The improvements that Naughty Dog made in gameplay and graphics showed that they were able to completely overhaul a system that wasn't all that bad to begin with, and the result was gameplay that kept me entertained even though it was the longest game that Naughty Dog had ever made. As I said, the action in this game is intense, grueling, and raw.
Just when you thought power fantasies couldn’t get any better, Doom Eternal comes along with its universe of blood and gore to put you in a state of flow.
To say that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is provocative is an understatement. It makes you think about a lot of things, including how much violence a video game should have.
I liked the intentions of the game. But while it did have a big twist, I felt like it was more of a short story than a long narrative.
Gears 5 has a lot to offer, with multiplayer, co-op modes, and a single-player campaign with wide range of emotions, from humor and laughter to despair and tragedy. It leaves the fans with a bit of a cliffhanger ending, but that just means that fans will want Gears 6 to come soon.
I think this is much more fun and takes advantage of the fundamentally social nature of the choose-your-adventure style gameplay in Man of Medan.
And while I can appreciate this new art form, this story wasn't quite as dramatic as I had hoped for, or at least the sequence in which I saw the events wasn't as satisfying. It's not as long as I thought it might be. With the pluses and minuses here, I see this as an evolving new medium but not one that has yet reached its highest form.
It had the potential to be as good as The Last of Us, but it lost its way. It’s worth playing, especially as Bend Studio stamps out the bugs.
But make no mistake: Red Dead Redemption 2 is a masterpiece. I see these flaws as small distractions, but they don't kill my enthusiasm for the game. Those bugs seem like nitpicking against scenes like the one in the video above, as Arthur rides to the sound of a beautiful song.
Call of Duty works best when it throws a diversity of experiences at you. The multiplayer game accomplishes this with the constant duels between the Specialists. The Zombies experience will keep you trying to survive for just one more round. And Blackout could provide an endless set of crazy and fun experiences.
I found there was plenty of emotion, story, and action to keep me interested in what happens next. I'm not a fan of the episodic nature of the game, as I would rather play it all at once. But I look forward to the rest of it.
This Lara Croft memoir ends in a good way, and I'll miss this version of Lara more than any of them.
The story was kind of wacky, it made me laugh, and it had a kind of moral to it in the end. It's not heavy moralizing, but it makes you think about whether you really should be tossing out so much trash for a donut hole to collect. I wished the story was longer and the game had more things to do besides capturing things in a hole. But the story was lighthearted and the gameplay was fun. If you don't have high expectations, I think you'll find Donut County is a nice diversion.
Detroit: Become Human is best when it foresees the consequences of our decisions and sets up a clear choice — or a muddy choice. It creates the illusion of the Butterfly Effect, where small actions can lead to big consequences.
You may feel split between the lack of complete agency and the recognition that you are being told a story.
It took me around 36 hours and 13 runs to beat the game. And when I finally beat it, I felt so good. Now I'll have to get started all over again.
Star Wars: Battlefront II tries to straddle the hardcore and casual audiences. It succeeds some of the time, and it also fails some of the time. So far, the cut scenes in the single-player campaign are excellent, but I'm waiting to get into some really fun gameplay.
My hat's off to the developers at Sledgehammer who are helping a new generation understand the sacrifices of those who died in the Second World War.
Overall, Total War: Warhammer II is an exciting edition to the Total War series, and the Warhammer characters certainly add a lot of personality. They're the sort of characters who generate more interest in the narrative and make you more interested in pursuing the rest of the story.
Chloe and Nadine are a good salve for the loss I still feel about the ending of Drake's story.