Phil Villarreal's Blog, page 47

PHIL ON FILM: Movies Leaving Netflix in July

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PHIL ON FILM: "Awake"

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"The Colonists" Review

Gamers waiting for the low-stress escape title that could become the "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" of 2021 should give "The Colonists" a look.

While stale and antiseptic rather than colorful and gregarious, "The Colonist" is no less wholesome and cutesy. The settlement-builder puts you in control of a gang of multiplying robots who are apparently picking up where humanity left off.

A slightly scaled-down version of the game that launched on PC in 2018, the console translates the controls and menus well to the stick-and-button format, making it relatively easy to find the flow of the build-harvest-exploration loop.

While a bit robotic in its delivery, the dev squad at Codebyfire shows an aptitude for ease of use and guidance, coaching you up with an extensive tutorial -- pieces of which stick around to help out if you mess things up too badly.

Bursting with subtle satirization of human tendencies, "The Colonists" spins its tongue-in-cheek metastory with subversive pleasure. 

"The Colonists" may not deliver the obsessive, play-everyday quality of the likes of "Animal Crossing," but has enough clever ideas of its own to stand out from the pack. Those looking for lighthearted, repetitive challenges will find satisfaction in these bots.

Publisher provided review code.

"Space Commander: War and Trade" Review

If you've ever daydreamed about a sci-fi-fueled life in the stars, "Space Commander: War and Trade" will bring those games back to Earth.

It turns out there is plenty of drudgery in the day-to-day operations of managing the interstellar military industrial complex. Expect a hefty helping of monotony building up slowly to the occasional frenzied spark.

The single-player adventure puts you at the helm of what turns out to be a day job that has you watching the clock a little too often. While the dev team at 7Levels should be applauded for crafting a solid, stable reward loop that encourages pre-planning and on-the-fly adjustments, there just isn't much sizzle to the affair.

A middling adaptation of a game that started off in the mobile realm, the gameplay pops a bit more on the Switch than on mobile devices, due to the lavish detail of the screen, which provides more real estate than most devices.

A lumbering economy and rough interface make it tough to manage your flow. While the experience is polished, it's sometimes as antiseptic as a ship's decontamination dock.

Publisher provided review code.

PHIL ON FILM: 5 Shows to Binge in June 2021

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"Mass Effect: Legendary Edition" Review

A groundbreaking and innovative effort that paved the way for the likes of "The Witcher" series, the "Mass Effect" trilogy gave players a hand in authorship, allowing them to shape and direct their own stories with key choices and morality-based decisions hanging in the balance.

Choices you made in the game not only affected your ending, but characters who lived or died shaped the rest of your experience in the remaining. It always seemed as though the trilogy were one, humongous interlinked game, and "Mass Effect: Legendary Edition" now brings that vision to life.

Originally released in 2007, 2010 and 2012, the trilogy had started to show some laugh lines and arthritic pains over the years. The new effort from BioWare smooths out the rough edges and combines the games into one near-seamless saga. 

The original "Mass Effect" gets the most noticeable facelift, with its rough control systems smoothed out and its laborious loading times mitigated. The other two games also get significant boosts, with the lone significant sacrifice -- the loss of multiplayer in "Mass Effect 3" -- only seeming like a minimal setback.

Crafting and shaping your Command Shepard throughout the journey is enriching, with repeated playthroughs letting you toy with various styles and permutations. You can take on the mentality of a conniving manipulator in one, a ruthless, bloodthirsty tyrant in another, and a meek person with pacifist leanings in a third go-round. The often devastating repercussions -- in survival of characters and entire races, romantic unions lost and fund and in side stories discovered -- is often illuminating or disheartening.

The writing craft at play in the "Mass Effect" franchise was always the rocket that lifted it to its storied heights, and now the visuals and accessibility match it. Always known as a tough RPG, the ease-of-life benefits now sometimes steer the game into easy territory. But the true rewards come in participating in the story in a way unlike any franchise before, and a nature that is in many ways still unmatched.

While the trilogy's follow-up, "Mass Effect: Andromeda," left some players yearning for the olden days, this revamped, optimized taste of the original satisfies that nostalgic craving, while shining a promising light on the series' future.

Publisher provided review code.

PHIL ON FILM: "Army of the Dead"

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PHIL ON FILM: "Spiral" and "Those Who Wish Me Dead"

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PHIL ON FILM: Movies Leaving Netflix in June 2021

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"Angels of Death" Review

 Locked away in a prison that seems to be straight out of a horror flick nightmare, you're pursued by a relentless killer who can overwhelm you with strength or speed. "Angels of Death" tasks you to use limited resources to evade and overcome the threat.

Whether or not you succeed is determined by your ingenuity, capacity for failure and -- most likely -- ability to closely follow YouTube walkthroughs.

Oddball twists and obfuscated solutions to strange puzzles abound, but the roadblocks ratchet up the sense of satisfaction as you progress in spite of the foreboding odds. "Angels of Death" is feet meeting fire.

The top-down puzzle adventure, which came out on PC in 2016 and the Switch in 2018, now makes its way to the Xbox One.

Developer Kadokawa Dwango Corporation keeps the sounds and visuals simple, giving the game the feel of a 16-bit classic. The archaic sensibilities add to the charm, making it feel as though you're playing through an otherworldly experience from a lost parallel universe.

"Angels of Death" is a rough-hewn experience, but well-polished in execution over the years. Dark and melancholic, the game offers punishment for those who are into that kind of thing.

Publisher provided review code.