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...
Dishonored 2 (2016) - Rated 24 Jun 2025
"Really cool setpieces, love the level with time travel, and honestly, I think most of my enjoyment from the game comes from that. But on the other hand I hate how much gating the game puts on your abilities which severely limit how much interaction you can have with levels and enemies. The level themselves also feel needlessly big at times and while a good many have cool setpieces a lot also have gimmicks I find annoying, not to mention transparency on enemy detection is poorly conveyed."
Jetpac (1983) - Rated 16 Jun 2025
"The main thing I like about this is the physics, movement feels generally good. Problem is the platforms provide way too much safety and it's easy to cheese it when enemies have awful target seeking and you can sit in one spot to abuse this. It would have done wonders if they diversified the level layout and made enemy movement far less obvious."
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (2022) - Rated 07 Jun 2025
"There are parts of the narrative that get neglected after a certain point but what makes this work is just how much it rides on its setting and how this affects its characters. There's so much to unpack here about utopianism and its relation to the environment, the consequences of community/social relations, and the value of humanity itself that's never fed to you in a simplistic way, often rejecting conventions to present other extreme ideals as palpable if perhaps bitter sweet."
Mega Man 9 (2008) - Rated 25 May 2025
"In contrast to the NES games I think it's more into elaborate setpieces that seem oppressive at first but have simple solutions once you figure out the proper weapon and movement patterns. Some of the level design is atrociously douchey, especially Magma Man's stage which have stupidly precise jumps. But honestly, I love how it fucks with the player. The grab robot in Galaxy man's stage never ceases to make me laugh on how borderline kaizo it is."
Citizen Sleeper (2022) - Rated 17 Apr 2025
"Toothless cyberpunk that presents a cool enough setting and premise but virtually everyone is an exposition machine where the PC has no real agency on anything other than following the directions of quest givers which wouldn't be so bad if there was more cohesion to how these factions played with each other and if the character conflict wasn't so weak and milquetoast. The gameplay also ends up being trivialized by the end, just felt like I was going through the motions after a certain point."
Growing Up (2021) - Rated 14 Apr 2025
"Main gripe is that the core of the game is its visual novel aspects and so much of it is gated behind lame mini-games that are largely rng. You want to explore multiple routes but doing so requires a grind that's mind numbing as hell. But for what it's worth the actual VN stuff is novel and you do have enough control to at least create a personality and niche for your PC. Storytelling doesn't land on anything strong and it's too ubiquitous to be believable but it lands a solid cozyness I like."
Refind Self: The Personality Test Game (2021) - Rated 13 Apr 2025
"Personality tests are nothing that should be taken seriously but I dig this because I like the abstract way it plays with the concept and it also just has a cool vibe. What makes this neat too is that it gets interesting on subsequent playthroughs to figure out unique ways to route yourself to really start uncovering the nitty of its narrative. I don't think it lands on any hugely moving plot beats but I do think it's conceptually interesting in a lot of ways that I like."
Stranded: Alien Dawn (2023) - Rated 13 Apr 2025
"I think the gameplay loop is shallow and the base building is novel but rudimentary. Fundamentally it's a game about how well you manage the wait times but there's so many small annoying things relating to that. Like how the map is excessively large yet the game doesn't have ways to speed up navigation nor a map to quickly jump to any area on the map. Considering you're so confined to one area, what's the point? It's also not too hard to snowball yourself to victory unless you get rng screwed."
RoboCop: Rogue City (2023) - Rated 13 Apr 2025
"This game is weird in how it's structured like an imsim but there's really only one playstyle the levels allow for and you're not given any variety on how to approach objectives. But man I just love how it plays into the "walking tank" gimmick of the character and tossing shit around is such a satisfying novelty to play with. I think encounters are a bit poorly paced but I think its enemy variety is solid. It captures the aesthetic and vibe of the movies perfectly, too."
In Stars and Time (2023) - Rated 08 Mar 2025
"A lot of stuff in its narrative are perhaps underbaked or don't go anywhere and maybe the conceit it lands on is cheesy as hell, but this is such a cool title that takes the Groundhog Day premise and plays with the psychological aspect of it that lands both within the game's context and elevating that through its mechanics. It being as draining as it is to get to the end adds so much to the core narrative, and the fact its main cast is so enjoyable makes its conceit land somehow."
