Lovely Planet Arcade (2016)

Was it what you guessed it would be? Fans of puzzle games and first-person shooters alike will probably find a lot to love in Lovely Planet Arcade, but much of the game is spent feeling stupid for something you wouldn't have known anyway. While the simple graphics are charming, and the music leaves a lot to be desired, Lovely Planet Arcade will either feel like a challenging mentor, or a schoolyard bully, depending on how you as a gamer play.

Verdict: A sequel only by sight, Lovely Planet Arcade is too frustrating to be enjoyable despite its pedigree.

The highlight of Lovely Planet Arcade is the fast paced combat combined with the puzzles of the levels. It gives the game a surprising challenge to it and makes it really satisfying to combine your reflexes and intellect to blast through a stage as fast as you can.

I'm glad that the developer of Lovely Planet Arcade chose to make significant changes for the sequel, but I'm not convinced that these changes were successful. Arcade doesn't scratch the same itches that the first game did, nor does the new gameplay come together in a satisfying way. It's certainly not a bad game, but it lacks the joyous free-form nature of the original game. I'd strongly recommend that newcomers to the series start with Lovely Planet, and only move onto Arcade if searching for a different type of challenge in the same style.

In some ways, Lovely Planet Arcade is more of a puzzle game than an action shooter, in the strictest sense