Oliver Revolta, Author at Thumb Culture

Metroid Prime Remastered – Switch Review

10Mar

By Oliver RevoltaNo Comments

Metroid Prime Remastered – Switch Review

If you’ve never played a game in the Metroid Prime series, it’s likely that your preconceived ideas are wrong. Screenshots suggest a trio of pretty-standard first person shooters, but these games are—true to the design of the wider Metroid series as a whole—metroidvanias through and through, though rendered in a first-person 3D style. They feature the same emphasis on map-reading and exploration and almost identical platforming and action, down to the pacing of the encounters with enemies and the giant bosses. On its original release back in 2003, Metroid Prime was hailed as a masterpiece. And the game was impressive—I remember it vividly—there was something powerful in its all-encompassing atmosphere, and how via a hundred artful details and design choices it made you feel part of ...

13Feb

By Oliver RevoltaNo Comments

Switch Reviews

Fire Emblem Engage – Switch Review

One of the great benefits of writing reviews for Thumb Culture is the variety of games I've been exposed to that I might never have played otherwise. I've been able to loosen up when it comes to my game choices—and the many fantastic experiences I've had have convinced me that the Switch's library is in very good health. Next up is Fire Emblem, a series that’s been on my radar for a long time—I'm a fan of turn-based combat, and I know these games have a lot of devotees—so I launched myself enthusiastically into the review for the latest release, Fire Emblem Engage. Rarely have I played a game as difficult to review. Engage has been constructed in two entwined but very different halves—both of which are stuffed with intricate gameplay and upgrade systems. As a noob—and this is clearly ...

31Jan

By Oliver RevoltaNo Comments

Switch Reviews

NEScape! – Switch Review

Some people are going to look at NEScape! and write it off without thinking—but I’m here to tell you otherwise. This under-the-radar indie is worth your time, and is perhaps one of the more obvious candidates for the hallowed title of ‘hidden gem.’ NEScape! is a fully-realised escape room—a modern phenomenon—intriguingly brought to life in a 1980s-style 8-bit aesthetic. And it works so well that it’s easy to imagine it as one of the actual classic games of the NES library. THE DEFINITIVE 8-BIT ESCAPE ROOM EXPERIENCE At the start of the game you’re placed in a dark room. You find the right pixel to turn on the light switch then have an hour to complete the puzzles and escape through the locked door. To do so you cycle between four screens—the four walls of the room—and interact with the d...

24Jan

By Oliver RevoltaNo Comments

Switch Reviews

Lil Gator Game – Switch Review

Every now and again a game is released that I completely underestimate at first glance. I’m not sure if it’s down to some residual peer pressure in my head. Sometimes, in my imagination, I have the critical eyes of certain friends looming over my shoulder when I start up a game. So if the game is a little too colourful and happy-looking then my own fickle decision-making weakens and prostrates itself to my friends’ illusionary judgement. I looked at the pictures and announcement video of Lil Gator Game and thought on some level that it wasn’t necessarily for me. I wanted something a little less whimsical. But I was wrong. It’s difficult to realise without playing it, but Lil Gator Game is a triumph. It’s one of those games with a universal appeal—like Donut County, or Katamari Damacy. And,...

23Nov

By Oliver RevoltaNo Comments

Switch Reviews

Bayonetta 3 – Switch Review

It was a little strange of me to put my name forward to review Bayonetta 3 (PlatinumGames). I haven’t played the other two in the series, but I’ve always been intrigued by Bayonetta’s passionate and loyal following—and also by Bayonetta herself, the witch with guns for shoes and clothes made out of her own hair. I wondered if this action game, in the same genre as No More Heroes and NieR:Automata, would be accessible to newcomers even if it was the third in the series, like in a Zelda or Metroid, where starting with the third or fourth game doesn’t matter. The conclusion on that count is certainly mixed, but I also had a hell of a good time finding out. A MOST BEWITCHING TIME It seems obligatory (and logical) in reviews for Bayonetta 3 to list examples of its wild eccentricities. The gam...

22Nov

By Oliver RevoltaNo Comments

Switch Reviews

Signalis – Switch Review

Nothing sums up the artful, near-pretentious confidence of Signalis better than how some players are going to miss its final act and they won’t realise. I won’t go into spoilers, but this retro-futuristic survival horror game—which plays like an art-house cinema mashup of classic Resident Evil, classic Metal Gear Solid, and the ever under-appreciated Eternal Darkness—has a fake out ending. This design choice is bold, assertive, and a little strange, a trio of adjectives which represent the game well. WHAT ANDROIDS DREAM The first wave of my enthusiasm towards Signalis peaked during the impressively confident first hour and a half. From the menu screen, with its cathode-ray-tube visuals and clacking sound of its slowly-revealing text, to the opening screens of the game itself, with their ...

26Oct

By Oliver RevoltaNo Comments

Switch Reviews

LEGO Bricktales – Switch Review

LEGO Bricktales—a 3D puzzle-adventure game centred around helping NPCs with LEGO-brick constructions—is one of my surprise gaming experiences of the year. It was developed by Clockstone Studios and published by Thunderful Publishing. More than any LEGO game to date, developer Clockstone Studios have captured the essence of what makes LEGO fun. The in-game building mechanic feels somehow magical: I didn’t just remember what it was like to be a kid playing with little blocks—blocks I’ve given no thought to as an adult—I relived it. The game lured my weary, aging mind back to the same calm, happy mental space I had as a seven or eight year old. Once again I was living my life brick by brick in an innocent, zen-like calm. It felt great. And the video game elements enhanced this core experie...

29Sep

By Oliver RevoltaNo Comments

Switch Reviews

Haiku, The Robot – Switch Review

To teach himself the rhythm and structure of a great novel, legendary journalist Hunter S. Thompson once re-typed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby word for word. Playing Haiku, The Robot made me think something similar was going on, because the game’s resemblance to Hollow Knight is so overt that you could almost call it a replica—or, to put it more generously, a Hollow Knight expansion with a robot skin. The sense is that the game’s solo developer, James Morris, AKA Mister Morris Games, had no intention of hiding his influence. You play as a little robot named Haiku, and as you explore the robotic world of Arcadia, divided up into branching paths like in any Metroid-vania, the echoes of Hollow Knight are frequent. The tech-based enemies have a direct insectoid parallel in Hollow ...

14Aug

By Oliver Revolta2 Comments

Switch Reviews

Live A Live – Switch Review

Live A Live comes to the Nintendo Switch a thing of intrigue—a game that has waited 28 years for a western release, and one that has websites and reviewers singling out this remaster as a standard-bearer in games preservation done well. The hype is strong and expectations are high, particularly for a game that due to its age could potentially not hold up to modern sensibilities. From a distance, the game’s background appears mysterious. Searches for reasons why this 1994 SNES release never travelled outside of Japan give conflicting reports. Maybe low sales are the culprit—Square Enix shifted only 270,000 copies originally. Square’s other games that year did much better in comparison, at least in Japan. It’s possible that Live A Live’s unique structure—seven narratives, each designed...

14Aug

By Oliver RevoltaNo Comments

Hardware & Tech

Soundpeats Air 3 Review

The Soundpeats Air 3 come at a good price and with one eye-catching promise in particular—low latency video game Bluetooth earbuds that will give your games lag-free wireless audio without breaking the bank. How did they do? My feelings after two weeks of testing them can be summed up with the sentence: finally, I have Bluetooth earbuds that work flawlessly with my Switch. UNBREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER– LAG-FREE GAMING AT A LOW PRICE USER EXPERIENCE—GAMING AND MOBILE If these buds are in your budget—and they are priced well—then you have access to a Bluetooth audio experience with very few drawbacks and plenty of upsides. As this is a gaming website, let’s begin with the juiciest of details: the Soundpeats Air 3s have a dedicated game mode. Three taps of the left bud—part of a huge ar...