciting to obtain.

And whoever designed this in a way that you have to wait as animations finish when switching weapons and items needs some sense knocking into them. As it can be annoyingly slow changing between them, and even better yet there isn't a weapons wheel when using a controller, so the whole thing is sluggish and fiddly.

Most of the time it isn't too bad, but when the action gets hectic it feels like a poor choice to have made. Which is a shame, as it's quite visceral and enjoyable upto a point. Boss-battles are simplistic sh*te, though there's only three of them, and in all fairness, I can't recall the last game of this type (be it a boomer shooter, or fantasy combat like this) that wasn't utterly crap in this regard.

Its not exactly an endorsement of this title that everyone else produces dog-sh*t when it comes to these supposedly "thrilling" encounters, but as I said: there's not that many of them, so I'll let it slide.

Exploration is nice, as this isn't a linear title and it has pleasant secrets hidden about, or "cute" progression compared to something where its just switch-hunting or finding keys. Like, you know, the bazillions of simplistic boomer shooters that don't even have those two activities, never-mind anything even vaguely more sophisticated.

But then it doesn't give you a map, and any time you save out of an area you don't restart at the same place. Instead you go back to a hub area and have to make your way back. The game isn't exactly short, but the 30 hours I've clocked up so far is a lot of back-tracking, either because I missed something obscure, or because of quitting before a level was finished.

So far this sounds like I have more issues with it than positives, and it's true that you need patience to "enjoy" this, but it is still fun....mostly. Perhaps I'm just sick of dumb shooty-shooty-bang-bang, of which a blind person throwing a dart at titles on steam could hit, I dunno, a thousand of the same mind-numbingly dull DOOM Eternal wannabes with PS1 era graphics (thumbs down: not enough polygonal warbling or pop-in, and it has hi-res textures...disgusting in this day and age!!)

Something about Graven, despite its many issues, makes it more appealing than those kinds of games, but it is just "okay" and should have been better. This isn't Dishonored, Thief or Dark messiah of might and magic, but then again - what is these days? I'd really like to know of any title that comes even vaguely close to those games, because beyond the likes of them conventional shooters just bore me to tears.

This game will probably bore you to tears, or frustrate you, but it may not. I just appreciate that it has somewhat more depth than most, and there's slim pickings to be had in the genre so it will have to suffice. Maybe Avowed won't be too bad and will have fewer rough edges, but I won't hold my breath based on what I've seen of it so far (the game-play could be great, but the graphics are yucky, which is awkward..because they aren't even deliberately making it look crap and outdated)

In the meantime I wouldn't recommend this over Amid Evil (which is better than this in most ways, although the bosses are rubbish there too), or Hands of necromancy (great combat and exploration, but insipid woeful boss-battles...what a shock....), but I did find it more appealing than the likes of Elderborn.

PS: The reviews mentioning soft-locks may have been correct at the time of release, but it was very stable for me so I think that has been fixed. The level design can make it SEEM like it has screwed you over, and I thought that a couple of times, but in the end they always do provide a means for alternate access.

You maybe get to an area by pulling a switch that activates a lift, and then that lever stops working. "The game is broke" you think, but no! The lever only stops working when you have completed that bit, and some other exit has opened up. It would be easy to say its bust, and maybe it was before, but now its just on you as the player for not figuring it out.

I'm in the last area of the game (act 3), so unless there is a massive f**k-up at the end - it's working fine when people are saying they couldn't get past act 1!

Below is, without exaggeration, one of the most mind-numbingly boring games I have played in my life. It looks like it will be a top-down Zelda-esque mix of "action" *coughs* and exploration / puzzle solving. And maybe it is that, it's just that within an hour of playing it all I had experienced was a complete absence of any of those things.

The first five minutes of the game is the intro, and all it comprises of is a very, very, verrrrrrrry loooong shot of an ocean viewed from a million miles away. Eventually a distant speck is revealed to be a boat as the camera moves in at a pace that would shame a dead snail, but hey! Even though its more boring than watching paint dry, its "super atmospheric" and "scene-setting" in a way that's meant to evoke 'Shadow of the colossus' / 'ico' / 'half-life', albeit lacking anything remotely interesting while it does so.

After this dull introduction you'd think they would do something to invite you in and get you excited, and you'd be wrong. The game tells you nothing of what you have to do, continues with the view being so far out that you can barely see, and does an incredibly poor job of highlighting the exit points of each single screen room.

The view is pulled back so you can see more of the landscape, and yet even running you still plod along looking for whatever it is you're meant to find amongst the washed out colours and obscured details. It took me about half an hour to figure out where to go and having done so didn't find anything worthwhile, so I thought, well, if this is the game putting its best foot forward, then it has a pretty crippled foot.

Combat is simple but unrewarding, given that, like everything else, you can hardly see it due to the view staying practically in orbit its so far out. When you add up the drab graphics, boring game-play and it obscuring everything , including what the heck you're supposed to be doing, it didn't take long before I was wondering why it was worth carrying on playing.

Maybe if you're super patient it will reveal something of interest, after maybe a few more hours of mind-numbing sh*te, but I'm of the mind-set that a game ought to draw you in somewhat faster than that. As is: it's quite helpful to be so rubbish this early on, as at least you can still get a refund if you find it to be a load of crap like I did.

It cost me about £3 and so far that's wasted money. Having played it for an hour it was the most boring hour I've spent recently on a game. Compared to the likes of Hyper Light Drifter / Tunic, which this fundamentally does share some DNA with, this is painfully dull to experience, both in the game-play and in the presentation.

If there's anything even vaguely redeeming to be had from it, they needed to push it upfront much quicker. There's no narrative to give a sense of mystery and so provide something compelling to hold onto it, so overall it's just dull as f**k whichever way I look at.

This is a weird genre to review, as it's a loot based arpg that also seems to have co-operative / social mmo-lite elements included. One way or the other it's designed to suck up as many hours of your time as is humanly possible, whether that's the grind to level up in the single-player content, or the end-game content that seems nigh on impossible without another players assistance.

The fundamentals are quite enjoyable and there is a fair bit of depth to its mechanics. The only problem is that by the time you get to the point where you can really start experimenting, well, you'll have finished the most meaningful story content and along the way have encountered some horrendous difficulty spikes that put a blight on the enjoyment to be had.

You can't "get gud" with this type of game, only understand its systems better, and hope to get lucky with the random drops. As it isn't a reflex-driven action game like Dark Souls, but is instead one where you load up with the best spells / armour / weapons and then mindlessly obliterate enemies whilst most of the time you can hardly even see what's going on due to all the special effects.

Every time you level up, or upgrade your gear, it gets "better" to play, but at the same time devolves when it comes to the action. You're either going to get one-shotted by something that will takes ages grinding to be able to overcome, or you'll cut through mobs like a hot knife through melted butter.

Come a certain stage of development this is the default response. It's either ridiculously easy, or insanely hard, and both to my mind are the kind of poor design (or not, if you like this kind of thing) that sums up the genre. Yes, you have to think when setting up your gear, but in the heat of battle it's just spamming attacks and anyone will do (even when an enemy is supposedly resistant to its effects, if you're high enough in power they will die to anything)

So it can be fun and thoughtful as you min / max your loot, and the action is visceral with its graphics, sounds and feel. Up to a point it's enjoyable, but then the difficulty spikes for bosses, and the somewhat clumsy general game-play that accompanies them, take off a lot of the shine.

The narrative is...there...and it's...okaaaaaay, I suppose. Even though it seems like its made up of several different stories bodged together (which it is, given that this was developed over years of early access) and none of the characters or plot-points are especially interesting, or original.

There's enough here to be reasonably satisfying, right up until the time where it gets tedious trying to do the end-game content. But by then you'll have had a 100+ hours out of it, and for the cost of nowt. For myself I can't be bothered seeing if there's anything particularly meaningful for a grind that could take years (!! no joking) and seems to be designed around playing with more people.

Since its nowhere near possible for me to carry on playing it by myself, as it's just an endless grind and praying for a good drop. yet who knows if there's anything worthwhile for doing so. It can be fun, it can be crap, but overall I think its worth it for free. Just stop playing when it becomes a chore, and that's what I'm going to do.

Little Nightmares is a tough game to review, as it is in a genre (the 2.5d "walking simulator-platformer-puzzle-setpiece-em-up") that tends not to have a whole lot of action, and when it does, tends to be rather ordinary.

Most games in this genre, such as Inside / Limbo / Black the fall / 7th sector / Bramble King / DARQ, are often about atmosphere and narrative. With a focus on those elements generally outweighing any reflex driven platforming (they're usually quite sedate as a challenge, if at all) or set-pieces such as stealth sections, which are usually pretty rote in execution.

Unfortunately this is Little Nightmares summed up to a tee, as none of the game-play elements are anywhere near the standard a "proper" game would deliver. The same could be said for many others of its ilk, but in this case it is at a very dreary level that underwhelms with limp scares, and set-pieces that are cool to experience yet never get your pulse-pounding with adrenaline and fear.

Which is awkward, because this clearly does want to be a frightening game, albeit one at a somewhat soft un-adult level of cartoony grotesqueness that's like Resident Evil meets Coraline.

As an hour and a half long stop motion animated film this would have been compelling, but as a "game" where the game-play is mediocre throughout, well, it gets pretty boring.

On the one hand: the character designs are great and the visual presentation unquestionably delivers upon the style.

On the other hand: any action here is distinctly trite, and the puzzles are just outright dull, with none of them requiring anything more than box pushing and lever pulling.

A couple of the chase sequences / stealth sections are...okay. I've seen worse examples, but, uh, have also seen many that were much, much, muuuuuch better. Whilst one of the later ones was excellent, at least to experience as a sensation, if not, you know, when broken down into its game-play mechanics, which were as basic as you can get without it just being a QTE.

At no point does this ever attempt to be more than simplistic padding, and if you come across a puzzle and have some clever solution in your head, well, ignore it.

Because the puzzles here are 100% the opposite of satisfying brain-teasers. I don't recall a single one where it gave a eureka moment, or anything more head-scratching than having to deal with the fixed camera perspective that makes some bits quite fiddly.

This also made some of the platforming sections more trickier, as it wasn't the design that made it challenging, but the clumsy controls and unhelpful point of view.

I loved Inside despite it having similar characteristics in many regards, but the puzzles there had a weird charm to them, and DARQ was also very satisfying in a way that this really, really...really! isn't. It's boring AF, and only saved by the visuals and story.

As to what that story is, and how it ended, well...(a) it's hard to say if this is a metaphor for child abuse, or if its to be taken literally, and (b) if its to be taken literally then I resent some of the actions my character took, that seemingly I had no choice in making.

During the course of the game I encountered several cute little creatures that were no threat to me, and if they were trapped I was setting them free. At various points your character (a bit of a starving waif) gets desperately hungry and aches for food.

On one such occasion one of these creatures offered me some meat as thanks for helping. My character then violently murdered them and ate them instead.

This wasn't totally out of the blue, at least as far as the narrative vibe wasn't at odds with this direction. You can understand why your character did this (they'd just discovered the meat was the remains of people), even if you can't justify it, or the dissonance it creates between your "choices" as the player and this sudden lurch that doesn't reflect any of those choices.

These little creatures were simple beings and unaware of why this offering would cause offence. They didn't kill those people and they weren't the ones relentlessly hunting my character with the intent of eating them. But, no! For "dramatic" purposes the story decides you are now playing as a massive piece of sh*t, in utter contradiction of any actions you took previously.

It seemingly never occurred to the writers that this undoes your connection to your "avatar", because its conclusively not your avatar anymore by this point, or that you would lose sympathy for the character.

Maybe I missed something that would have changed this outcome, but the game ended with them irrideemably corrupted by the experience and killing every single living thing that they came across. For a rather boring game it was quite an unsatisfying conclusion, and whilst I was erring towards a not-super-positive thumbs up, it was enough to drag it down into a negative review.

The puzzles are bland, the action is no better than okay (the kiss of death for any game intending to be even vaguely scary), and the story is ass if taken literally. If its a metaphor for some deeper themes then it was done so in a manner lacking in nuance.

Personally: if "my" character had died at the end, I would have said good riddance given how murderous they are by this point. To feel that way about someone whose world you were meant to be inhabiting, and presumably sympathising with, it totally throws me out and makes that fours spent playing the game a further waste of time.

It almost succeeded through the atmosphere, but in every other department it's either a non-event or a disappointment.

RAGE 1 was a first-person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic world after it was ravaged by an asteroid strike, with the survivors either eking out a living on the surface in the aftermath, or retreated to cryostasis pods that buried into the ground.

With slick shooting and presentation that was, for the time, fairly slick for a semi-open world environment, it was a fun experience but ultimately somewhat shallow given the comparison to the similarly themed Fallout games it unfairly received (since its nothing like Fallout as a game)

Whilst that disappointment was somewhat on the player due to misrepresentation and / or the wrong expectations (its still a relatively linear shooter with none of the depth those Fallout comparisons suggest) it did have its failings.

On the one hand you had the visceral combat and smooth feel of FPSes that Id software are known for, but on the other you had a clunky narrative with undeveloped villains, and a game-world that wasn't especially convincing in size or content when put up against the likes of Fallout or S.TA.L.KE.R.

There were a lot of good points to RAGE, such as the combat being a precursor to the likes of DOOM 2016 with its fast pace and brutal intensity, and a reasonably in-depth system of weapons upgrades and item crafting. Unfortunately there wasn't a whole lot beyond that action backing it up.

Does this sequel, then, right those wrongs?

Ehhhhh......kind of....?? But not really.

The story is throwaway crap, the villain is still undeveloped, and it is still just shallow shooty-shooty-bang-bang if you were expecting an immersive sim or a more involving 100+ hour experience.

What it does do, however, is manage that sense of scale better and actually feels like a large environment with things to discover. Then when you get into the nitty-griity of the gun-play, well, it totally rocks and is probably one of the most satisfyingly punchy (quite literally) shooters that isn't called DOOM.

Your character gets their hands on a super-suit that comes with special abilities, and as you level these up they become devastatingly effective in battle. With moves that can yeet an enemy into another time-zone, or pulverise them into walls, you'll often see enemies being rag-dolled in a manner that evokes memories of Skyrims sometimes crazy physics.

Even your bog-standard melee attack will wallop them senseless before you obliterate them with your rather fabulous shotty-gun, or various other weapons that all tend to leave them as a stain on the floor and walls.

Everything can be upgraded and on a harder difficulty level you'll need to invest resources into these enhancements, as the engine is quite capable of throwing fairly large numbers of tough combatants at you. On the action side of things this is a ten out of ten title.

The game-world is reasonably flexible with fast-travel points, and when you have to manually get around there's always violent skirmishes to be found along the way, as various factions start scrapping with each other. Eventually you get a mini flying machine that speeds up travelling when you eventually reach the point of wanting to be quick and more direct.

On the whole it provides enough game-play mechanics to stay compelling, and it's always super fun as a shooter. It begins with deliberately rough edges and over time sands them off in appreciable ways into a slick loop.

But, despite all of this well-realised potential, it still fumbles (ever-so-slightly) if narrative or player choice are your thang. I played it for forty hours because its incredibly enjoyable when it comes to the combat, whereas the story.....um.....not so much. It's passable stuff, though not especially compelling or note-worthy.

Cyber Shadow is an initially very enjoyable retro side-scrolling hack and slash platformer that unfortunately grows tiresome as it goes on. There's a purity to its action that is refreshing if you're bored with Souls-like levelling up being put into the mix, as it concentrates on being a test of your reflexes, but it takes this to an infuriating degree.

Particularly in the level design, where a lack of saves in the easier beginning stages wasn't so tedious, but by the time it really ramps up the challenge it becomes a slog rather than a fun experience. This, of course, depends on your tolerance for such things, and no doubt some people will "enjoy" it one way or the other (be they a masochist, or an elitest "git gud" type)

Personally it never thrilled me, and whilst the moment to moment action is fine and relatively exciting, as it ramped up in difficulty between the combat and the platforming it began to wear me down at the same time.

Upon taking damage you have a very (very!) limited window of invulnerability that is too short to help if you end up being punted into insta-death hazards by impact or enemy attacks.

It is especially infuriating when it happens during an intense sequence that involves outrunning some environmental hazard, as they don't tone down the combat encounters when these happen. Unlike most games where they separate these elements and you aren't typically under attack during these challenging set-pieces, here there is no distinction.

I think it is this that makes me find it less rewarding than the likes of Hollow Knight / Blasphemous / Ori etc, as they were better judged when it came to being tricky and finely tuned. With those games it got my adrenaline pumping, and despite being tough to finish they were satisfying. This is not and for only this one reason does it fail.

The bosses that I have faced were enjoyable and up until a few hours in it was fun, but beyond that point it was too retro for my tastes and it just knuckles down on this design.

If you like games being built with health bars for your character that allow you to take several hits, but then contradict this with insta-death objects where you can end up being ping-ponged between enemies into them and then have to restart an entire level, then this is the game for you.

If you don't like those things, then it isn't the game for you. I thought I'd like it, and for a while I did, but eventually that wore off when faced with the tedious repetition. Or the fact that they start putting health refills in places where you are likely to take damage trying to get it, which is an extra slap in the face when you're struggling to get through in the first place.

In itty-bitty chunks its tolerable but playing beyond that makes me feel its one to end up siting in the back-log, as something more fun and forgiving takes my attention. By this point the developers have my money, and as it isn't an awful game I don't begrudge them that, but at the same time I honestly doubt I will be compelled to finish this anytime soon.

Does that sound like a recommended to you? Because it doesn't to me, and so it's not going to get one.