First and foremost, I got to hand it to Nicolas Meyssonnier, a one-man developer who was able to put together this entertaining experience. Through a partnership with publisher Headup Games, was able to bring this experience to a multitude of platforms. If you are like me, Pumpkin Jack will give you vibes of other action 3D platformers like Jersey Devil, Jak & Daxter and MediEvil, which dominated the early years of PlayStation. Taking place in the uneventful kingdom of Arc En Ciel; not be confused with the game of similar name… TOMARUNNER VS L'Arc en Ciel, the Devil decides to have a little fun and conjures up a curse that would plunge the kingdom into despair. To combat this, the King puts his all-powerful wizard to work in order to defend the kingdom from hordes of monsters and ghouls. Not being outdone, the Devil one ups the King by unleashing his own champion to combat the Wizard: Pumpkin Jack.
We dive into the best Switch horror games for the Halloween season for both kids and adults.
VGChartz's Lee Mehr: "Regardless of where I land on it overall, Pumpkin Jack is another great example of the prodigious work one developer can accomplish with modern tools. I think that's a wonderful testament. When looking at the game proper, I think Nicolas Meyssonnier's work falls just short of its action-platformer goals. But when you consider its great Halloween-themed visual design, engaging soundtrack, strong personality, creative potential, and its place in today's market, genre fans can still have a gourd time with it."
If asking me (the writer) personally: it depends on which titles we're talking about. Rainbow Six Siege ranks among the best shooters of the past decade, but Extraction looks incredibly boring. I only started Immortals Fenyx Rising, but that felt more up my alley than recent AC titles.
Other site writers have been kinder to Ubisoft games than I likely would be, but that's how it tends to go anyways.
I would think open world AC Ubisoft games would be around a 6-7. The level gating through MTs stops gameplay flow, which fails to hit the open and free experience that open world titles need to have. This alone renders a would be top tier experience to something that is average at best. This probably goes for most of their titles I would assume.
Whoever wrote reviewed Valhalla enjoyed it more. As I said, it's been a while since I played the AC games but we're in agreement about MTs as artificial gameplay weights (to a large extent). But there's always some threshold of whether they're obnoxious or inconsequential in my eyes. R6 Siege pushes a shop with costly cosmetic options, but they have a free battle pass system and a card system that's pretty generous. I don't remember Immortals incorporating any of that level gating; I just remember it going base game & paid DLC route.
Base game with multiple editions means that Ubisoft games are actually $100 if you want to complete experience. I think the base games are the ones that should be reviewed. I suppose what I am getting at is that big companies get massive breaks in the review process. I don't think Ubisoft has made a game worth more than a 7 in almost a decade. At any rate, I enjoyed your review.
That's not universal though. Going back to Siege, sure they have editions that fast-tracked acquiring new characters in each season, but they had supplementary options that weren't much of a hurdle. I'd also call attention to their brief period of publishing indie games during 8th gen too.
-"I suppose what I am getting at is that big companies get massive breaks in the review process."
Although review sites have done better during 8th gen than 7th gen, I still agree with that sentiment. For me? I tend to find myself in rare scoring company - indie or AAA. That's gone on since my user reviews here.
-"At any rate, I enjoyed your review."
Greatly appreciated. I enjoyed having this chance to explain my thought process a bit more.
TGG says: "Pumpkin Jack is back! No, not with a new game, but around Halloween the game finally received some next-gen updates to make it run smoother on the Xbox Series X|S and PS5. At the same time, the developer also fixed some longstanding issues with the achievements that wouldn’t track correctly so now seemed like the perfect time to finally light the candle in our hollowed-out pumpkin head and dig in."
