ZCW Reviews

  Teeming with Modernity-A Monster Hunter Rise Review Having previously merely tolerated Capcom's legacy entries in the series, I hadn't really kept an eye out for Monster Hunter games when they release. That is, until Monster Hunter World broke out of the series long standing hold of outright frustrating and dated mechanics to finally revitalize the series for a modern audience. However, my excitement was momentarily postponed when the initial Nintendo Switch version of Rise released, as it struggled to perform with even low quality textures on the Switch's dated chip set. Following a recent release on Steam on January 12th I was finally able to experience this game as smoothly as possible, so just how does it deliver on the foundation MH: World set down? Continuing to Refine Monster Hunter is inheritably a grindy formula which is not necessarily what I take issue with, but always these games have around 3-4 hours of blatant padding at the start where you gather herbs or f...

A Dimensional Dance-A Solar Ash Review When I think of the term "indie game" there are a very choice selection of titles that immediately come to mind, and Heart Machine's first title Hyper Light Drifter is definitely one of them. With that said, when the company announced they'd be making a 3D platformer as the next project they were working on I waited with eager expectations for another gem. As it quietly released onto the Epic Games Store and PlayStation systems I was admittedly curious as to why no buzz was surrounding the game. With a dev team as touted in my mind as the ones at Heart Machine, what exactly is going on with their new title Solar Ash? Beauty and the Boredom In terms of gameplay, Solar Ash is a very smooth experience. It's clear a lot of work went in to creating an engine conducive to proper movement and control. Hitting enemies with your sword feels pretty satisfying with a three hit flourish, and the way you skate across levels feels very pol...

   A Swarm of Syllables and Bullets-A Super Galaxy Squadron EX Turbo Review Super Galaxy Squadron EX Turbo, which I'm referring to as SGS from now on, is a remastering of a 2015 shoot em up game of the same name (minus the EX Turbo fanfare) which aims to fully modernize its formula and keep it interesting (it should be noted that this release also comes with the original bundled in, which was surprisingly good in of itself). With that in mind, did Synset set the high bar held by games published through New Blood Interactive or were they just a middling starting point for them? Polishing up the Genre SGS is standard fare for bullet hell games, but with a few twists that I really liked. The content at hand here is both deeply familiar for fans of the genre but presented in a fashion that allows for new players to hop in and enjoy it as well.  Starting with the basics, everything you can expect from this genre is here with a few extras. You'll dodge screenfuls of projectiles...

  Arcade Baseball Amusement-A Super mega Baseball 3 Review When it comes to sports games, I'm far more engrossed with the more arcade style types as opposed to the more realistic sims. What Super Mega Baseball 3 should provide is another great arcade sports game that is fun to pick up and play at your leisure, so does it succeed at that goal? Similar Slugging The gameplay of SMB3 is nearly identical to the second game minus a few visual tweaks and improvements that hardly change the "feel" of the game. I will say, as someone who played the second game a ton, there really aren't enough changes and additions here to really justify that $45 price tag nor justify calling it a sequel. However, I'd like to go over the one area of truly additional content: the highly touted franchise mode.  This is certainly the most interesting portion of the game, where you essentially play the season mode with a bunch of additional options to fine tune your team. You can handle the pl...

  Hellishly Entrancing-A Demon Turf Review Before we get into this one, I just wanted to take some time here at the start to thank any regular readers here at this little review site. Today marks the 50th (WOW) piece I've written on this blog and it is just so great to share my thoughts with you all each week. Here's to the next 50!  Demon Turf is another installment in the "games I saw early in development that I forget about then just randomly see get released" category of indie titles. This linear 3D platformer occupies one of my favorite genres in all of gaming, so let's look into its trenches and see what it beholds.  Focused on Fun Demon Turf is a prime example as to why I far prefer the more focused moment-to-moment gameplay of linear games to their more sprawling non-linear counterparts. What Demon Turf accomplishes in its runtime far surpasses any of the monolithic 50+ hour collect-a-thons that exist out there with their troves of backtracking and empty w...