DarkStation's Scores

  • Games
For 3,653 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 7% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Game review score: 72
Highest review score: 100 Turmoil
Lowest review score: 10 Another Dawn
Score distribution:
3656 game reviews
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    SpiritSphere has a lot going for it: dedication to the 8bit style, a fantastic soundtrack, novel gameplay, interesting characters, and a myriad of spheres and arenas. There was clearly a lot of work put into SpiritSphere to marry together two disparate genres and it shows. Unfortunately, when stacked up against other competitive games of this nature, SpiritSphere looks like a novel idea that is fun to play for a few hours but lacks the real competitive nature of faster, more hard-hitting games due to its self-imposed 8bit restrictions. While the idea is great and executed in a fun way, it’s hard to recommend SpiritSphere to anyone not interested in an interesting 8bit competitive game due to its lack of depth and competitive multiplayer.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Despite its early leaden pacing, Nights of Azure's story concept isn't bad. The two main characters, with their shy, budding romance and mutual dependence, have potential for an interesting arc. What surrounds them -- bland visuals, inconsistent design, sloppy localization and fast-paced but ultimately repetitive action -- makes it challenging to appreciate their relationship and story.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fly Punch Boom is a fun multiplayer game that will keep you and your friends entertained. Although lacking a lot of variety for a single-player campaign, playing with a group of friends will bring laughter and frustration (the good kind). With a unique take on the genre, JollyPunch has created a title that is accessible yet tough to master. So, if you’re looking for a new fighting game that doesn't follow the formula, then Fly Punch Boom is certainly worth your time.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trekkies praying for a half decent Star Trek game can look away now, as Bethesda releases a seriously dull simulation, filled with uneventful encounters and dire visuals.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Multiplayer puzzle games aren’t exactly plentiful on the PS4 right now, but that fact doesn’t make Tiny Brains more appealing. Its short, easy and unimaginative. The Worms and soccer-inspired mini game diversions don’t help its cause as a game to break out with friends, either. Even if this sort of couch co-op experience is your jam, I can’t recommend it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Japanese video games are often equal to anime and manga, it doesn’t matter in what format you’re enjoying the stories. The Caligula Effect: Overdose, too, makes you forget you’re playing a game but rather, experiencing a piece of Japanese popular culture.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Unless you are a diehard Dynasty Warriors fan, I can't promise you intriguing gameplay, but there is a fun story locked behind all the repetitiveness. Maybe one day we'll see the One Piece game that this story deserves. Until then, I think I might just search out some episodes of the anime and see how they stack up.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is difficult and opaque in many important ways, but its premise is refreshing and its vision compelling enough to keep the player moving forward. Expect lots of false starts and failure at the beginning, but eventually the mechanics become familiar and the achievement of inching the species forward becomes uniquely rewarding.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Serious Sam: The Random Encounter is a fun, albeit short game that delivers where Serious Sam games try too, with shallow but dumb fun. The humor is great, graphics are nice and the game is fun while it lasts. TRE doesn't do a whole lot, but what it does is fun and I would say that that fun is well worthy of a purchase especially if you're already a fan of Sam.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sadly, the truly unique quality of proper airship-to-airship combat can't justify all blemishes that come with Guns of Icarus Online. It would simply be deceitful for this reviewer to say there aren't better, free, and readily accessible alternatives.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fictorum, to me, feels like a game that has a single focus, its destruction mechanic, and everything else was slapped on after that was nailed down. It feels like the kind of game that is acting more as a business pitch to bigger companies, a way for the developers to say look at this cool thing we did instead of hey gamers, check out our awesome game. There is a great mechanic here that is fun to play with, but Fictorum lacks any kind of soul beyond that. It’s worth checking out for a weekend or two, but I can’t recommend much more than that.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pagan Online’s Slavic fantasy pulls from mythologies that are slightly off the beaten path, but so much of the game feels like familiar — and what’s worse, less successful — tropes, mechanics and ideas gleaned from other ARPGs, MOBAs and mobile games. It does have the advantage of presenting relatively short and fast-paced missions to the time-pressed player, but I suspect fans of action RPGs would prefer a more creative, immersive and less repetitive experience to one that is just abbreviated.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Unfortunately the game also has some design issues, repetition and a solid lack of good jokes.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In the end, Mulaka's disappoints by bolting a really interesting and rarely experienced setting to a rather unimaginative action game and and art style that might be divisive. The gameplay loop is so familiar that the story and Native American setting feel arbitrary. Never very challenging as an action game, Mulaka is best experienced as a brief portal into an unfamiliar culture.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD fails to meet the same measure of fun that previous games in the series managed to accomplish.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The design of the monsters and the Innsmouthers are fantastic and the world building is creepy and fun. However, The Sinking City gets hamstrung by an overall chunkiness it doesn’t quite recover from. It’s hard to stay invested when combat is terrible and glitches and crashes ruin pacing and progression. This is a game demands a lot of patience and tolerance.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    I really enjoyed the previous versions of this game but the 3DS version is sadly just not worth anyone’s time.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All that being said, the core of Pressure is a fun ride. Good mechanics go a long way towards making a great action-racer, but the bumps along the road end up bogging this down at the end of the race.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a fairly enjoyable fighting game. It has some cool gameplay hooks that you don't see in many fighters, but the game does a very poor job of teaching you about any of this. Because of this and the game's $20 price tag, only those who really enjoy fighting games or JoJo's Bizarre Adventure should consider this release.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unfortunately, the compromises necessary to make SimCity a multiplayer, always-online game detract from what’s most enjoyable about city-builders, resulting in a product that feels like it’s actively trying to keep the player from having a good time.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It’s an experience that will undoubtedly draw a cult following, but without some kind of universally applicable lesson the rest of us can skip it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The game just never really gets moving and therefore most of us will end up turning it off after a good twenty minutes.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In the end, The Coma: Recut delivers a solid (albeit short) 2D horror experience. However, the game as a whole suffers a bit from being a one-hit wonder in the gameplay. After being chased 7-8 times in a row, the 9th time just doesn't scare you anymore. It changes the gameplay from a run and hide horror to here we go again monotony. The game's short length definitely helps enough that I can say if you enjoy these survival horror games with no fighting, and don't mind the repetitive gameplay, The Coma: Recut may be right up you alley.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Koral is part science display, part puzzle game, and all design compromise. It feels like a roadmap on what not to do when designing an environmentally conscious game. Without a doubt, the visuals are initially captivating, but their flair quickly wears off and you’re left with the game’s dismal content. The game provides a clunky experience that doesn’t satisfy in any meaningful manner. Too shallow in both its educational content and puzzle-solving gameplay, Koral finds the perfect middle ground to embody an especially painful kind of mediocrity.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    My first thought as soon as I opened the game was “wow this feels cheap.” The feeling never went away, and just got even deeper.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Redeemer's great peculiarity is that it starts with strong gameplay and a weak story, and then the two switch entirely. Combat that was once challenging, varied, and rewarding gives way to enemy numbers and attack patterns that bottleneck the player into a constant dodge-fest that feels like breaking the rules of a broken game. Whether you succeed or fail, too little of what you do after the first chapter is based on any amount of skill. As monotony settles in, the captivating story proves not enough to pick up the slack. In its first four hours, Redeemer is great. Afterwards? Far from it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Overall, the game is fun and a worthy addition to the Resident Evil franchise. All it needs is a couple of tweaks and a dedicated fan base, and it could become one of the more popular Resident Evil games purely because of its endless replayability and fun factor.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As a final interesting note, RiME was actually first revealed as a survival game with elements of health and stamina. While we may never see what that game was like, I’m thankful that developer Tequila Works opted for a deeper tale with that same boy on an island. While an open world would have been fun to explore, the segmented chapters help to tell a bigger truth. Though action would have helped bring more gamers in, laid-back puzzle-solving ensures that more people can freely explore and reach the end. A smoother presentation could have helped the game’s cinematic presence, but the story lives on despite it. RiME isn’t perfect or too original, but it does well to scratch the same emotionally driven story itch that trailblazers like Dear Esther and Journey have pioneered in the past.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alien Breed is a decent package and great love letter to a classic arcade game but that’s all it manages to be. The inclusion of multiplayer goes a long way to make this package worth the price but if you are looking for something more in depth you may want to look elsewhere.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Seasons After Fall has its share of issues, but it has enough going for it that there is an audience out there that will gain some enjoyment from it. The game's production values are top notch, so if you can look past the game's problematic level design and simplistic gameplay then you may find it to be a very serene and immersive experience. It is a shame that those issues exist though, because the game's mechanics show some terrific potential. There are scattered moments when all of the game's elements -- its atmosphere, its gameplay, and its graphics -- come together to provide some memorable experiences. In the end though, the story in Seasons After Fall is too vague and confusing to be satisfying, and a game's graphics and music can only carry it so far. There is more than enough art in this package, but there is not enough game.

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