Jordan Helm
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Hardcore Gamer Latest Reviews
Who's to say what the real, developer-side cause is for Scarlet Nexus' failings. What was already a mammoth undertaking in crafting a competent-enough hack-and-slash action game that could muscle its way into the spotlight, Bandai Namco's latest in-house creation is not just inadequate in appeasing long-time fans of the genre,...
At its best, there's moments of appreciation and respect for the artistic detail Narita Boy lavishes in, with its pixel art and generally-eery vision of cyberspace run amok with corrupted foes. At the very least, the somewhat-warped screen display and drenching in '80s culture tropes is anything but off-putting. The...
Even with these brief spots of imbalance -- when the Lemming-like behavior of minions can feel too brain-dead or uncontrollable -- Evil Genius 2: World Domination is an impressive revival of a decades-old philosophy on strategy games. Whose sequel this year almost makes it look easy in that it lands...
Without a key mechanic to keep gameplay fresh, or even a story that's both fleshed out and well-structured, Twin Mirror fails to find any kind of hook beyond the fleeting intrigue in how it all ends. Even then, brief a run-time the game actually requires of its players, the conclusion...
With the brilliant heights that remakes of Resident Evil 2, for example, achieved last year, it felt inevitable that a remake like XIII would stand as the exact opposite result in that regard. Whether or not you're the type to maybe excuse some of the failings as unanswerable solutions to...
Even with these minor annoyances -- not least those carried over from previous games in the series -- what brief frustrations that do surface are quickly and easily eclipsed by everything else going on in Like a Dragon. Or more appropriately, by the sheer scale of deviation and conviction that...
Though the story elements won't be to everyone's taste -- and as such, the efforts the game makes to inject a sense of drama and interpretation stakes can fall flat and veer into being completely off-putting -- the sheer breadth and scale that Genshin Impact offers means that the brief...
It's astonishing to see just how far off the mark Disintegration is in terms of how it looks and plays. An astonishment made painfully evident across both of its equally-unflattering, technically-flawed game modes devoid of any quirk, personality or lasting impression. Impressions that are of anything but the feeling of...
There are times when you feel obliged to find faults no matter how minor, but in the ten-plus hours spent with Moon Studios' latest, there are none. It's a feat few studios can rightfully claim to accomplish in recent times but such a claim is more than merited for a...
Even with its unfortunate dip in visual quality from time to time, that aside, a lot of the points held against Skookum Arts can be admittedly put down to personal aspirations not met, rather than some fundamental flaw the game is undeniably guilty of. An aspiration easily ignored for The...
Maybe it's a little unfair to propose that Kunai's weaker spots are a result of the high bar games preceding it have set. There's commendation to offer with the way TurtleBlaze manage to build off of their stripped-back visual aesthetic. Providing a sense of movement that, while not deep, does...
You could very well copy-paste the conclusion to our Strange Brigade review when summing up the up-and-down nature of Zombie Army 4: Dead War and in one respect that does draw attention as well to this game's general relevancy. Even so, the short, and many, bursts of fighting back the...
