Recent reviews by Auxro

I've been following Haste since wayy back when that first concept video came out. I thought it looked cool and hoped they'd make it into something full one day. I'm so happy to say that it lived up to all the hype I felt for it!

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I first want to praise how hard the team have been working following the release. Over the first couple of days playing this game, I had a number of issues. The team fixed almost all of my issues just two days after release, and they put out another update the day after following up on even more feedback. They've been absolutely incredible and I'm so excited to see any further changes this game sees.

This game is FUN. The premise is very simple - run fast and catch yourself on slopes to translate downward momentum into speed, and outrun a pursuing void. Where this game gets really exciting though is when you're running at 180m/s, dodging ice spikes flying out of the ground, explosions raining from the sky, and walls of lasers. When you get enough items to really pick up the speed, you just feel so cool when you get to the end of a difficult level, there's no other more complex way to put it. And this game has plenty of ways to make you feel fast too. Effects around Zoe as she is dashing forward, blurred environments around her, with her feet glowing depending on how much boost you have, as well as giving you equipment like a hoverboard and a harpoon to use to pick up even more speed

Usually, in games like this, the story is something I acknowledge but don't really think about too much. But this game's story really captured me, as simple as it was. Throughout the game, each character (who are all so much fun, by the way) assists Zoe on her journey, particularly by passing valuable information and life lessons on to her. There are little mysteries that get solved throughout the game and character arcs that get resolved, but they're told in a way that's very considerate to the main event, the gameplay. The game doesn't take you out of gameplay for long periods of time to deliver character interactions - the dialogue is all given at campfires, occasional short exchanges between levels during a run, and sometimes someone will have something extra to say at the base camp area in the hub world. I really enjoyed watching the characters grow around one another.

I also really enjoyed each of the bosses. My favourite was Convoy (I think that's what it's called), which has you avoid a barrage of lasers while you run to the other end of the long machine, and then attack it from the inside once you avoid all the internal obstacles. Nine of the ten bosses in this game are different tiers of the same three bosses. For example, Jumper is the boss of three different shards, each iteration being stronger than the last and introducing a new gimmick. This was initially something I was unhappy about, but I came around to it eventually after I realised how fun these bosses get when you build them up in this way. It definitely paid off in the end making the bosses work like this. The final boss is also great fun as well. I almost beat it on my first try, but ran out of time just before finishing it. Honestly though, what happens when you run out of time is so cool that I'm glad I lost just so I could experience it.

The presentation of this game is absolutely phenomenal too - catchy music tracks, beautiful artwork and a really fun visual style. The feeling of trying to run as fast as you can while the music distorts and haunting darkness creeps in from behind you is one of the coolest feelings this game provides, especially when you manage to get away from it successfully.

When I posted this review, I was harsh on the slow progression of Endless Mode, and how I felt it was the worst way to experience the game. Since then, they've updated the rate you gain items and have now made it my favourite way to play the game. I just had to go back and edit the review to reflect that.

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While I'd love to give this game nothing but praise for the whole review, there are a few small issues that I'd like to cover in case the devs see this

Sometimes, the level generation can just be unfair. In one case, during a level in the spooky dark dimension place, I was stuck on a narrow path with walls either side of me and no opportunity to jump because the ground was flat, and I ended up reaching a dead end after a couple of seconds. In another case, I reached a room raining lasers down from the ceiling, and the idea with these rooms is that you leap out the other side of it back onto the main ground. Usually the ground is directly ahead of the jump, occasionally a little to the left or right. In one case though, I leapt and couldn't see any ground. Approaching again with my second life, it turned out the main ground had spawned a sharp 80 degrees to the left, which I never could've spotted first time. This kind of thing only happened to me 4 or 5 times in 14 hours, but worth commenting on

Also, there are points in this game where the audio balancing is just a bit off. The first few times I defeated a boss, I found myself scrambling to turn the game down on my headphones because it was just so much louder than anything else that was happening at the time. Another time I found this was when I first encountered an obstacle in the desert area which launches gemstones into the sky that fall onto the ground. This obstacle was far louder than anything else I was hearing in game at the time, so it was very uncomfortable to listen to and I had to pause and turn my headphones down, just to turn them up again when I was past the obstacle.

By the time I got to shard 7, I found myself having a lot less fun. Rather than introducing new gimmicks, you spend the latter third of the game dealing with a lot more of the same gimmicks, and I just wish there would've been more fresh stuff in those last few shards.

I was surprised to see the game doesn't have a level select menu (unless it exists but I've just totally missed it - I tried very hard to find it). I like having a hub world that contains all the different shards, but eventually when you want to revisit old stages it can be quite a chore having to run all the way there. This isn't so bad after unlocking shard 10 as that shard has a beam to every other shard, but before that I had a point that I wanted to replay shard 1 after beating shard 5. I wasn't very familiar with the hub world layout at that point, so I had to follow the light path from 5 to 4, then from 4 to 3, and then I was able to find shard 1 on my own. It would just be so much easier with a level select menu.

Just a small nitpick - as cool as the time out sequence is for the final boss, it felt like a bit of a slap in the face to realise I didn't get given any antishards for my run. In repeat runs, when I think I'm going to run out of time I dive into the void just to avoid missing out of antishards again.

Final little gripe, dialogue seems to be out of order sometimes. The game has a major plot twist and, while I predicted the plot twist so it wasn't too big a deal, characters started discussing it without any reveal at one point in the game. This confused me and I thought I'd just not been reading too closely at one point. Two hours later, there it was, the dialogue where the plot twist reveal happened, and Zoe reacting as if she had no idea.

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Overall, this game is sooooo much fun. I'm looking forward to seeing further improvements and potentially any additional content the team is planning to add to the game in the future. This is Landfall's strongest title to date.

Shadow Generations oh my GODDDD

• Best 3D level design in a Sonic game, and surprisingly good 2D level design too
• While this version of the boost is potentially the slowest in a Sonic game, it allows for incredibly tight platforming in a 3D space
• Each level has an unbelievable number of branching paths and hidden shortcuts
• Every Doom power is so entertaining and satisfying to use, especially going back and breaking stages with Doom Wings. I only wish the other stages had reasons to go back to them when a new Doom power is unlocked, like if they put a Doom Morph section in Space Colony ARK
• Really fleshed out, densely populated open world white space area
• Some of my favourite boss fights in the series
• Incredibly strong OST (as always for Sonic games)
• A surprisingly immersive story full of strong character moments, which I didn't expect after Sonic Generations did so little with its story due to being restricted to White Space

And then this 100/10 also gets packaged with Sonic Generations??? SxSG is made of pure gold. It's going to take Sonic Team a longg time to surpass this masterpiece

Okay, that's all the time I've got for this review. I gotta get back to writing Black Doom x Radical Highway fanfics on my Nintendo 3DS

Such a fun and silly little collectathon that practically begged me to 100% it, all while getting plenty of laughs out of me :)

Super fun game! Not the longest in the world considering the price point - it took about 15 hours to get all achievements, collect all gold bolts, etc. but lots of fun packed into the relatively low playtime

The weapons are very satisfying to use! Not quite as enjoyable as the peak of some of the other Ratchet and Clank games, but they were far from boring to use. The plot was simple but enjoyable, and the writing and comedic style in both the cutscenes and enemy dialogue in game completely held up to franchise standards

I do just wish they settled down a bit with the invisible walls. Ratchet and Clank as a series, including this game, loves hiding secrets in areas players would rarely think to explore, but it gets very discouraging tying to explore these areas just to hit an abrupt, unnecessary invisible wall 95% of the time

It's also pretty glitchy. In one level I fell into a pool of water and then when I got out, until I turned my game off and on again, my run and jump animations were being constantly interrupted by water splashes where something in the code clearly thought I was landing in water when I wasn't. And the number of times I would get to the top of a staircase just to die because I went "out of bounds", leading me to redo an entire enemy encounter, was insane

So really fun game overall, it just suffered a bit from the awkward design quirks and glitches

This is the best Dragon Ball combat has ever felt, but it still leaves a lot to be desired.

The anime-like graphics and flashy explosions make every single interaction in this game look stunning. Little details like smoke dissipating when a character charges their ki from within it just makes it all the more visually interesting. There's sooo much character variety, and character feel unique enough to one another to make me want to play everyone, even the weird, niche characters (hi Cui). Options like the Dragon Dash and Instant Transmission help to keep the action dynamic and fast-paced by allowing the gap to be closed quickly. Overall, this is without a doubt the most fun I've had playing a Dragon Ball game

However, despite my love for the game, there are a number of things I wish would get fixed sooner or later:
• There aren't enough maps. At all. They even cut Kami's Lookout from this game??
• Super Counters need to cost ki. Playing against someone who has them mastered is incredibly unfun.
• Characters only have one expression for their intro and outro, no matter what they're saying. This can lead to Goku angrily yelling at someone and then giving them a nice excited smile, for example. They really need to adjust the facial expressions for each line
• Custom Battles are so much fun. However, it takes so long to make one if you want to go in depth with the cutscenes and add a lot of dialogue. They added sorting alphabetically in a patch, but I wish you could type in a word or phrase and search for all messages containing that word. When working on a particularly in depth game, that could genuinely save like an hour
• Some melee blast attacks completely lack punch in their animations. Even just a bit more screenshake would go a long way
• The game came out 6 months ago and Jiren *still* doesn't have an actual transformation animation? Huh??

This is genuinely such a good start. The game came out feeling a little underbaked, and I'm crossing my fingers that they will continue to update the game as the DLC comes out and some of the issues I mentioned above will be fixed, making my favourite Dragon Ball game my favouriter Dragon Ball game

good :)

I've thoroughly enjoyed every single RGG game I've played up until now. I'd played every single PC release besides this one, and was quite excited because the theme of the game looked like a lot of fun

That's why I'm so disappointed to say that I'm uninstalling after having only gotten to the end of chapter two. After three hours of playing, the game's rather boring story hadn't even begun to draw me in. And this is absolutely the worst combat in ANY Yakuza game. The brawler is just a worse version of classic Yakuza combat, the sword style feels far too slow to be enjoyable, and the gun style is very situational and kinda just bad against most enemies. The style where you dual wield a sword and a gun is AWESOME and great fun but, unfortunately, I can't just focus that one style and put all my skill points into that because there have already been numerous fights which force you to use a set style which feel a lot slower than they need to because I haven't put points into those styles. Also the number of fights that have started and just put me in sword style (despite me *never* using it unless I have to) and I've spent the first 10 seconds of the fight wondering why my attacks aren't working

I'm just not having any fun with this game. The only fun I'm having is with that one fighting style, but I'm constantly thinking about how much I'm disadvantaging myself by not upgrading the other styles when I know it's going to force me to use them later. There's no point in me continuing any further. I've finally found the first Yakuza game that I do not enjoy.

It's honestly a crime that I had no knowledge of this game before last year's Steam Winter Sale

Gunfire Reborn took Borderlands and made it a roguelike and it works so well. Every single run, every character I've played, every weapon I've tried, every difficulty I've played on, solo or multiplayer, it's all just been such a blast!! Finding your favourite characters, weapons and inscriptions is a lot of fun, especially when you start playing around with Gemini Inscriptions, which effectively let you use the attributes of the second weapon in your loadout to buff the weapon you're currently using. It then just takes a while to find it in you to stop using the Rainbow + Argus Spores build because it's so blatantly overpowered lmao

If I were to offer any criticism towards the game, it'd be the lack of enemy variety once you've put a decent bit of time into the game. Once you've played through the same four areas a number of times, there's nothing else for you to see. Increasing the difficulty enhances the enemies which can be a fun challenge, but it's nothing beyond stat buffs and giving them one or two new properties. The game could really use some more stages, just so you'll never really know where you'll be next. It's my desire for something like that that makes me really appreciate each area having two potential bosses, so it's always a fun little surprise when you enter the boss stage

Overall, this is a game you absolutely should not miss out on if you enjoy PVE shooters

Hot take - I actually wasn't a massive fan of Judgment. The story wasn't super gripping (entertaining for sure, just not quite my speed) and, while I loved Crane Style, Tiger Style didn't feel very good to use in my opinion, so the combat didn't have quite as much variety as I was hoping for

That being said, THIS is one of the best RGG games without a doubt! The story is absolutely incredible with great pacing from start to end, the characters are deep and impactful, and every single combat style is so much fun - Tiger Style was actually my favourite in this one!!

I also found myself really enjoying the School Stories side content. Each minigame was a lot of fun (except for the early stages of the Robotics minigame, but once you get the speed upgrades it starts to feel a lot nicer to control)

I even ended up really enjoying the Kaito Files side-story. It was nothing life-changing, just a very engaging story with some really touching emotional beats. I've always really enjoyed Kaito's character so seeing his story explored in a bit more depth was very interesting to me

Overall, this is one of the best experiences that this studio has to offer right now. If you're a fan of the Yakuza games, make sure you don't miss this

This game is an absolute masterpiece!! The story is engaging and full of gripping character moments, the world has never felt so large and bustling thanks to how social Honolulu feels, and my GODD the music slaps. I love all of the new characters - Tomizawa, Chitose and Yamai are all so so much fun, and there are so many returning characters and it was awesome to check in with them all

This game presents such an interesting side to Kiryu. Due to his difficult situation, you see a lot more inner conflict than has been present in any previous Yakuza game. This game truly portrays Kazuma Kiryu at his most vulnerable, which is such an intriguing angle to approach him from. And going and revisiting all of his old memories felt truly nostalgic.

As always, the side content is great in this game. I spent about 12 hours of playtime just on Dondoko Island alone because, when it opened up, I was so hooked that I played start to finish barely leaving the island. The Sujimon battling isn't as fun to me, but I appreciate how silly a gamemode it is. And, as always, the substories are incredible, with some being your typical goofy Yakuza substory and some being very... melancholic.

After finishing the game today I'm so not thrilled that, for the next two or three years, that cliffhanger is going to have to sit in my head while I wait for Yakuza 9. But *that* pain just speaks to how truly great the plot of this game was. When you look over it as a whole it is maybe a little shallow but it's watching it unravel and experiencing the solid character moments that makes the game's plot feel special


In conclusion: Play video game