Stormblood's epic narrative, gorgeous new locales, spectacular battles and some fresh gameplay mechanics make a great game even better.
If you're ready to hit and kick other players until they stop moving, whether you're a seasoned veteran or a newbie just getting your feet wet, Tekken 7 is the real deal.
Where follow-ups to traditional comic book events often fail, Injustice 2 is a worthy successor to the original in almost every way.
Mario Kart 8 is an excellent game. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is even better.
Giving players the option to enjoy the game on their own terms is something Nier: Automata does very well. Challenge-hungry players can ramp the difficulty all the way up, doing away with silly things like targeting and aiming. Folks who just want to enjoy the nice game with the pretty androids can set the difficulty to easy, which allows for the equipping of special chips that auto-heal, auto-fight, auto-dodge—they almost play the game for you.
Like most recent entries in the Tales series, Tales of Berseria is an epic adventure packed with stuff to do. There are mini-games to play, cosmetic items to collect, food to cook and treasures to uncover. Those goofy fun trappings are draped across a much more serious whole this time around, offering welcome respite from a tale that’s not afraid to take its memorable characters to some very dark places.
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone doesn’t miss many beats. Though a couple of my more recent favorite Miku tunes didn’t make the cut (notably “Love Song,” featured in last year’s Project Diva X), I am overwhelmed by what Sega’s latest vocaloid rhythm game has to offer.
Eschewing the spare storytelling of previous Team Ico games, The Last Guardian's plot unfolds in a series of easily digestible cutscenes. It's a dark fairy tale that probably isn't quite what anyone expected, but ultimately serves to make the friendship at the core of the game even more remarkable. The Last Guardian is about two lost souls becoming one, and the strength and joy found in that conjunction.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is three very different games. It’s a character-driven military sci-fi action adventure with spaceship battles and a villain carved from the finest cedar. It’s a lighthearted co-op survival game with a bitchin’ period theme and some classic tunes. And it’s Black Ops III’s competitive multiplayer with a fresh coat of paint. I suppose it’s easier to push boundaries if you take them one at a time.
A trip back to Final Fantasy's roots with many of the friends and enemies we've made along the way
After a dozen hours romping around the Skylands with Faemily, Seamusbot, Archer Rex, Bird Kirkilton and Dadcat Robot, it feels like I’ve made the game my own. This is my Skylanders.
If you can handle a little (or a lot) of frustration and aren’t too hung up on visuals, Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice isn’t too bad. It manages to combine the wit and charm of the Sonic Boom animated series (your mileage may vary there) with the speed and simplicity of old school Sonic the Hedgehog in a way that doesn’t completely miss the mark.
Class campaigns, artifact weapons, and level-scaling make Legion feel like an entirely different game. Lots of waiting on timers.
7th Dragon III Code: VFD takes all my favorite features of a Japanese role-playing games and wraps them in a very pretty package.
With all of its filler, both good and bad, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens still feels like it should have waited for a few more movies. As I set about scouring the game's levels for special bricks, mini-kits and other goodies fans of the extended franchise obsess over, I keep thinking about what a great third of a trilogy game this will make once Star Wars Episode IX arrives in 2019.
There just isn't a lot of variety. It's a problem a lot of these MOBA-inspired hero shooters are going to run into. Traditional MOBA fans are fine with a small smattering of maps to play on. But this is a first-person shooter with MOBA elements, and first-person shooter players love their maps and modes. I know I do.
Pokken Tournament might not quite be the Pokemon fighting game I've been dreaming of for years, but to be fair my dreams are ridiculously lofty. Despite its limited-by-reality scope, it's the closest we've come to capturing the excitement of animated Pokemon battles in video game form.
Remember when online shooters were fresh and fun? Garden Warfare 2 certainly does.
To many I imagine Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is just a colorful but simplistic role-playing game with a slow-to-start story and repetitive dungeon environments. To me it's the chance to spend hours capturing Poyomon, Digivolving it to Tokomon, reaching max level and then De-digivolving it back to Poyomon, reaching max level and Digivolving to Tokomon, then Patomon, and finally increasing Patomon's stats so it can Digivolve to Angewoman. If that sounds exciting to you, then boof!
Great for kids and Marvel fans, but the LEGO video game formula is wearing really thin.