NerdBurglars Gaming

DARQ manages to deliver a frightening experience without ever explicitly scaring you. The subtle themes of darkness and despair are woven into every room that slowly chips away at happiness to create an incredible atmosphere that rises and falls as you make your way through the rather short adventure.

As a debut game, Maquette has really set the bar high for the future Graceful Decay. Between the emotional story, challenging and creative puzzles and the beautiful visual style, this game is a great showcase of the talent that lives within this development team. Maquette is a refreshing entry to the first-person puzzle genre that will provide you with more than a few challenging moments and a memorable experience.

Paradise Lost is an engrossing adventure that will suck you right in and deliver just enough to keep you satisfied but leave you wanting more. The experience is hindered by an aggravatingly slow walk speed with no option to run. While you will get used to it, it only highlights the limitations the walking simulator genre has imposed on what is one of the most unique settings in a game based on this time period.

At its core, Sackboy: A Big Adventure is a well-polished 3d platformer that has a lot of style and a very unique charm. It has pushed Sackboy even further into the realm of respected video game characters. The creativity we see in the level design may not have made its way to the puzzles but this does not stop this game being a great game to play on your shiny new PlayStation 5.

With such a strong foundation and a rock-solid game that came before it, Miles Morales had some high expectations. In many ways, it delivered what you would want from a Spiderman adventure. It falls short with a weaker lineup of villains and a less interesting story. Marvel's Spiderman was just too good.

West of Dead pulls you in with its attractive visual design and atmospheric premise. The gunplay is a lot of fun when you get good at it but there are far too many technical issues that get in the way of your experience. When games have permadeath, glitches are going to kill the fun as well as your character.

Neon Abyss is a great example of a rogue-lite game that is done right. The visuals and soundtrack make exploration a lot of fun. The gun mechanics and crazy powerups make it a lot of fun to kill everything in sight. The game just falls a little short when it comes to random rooms. They are often very small and cluttered. It is easy to lose where your character is on the screen until you either die or everything else in the room is dead.

With a huge number of combat games to draw inspiration from, it is a shame this game is more like button mashy Dynasty Warriors game than it is a precision, high speed action game like Ninja Gaiden. You never feel like the powerful warrior the story tries to make you believe you are.

It's hard to think of where Ellie's story could go having played the first game. Once you get stuck in, you're going to take an emotional beating. The 25-hour long story is massive and it cuts absolutely no corners. The story just keeps giving and giving. The stealth and combat will get your blood pumping and give you some moments you will not forget. When it comes to value for money, you aren't going to get a game that is more worthy of a purchase.

Final Fantasy VII is a pretty unusual game and is fun to play. The production values are just incredibly low at times. For a large title from a big franchise, its shocking to see flaws that you would often see in a House of the Dead game. The experience is fun as the city and lifestyle are so strange and foreign. This is not enough to make up for the boring side quests, drab environments, and poor visuals.

It came from space to eat our brans has a few things that it delivers well and some others that it falls short on. The trailer feels like a very poor representation of what the game actually contains. The lack of anything to do other than shoot aliens makes it quite boring to play alone and the lack of online multiplayer makes it difficult to play with others. This makes a great party game to have a few beers with friends but it isn’t a game to sit down and play after a hard day’s work.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is set in one of the most unique and creative locations you will ever see crammed under one roof. The diversity in style makes this feel like a dozen games crammed into one. There are times it feels like it may have been better to have fewer floors with more content put into the more interesting themes. As it is, there is still a huge amount of content with something for everyone.

The toolset offered by Dreams to create games is incredibly flexable. Giving players the ability to create games without needing to write code has produced some astonishing creations so far. There are endless hours of top quality community created content to sink your teeth into already.

The core mechanics in Rage 2 were very solid. Combined with strong visuals and a large map, there was a sandbox to have a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the events and missions you take part in have been used in every other open world. Rage 2 is built on a solid foundation but does very little to try and shake things up. You will find yourself getting tired of the repetitiveness quite fast, especially if you are someone who plays these types of games often.

Eastshade offers a very unique take on a walking simulator with RPG questing elements. The innocent simplistic lives people live make you feel at ease. The quests may not have exciting boss fights but this lack of combat allows you to drop your guard and absorb the beauty of the environment. While it is disappointing the console versions of the game are visually weak, you will still be able to appreciate the beauty. Even a rainy day in Eastshade is a pleasurable experience.

What The Outer Worlds offers in artistic creativity, it lacks in quest diversity. Exploring the colony is really exciting and you will lose yourself in everything it has to offer. unfortunately, you will end up performing a lot of the same menial tasks throughout the relatively short campaign. You have access to an incredible world but the quests never take full advantage of it. There is far too much focus on the political problems of the colony and not enough action and adventure. You never feel like the hero of the story, you feel more like the middle man between the people that are actually important.

While Edge of Time is not perfect, there isn’t anything in this game to be overly critical about. It does a fairly good job at giving you an authentic feeling Doctor Who experience. There are some silly plot holes but nothing to ruin the experience. The sonic screwdriver plays a big part the TV series, but is not used to the same extent in the game and is the biggest let down. It feels like Edge of Time was a prototype that was polished to completion. Far too many elements of this game were not fleshed out enough to reach their full potential.

Woven provides a pleasant experience with a nicely narrated story that will be very well suited to young children. While the technical issues are likely to go unnoticed by the target audience, they are enough to ruin the experience for anyone who plays games regularly. There isn’t much here that the average gamer would find enjoyable. With that being said, for parents looking for a game to introduce their children into gaming, you couldn’t find a better game than this.

Sparklite has several aspects that are quite enjoyable and well made. The soundtrack is delightfully happy and well composed, the world can be a pleasure to explore and the gadget crafting system in the workshop provides you with so many cool things. All of these are held back by an endless grind for money. The 2 hours of content are padded with hours upon hours of painful grinding that will poison the experience resulting in a game you will lothe rather than enjoy.

Death Stranding is a game with a fantastic and uniquely interesting story. Backed with a strong cast of experienced actors, the game manages to tell the story flawlessly. The gameplay doesn’t live up to the same level of perfection. The delivery aspects are fun and it tells a story in its own way. It just gets quite repetitive over time and leaves you wanting a bit more diversity to the delivery missions. Overall, Death Stranding should be seen as a very successful first project for Kojima productions and is hopefully a sign of many more to come.

Combining a farming game with an open world exploration game seems like a great idea. Unfortunately stranded sails fails to provide much fun with farming or exploration. There is way too much hand holding combined with boring progression and a disastrous stamina system. Stranded Sails is a game of fetch quests with no reward or enjoyment to be had in between. Exploring a desert island seems like fun, but the game doesn’t want you to have too much of that.

A really enjoyable game that looks great and has very high production values. The inclusion of so many characters from the Mario franchise will raise an eyebrow and have you wondering what the point is. Link’s Awakening doesn’t do anything bad, but it doesn’t have that special something that other titles in the Zelda franchise have.

Seed of Evil is a great story to expand on a fantastic post apocalyptic universe. Nothing has really changed in terms of the gameplay. The original pros and cons still apply. This DLC delivers everything you would expect from a story based expansion and is a must have for any fans of the original.

If you were a fan of the original or are a fan of classic 16 bit beat em up games, you will find a lot to enjoy here. For those into more modern forms of the genre, there has been very little added to modernize this game. Make sure you know what you are getting into before you purchase.

The Sojourn makes a great first impression. Strong visuals that show great production values. Unfortunately, the game fails to keep things interesting. Repetitive levels and repeating puzzle ideas stop this game from leaving a lasting impression.