For the most part, Mirror's Edge is a pretty good platformer game. The theme parkour is rarely ever explored in games and I'll take a dystopian society premise anytime. One thing certainly ruins my overall enjoyment for the game though: the ever so nauseating camera bob. Moreover the game also ends a bit too abruptly in an anti-climatic way. While it could be a bit longer to tie loose ends, it was still a pretty unique game of its time that makes its cult classic status well-deserved.

Placeholder

This game is reminiscent of the old Clock Tower games with the premise of Silent Hill. I love the hand-drawn comic book art style of the game as well as the atmosphere of the environment. Unfortunately the game's major issue for me is how it blocks you from achieving the True Ending in your playthrough just because you messed up the order of a certain action half an hour into the game. You see, the game has four requirements for that ending and three of them are obvious. But it turns out the fourth is a hidden side quest that can only be done before handing in a key item required for one of the other side quest. This is something you won't be able to know during your first playthrough and I couldn't be bothered to replay the game just for that, to be honest. Nevertheless, it's still a great game to go in blindly on one sitting.

Another game that takes the formula of an old game; this one is really similar to the old arcade racing games in the likes of Outrun or Road Rash. The only downside to this is its relatively short playtime length.

This visual novel/puzzle game can be a hard sell. In This Starry Midnight We Make, you help other people by making constellations using the Japanese traditional cosmology onmyou. It presents itself as a star making simulation game, while the story is told in visual novel format. The latter is nothing special to write home about. It's the former that makes the game divisive to the already niche audience; either you hate it or you like it.

There are some puzzle elements involved in the star creation that you won't be able to know without tons of trial and error. For instance, you have to give energy to the stars to grow them properly. As the game doesn't explain this process thoroughly, I was fumbling around for hours confused why my stars stopped growing. And once you do grow those properly, you still have to figure out how to influence the stars' growth by using a certain type of star. All in all, the concept of the game is interesting, but the gameplay is confusing without proper guidance.

Basically it's Ghost Busters set it in Tokyo. Story is presented in a visual novel format while the gameplay bit is an SRPG (think FF Tactics or Disgaea). The visual novel part is more unique than most VNs; character sprites are fully animated, and there is an action wheel that will influence your in-game actions during dialogue. The same wheel is also the first major issue I've had with the game. There are two action wheels: emotion (love, friendship, anger, investigation, and sad) as the first and the second as the five senses. Choosing the correct combination can increase characters' affinities, make them join your party, or trigger a special flashback about the ghosts dubbed "Sixth Sense". On paper it seemed amazing, but the problem is the game only shoved you the wheels without even slightly explaining how they work. There is also no set actions even when choosing the same combination. One time your character can act like a total jerk, a psycho, or even a player. Great concept, bad execution.

The gameplay part is also not blemish free either. At first glance the gameplay part of this visual novel plays like most Strategy RPG; the movement is made on a grid map. But then they made a twist on this formula which made it difficult on the first place. You and your enemies move at the same time when the turn ends. As a result you have to predict where the enemies are going to successfully attack them. While a guessing game can be done as the enemies' movement range is visible to you, their chosen action is always random if you don't use traps. During the battle preparation you can place these traps to influence your enemies' pathing. Problem is there are just loads of traps with a multitude of different effects. You don't want to just place everything randomly as you have a limit on the amount of traps which can be placed in a map, plus each one of those will reduce your potential reward money. Forcing this strategy segment on top of the guessing game just makes the learning curve for beginners steep. Oh, did I mention that since your enemies are ghosts they can go through walls and also damage you if they move to the same grid as your unit?

Many elements in this game are designed to stack against you, from the ghosts' advantage to the limited turn limit. Not to mention there's quite a lot of stats and terms that you also need to learn without the game's aid. The complexity of this game made me drop it after I played about one third of it. It's a damn shame as I liked the concept, aesthetic, and the premise of the game. Unfortunately they are ruined with the execution.

Another one of those difficult runners which force you to do numerous retries. The only thing that single-handedly saves this game is pretty much the soundtrack to be honest.

This iOS port tries really hard to emulate Super Mario 3D Land, from the UI, to the gameplay elements. Ultimately the game felt terribly bland not only because of its mobile origins but also thanks to its numerous gameplay issues. For starters, power ups are rare and felt really uninspired. There is also a notable lack of variety, Among 5 available powerups in the gane, one is your standard Mario mushroom, one is a coin magnet, and the other is the Invincible star. Only the two remaining 2 spruce up the platforming sections, making it felt really half-assed. Next, the bosses are the same enemies over and over again only with reskins. There's also some weird input lag on the game especially when trying to activate the power ups. And finally some of the collectible stars are obscure. Some of those in particular are located on a hidden platform that require you to willingly jump to a bottomless pit. Overall this game is only designed to cash in the the 3D platformer crowd in the mobile market and has nothing worthwhile going on.