Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival
Coming more than 25 years after Kick Off 2, Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival released earlier this year to provide some old-school soccer gameplay. However, after playing FIFA 17 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2017, and looking at how far soccer games have come, this reboot does not offer what you would want from such a game and the series’ charm seems to have disappeared. The top-down camera angle makes tactical play hard and the gameplay is too tough for players that never experienced the originals to enjoy. It terms of looks, the gameplay isn’t smooth and bugs frequently interrupt matches, making the whole experience look awful. Retro looking games can be fine if they run smoothly, but the style of Kick Off Revival highlights the visual faults and there are more than any game should have anyway.
The Martian VR Experience
The Martian, starring Matt Damon, was one of the best films of 2015 and the idea of the world being turned into a virtual reality experience was interesting. However, very little effort seems to have been put into making this VR experience reminiscent of the world the film aims to replicate. The game is made up of the film’s clips intersected by brief virtual reality sections. Mars looks bland, with each area being completely indistinguishable from another. Rocks are strange, angular objects and the inside of your Mars rover is lacking any of the detail in the film. It doesn’t help that the gameplay is also dull from start to finish. It is not an impressive visual experience in VR, nor is it an enjoyable game.
Homefront: The Revolution
Homefront: The Revolution doesn’t have the worst graphics this year, but the way it runs and the technical issues make it really difficult to look at. Players will frequently clip through walls, bugs interrupt gameplay, and the frame-rate is always an issue. It is a shame that a potentially interesting open-world can be so let down by poor visuals and technical problems. The look of the game’s world is also inconsistent. The textures in some areas look odd and character models are off-putting.The game certainly has redeeming features, such as its combat and theme, but the technical problems simply cannot be overlooked.
Crystal Rift
Crystal Rift is an attempted re-creation of dungeon crawlers of old. However, the dungeons themselves are some of the worst parts of game, which is fully playable in VR. Each room looks the same, with poorly designed bricks making up the walls and if you go too close to them you it becomes clear how awful the textures are. Much of the surrounding area is black, removing any creepy atmosphere the game attempts to create with its sound or field of view. Crystal Rift’s enemies are also laughably poorly designed. Generic pirate skeletons are the most common characters, but you will also comes across slime creatures that look a lot like Slimer from Ghostbusters. Dungeon crawlers rely heavily on the world you are exploring so it is surprising that Crystal Rift’s is so appalling visually.
7 Days to Die
Published by Telltale, 7 Days to Die is an open-world survival horror game that looks terrible on consoles. It originally released on PC via Steam early access but was ported to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One earlier this year. The crafting and building systems are good, but the animation is bad and most of the world is empty and lifeless. The enemies look ridiculous and there is nothing interesting to see while exploring the open world. It doesn’t help that the PC looks and runs far better with better animations and detail throughout. There are far better open-world survival games on the market.
Published: Dec 23, 2016 11:18 am