Velvet Crowe
Game Junkie
Member Since: 03 Jun 2010
Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Age: 33
Bio: Former journalist, invested in humanities, fitness, and consuming garbage. Probably one of the few Criticker users who actually read comics and plays competitive video games. Subtlety is overrated. https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/176986912-drew https://twitter.com/DrewStr56396515
Recent Ratings
Check out Velvet Crowe's...
Batman: The Video Game (1989) - Rated 11 Sep 2025
"The level design is so good in how it makes you utilize the wall jump for positioning and enemy placements, preventing you from going into autopilot. I also really love how effectively it uses its item economy, where all your tools are useful, but you're still going to want to use fists both for utility and preservation. I just wish the boss fights weren't so badly tuned, often having stupidly big hitboxes and being obnoxious damage sponges which lead to a lot of cheesing."
Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems (1996) - Rated 11 Sep 2025
"The first half is solid and I dig how effectively it uses verticality by mixing up grounded and aerial threats, especially when mild platforming gives that threat space to hurt you. 2end half comes off like they half assed the level design and it was mindlessly easy. I do think the way character diversity works is decent because a lot of it comes to how differently their animations and hitboxes work which is such a neat way to do diversity, especially when actual abilities are fairly ubiquitous."
Arcus Odyssey (1991) - Rated 11 Sep 2025
"The amount of consistency this game expects from you is insane. It'll dump you into a level and expect you to go through a gauntlet of multiple boss fights and the checkpoints will slap you at the start of this each time you die. And this is just the halfway point! Regardless, I dig how effectively this has enemies cover space not just with their physical hitboxes but with projectiles as well. I just wish it was more mechanically consistent, the block really sucks in terms of functionality."
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996) - Rated 21 Aug 2025
"The novelty of this game is in its scale but I do think it sacrifices a lot to do this resulting in cookie cutter quests and the towns being ubiquitous in their design and layout. The gameplay is largely a bunch of obnoxious stat checks and exploits and I don't think there's much in the way of making its utility interesting in spite of how complex its character building is. The RNG dungeons can often be goddamn TEDIOUS too. But in spite all that, it's a cool enough novelty I can't totally hate."
Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness (2022) - Rated 21 Aug 2025
"I'd define this game as CRPG's brought to their bare minimum and designed in the most stock way possible. But it's fixated on the worst aspects of CRPG's, meaning lots of painfully boring fetch quests with bland outcomes and combat that's one note and plodding. The main twist it wants to play with is the greed mechanic but that's so inconsistent in terms of how it's measured and the game never challenges you narratively in ways to make this the least bit engaging. Everything is so paper thin."
I Wanna Maker (2023) - Rated 16 Aug 2025
"Imagine I Wanna Be the Guy but the level design isn't a shitpost? The main campaign that comes with this package is on its own some of the best 2D platforming I've experienced but the game becomes infinitely replayable with how much it offers in the user created content. The physics and implementation of the double jump allows for so much level design to work with the simplest of options, yet this game offers so many variety of tools that possibilities are near endless!"
Spy Fiction (2003) - Rated 16 Aug 2025
"I like the game's style and personality but it's basically "what if we put Hitman into MGS?" Without the merits of either. You don't interact with NPCs beyond the garb system and virtually all of your tools are extremely contextualized gimmicks that only function in certain setpieces. And fuck me if its setpieces can't be atrociously bad at times, especially the Mission Impossible zipline sequences with awful visual cues. I think it's a charming novelty but... playing it is actually painful."
UFO 50 (2024) - Rated 16 Aug 2025
"UFO 50 is fascinating in that the quality of its titles is inconsistent but that inconsistency contributes to the overall meta narrative. It's interesting to look at each title as a representation of the phases this fictional company goes through, the experimentation and changes to how its titles are designed. But it's also impressive that it has a good number of titles that are enjoyable to play regardless, some I'd even say would be peak NES design had they been made in the 80's."
Ecsaform (1999) - Rated 11 Aug 2025
"Conceptually and vibes wise this is fantastic. I actually think it implements some cool gameplay systems too, the fact it moves so quickly is a huge plus in contrast to other PS1 SRPGs. But the big downfall of this is how unfinished everything comes off. There's literally town scenes where you can run around into a lot of areas with literally no NPCs around. The scope of battles while structured well is also so limited given how small they make everything. Really sucks, this could have been cool"
Evil Genius 2: World Domination (2021) - Rated 11 Aug 2025
"Part of me wants to say this is better because of how much more flexible it is with base building but it being so lenient just makes difficulty a joke and it doesn't aim to change much with the formula as much it just wants to add bloat. The bloat makes the gameplay loop so tedious and after a certain point you come to realize how every mission and task is literally the same thing every time. It doesn't help that the writing is low effort which could have salvaged all of this."
