Velvet Crowe

velvet_crowe
Game Junkie - 1137 Game Ratings
Member Since: 03 Jun 2010
Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Age: 31
TCI: not enough ratings
Games in Common: 0
Not in Your Top 1000 TCIs
Bio: Former journalist, invested in humanities, fitness, and consuming garbage.

Subtlety is overrated.

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5590954-dre
https://twitter.com/DrewStr56396515

more Recent Ratings

52 31% Help Will Come Tomorrow (2020) - Rated 28 Mar 2024
"There's a strong base here but I don't think the game succeeds in either its narrative or gameplay. The game doesn't really have narrative beats as much as it does admittedly decent backstories and random events, but there's no web tying it all together and it comes off as more flavor text than a meaningful narrative. The actual gameplay itself is extremely limited where it provides pretty obvious solutions to the RNG or just flat out makes the game unwinnable if you get unlucky."
86 90% Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) - Rated 28 Mar 2024
"The core of FFVIIR's gameplay is fantastic, even if the encounters and stat balancing don't do much to encourage player investment. As a remake, there is very noticeable padding and some of the added narrative beats can come off pretty moot or uninteresting. While the original still maintains its own valuable novelties in terms of presentation, this game does a fantastic job of not only reimaging the original's narrative but also creating strong theming about the nature of remakes in general."
55 36% Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1994) - Rated 23 Feb 2024
"This is an interesting beat'em'up since vertical movement does not exist and the game therefore relies on vertical hazards as a means to threaten you. Unfortunately, I don't think the game pushes this as hard it could and it gets wrapped up in really boring gimmicks. The lack of verticality also makes it way too easy to control enemy waves and bosses are also stunlocked too easily. The final megazord fight was a neat psuedo-fighting game thing and made me wish the game had more of that."
73 65% Granblue Fantasy: Relink (2024) - Rated 09 Feb 2024
"Relink has a solid base but I think the game is way too forgiving with how its revive system works among other small things that I think could be done better. The general campaign is solid, but the MH-styled post-game is muddled by how cookie cutter a lot of its setups are and how little extra enemies add to boss fights, not to mention multiple players being able to stunlock enemies for insane levels of damage just puts the balance too much in the player's favor for my liking."
77 73% GunForce II (1994) - Rated 09 Feb 2024
"This game is so cool in how it uses vehicles since they create completely new ways on how to navigate the space on screen but also designed it so that you have a different means of traversal if you decide to go on foot. This creates a lot of new ways with how you interact with the space that enemies control which is further elevated by solid enemy design. I think the game doesn't do THAT much with on foot movement and some of the late game setpieces are lame, but pretty damn solid title."
57 41% Cyber-Lip (1990) - Rated 09 Feb 2024
"Wasn't really big on this because the game either has very boring enemy layouts and one-note bosses that force you to stay in one spot or lame shit that genuinely comes across as developer oversights, such as how one level has a platform that's literally impossible to reach without killing yourself. To its credit, it does sometimes become challenging but that's usually when they design bosses that control space in a way that's impossible to read and makes your lack of mobility painful."
80 79% Bayonetta (2009) - Rated 09 Feb 2024
"Bayonetta sells me just on how the general style is and charisma of it all, even if there's not much to the core plot. The gameplay has spice to it too, even despite all of the things that annoy me like very lame/annoying enemy designs such as the flying ships and fire enemies or how the game glaringly recycles enemy encounters with bosses that are often too one-dimensional to be interesting. But the core mechanics here are super solid and getting S ranks is goddamn satisfying!"
82 83% Cannon Dancer: Osman (1996) - Rated 09 Feb 2024
"The game has a neat doppleganger mechanic which creates a lot of cool ways to manage your movement and optimize damage. The enemy placement also does wonders for controlling space and creates a lot of interesting spacing play where you have to not only be considerate of your positioning but also how you move to control space with your doppleganger. Some of the later levels do lame shit, but I generally dig the way this game mixes up movable space in level design."
63 50% Vanquish (2010) - Rated 25 Jan 2024
"Vanquish has a strong core but is muddled by how much the game makes doing cover shooting the optimal option and a campaign that has a lot of small annoying things that get progressively worse each act. It's a score attack game stuck in shitty 00's era FPS level design and the most fun you'll get out of it will be in the challenge missions which push you to take risks and not play it safe. Unfortunately, that's a small part of the game and by the end I struggled to want to even do that."
56 39% Epiphany City (2022) - Rated 22 Jan 2024
"The devs of this are passionate, likable people and I do think that energy is reflected in this game. However, I think the actual puzzle design is very one note where simply just doing the only available option is the solution and they also make the end game QTE shit last way too long. I think there's resonance in Lily's character arc in the intro despite some weird writing choices, but the plot contrives a lot of non-sense to justify the catharsis and I couldn't help but roll my eyes at it."