This is the finest football management game around and should be on everyone's Steam list.
It's tiki-taka and that's no bad thing
What we have here is a fun story with actual impactful choices lending a level of replayability unseen to date in similar games.
You'll not want it to end, just like you didn't want your very favourite RPGs of years-past to end either. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will sit in that list now. There isn't any higher praise.
If you want to learn how to drive the vehicles you can't get ahold of in real life, this is for you. If you want a real racing experience this is for you. If you want to collect them all, or have a bit of fun, then you're better off waiting for Gran Turismo or getting an arcade racer instead. For the most realistic driving simulation available though, Project CARS is all you'll need.
Ultimately what NetherRealm have done is moved the needle forwards in their execution of a proper fighting game. It's very Mortal Kombat which is what the fans would want. It has a story mode similar to that which has gone before, again a major bonus given it's unmatched by any game except for NetherRealm's input to date. The mechanics have been built on, with more complexity and depth, designed to attract fans of other series. The content is sizable and will keep happy Kombatants going for weeks. If you're a completionist, expect to play for tens of hours as you work towards that platinum trophy. So then: it's Mortal Kombat, improved. It's an evolution and not a revolution, and that's what fans would have wanted.
Entropy wins out in the end
So, to sum up what SingStar: Ultimate Party is I can safely say what it is not. It is not the ultimate party. If it were, life would be very dull indeed. What it is is a way to collate certain music videos in one place in exchange for payment as opposed to finding them for free via various other methods. It's a chance to sing into your smartphone rather than hear singing from it and a chance to see shapes turn blue or gold or stay white. It's a chance to record yourself singing without pressing play on the video recorder and a chance to have other people you don't know rate your singing to prove once and for all to your wife/mother/friends that you bloody well can sing. Does all of that make the game worth playing? Not a chance.
With Lords of the Fallen we have the first true "inspired by" Dark Souls game and the developers have had a good stab at recreating the wonders of that title and ended up delivering what can be described as Dark Souls for the MTV generation. It's a big, brash and colourful rendition of what makes the genre wonderful, with a sprinkling of innovation and a chunk of failure mixed up into a forgettable story, with some fun but ultimately limited gameplay. You'll enjoy it whilst it lasts and if new to this type of game the length it lasts will extend quite a way, but it could have been more had it kept in mind what was proven to work and added to that, rather than taking some of those bits and pieces and building from that foundation.
As ever with a Football Manager game there has been a whole host of changes some of which are apparent straight away, whilst others become clear over time. The time-honoured tradition is to incite revolution in some areas and optimising others via evolution. Whilst this ensures there's enough new stuff to get owners of older versions to buy the latest release, it does mean that nothing is ever made perfect because of the modular, but cyclic change. It's not like everything that needs to be improved is touched in one go; nor do we get that brand-new and surprising title. So here we don't get that ten out of ten rating but Sports Interactive deserve praise for again delivering the best football management simulation around. It's the same as last year then, only different.
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It doesn't quite shed the feeling of being an unfinished game though. If Destiny is meant to be this multi-year, multi-game shared-world experience is this it and will we just get more of it? If so it's good but it's not genre-defining. What genre is it trying to define actually? What have Bungie got still to come and how will that change things for better or for worse? It doesn't really matter in the here and now; this is the game we have to play. But the fact it shows promise and pain both at times throughout its life, as well as making us question if this is it or what more there will be, doesn't really garner it with glory. If you go into it knowing what you have today and that in the future something might - or might not change - then you'll be left with an enjoyable and long-lasting experience. If you expect the future that might be now - if you have bought into Bungie and Activision's chatter as being the day one solution, well, with that your joy will be muted.
Fundamentally that's the overriding feeling of Watch Dogs. It's a game that has so much to offer and so many things to do that it can't fail to engage you as a player. But eventually you'll realise it's not all good and what you find interesting is done. There's little to compel the player to finish in terms of the way it does things, aside from that square button which allows magical occurrences to happen. With this introduction to the world of hacking Ubisoft have created a behemoth of an IP, one that promises much. Like its predecessor though, we'll have to wait for the tighter and more focussed second iteration, removing what didn't work and improving that which did, to realise that full potential.
Ultimately Nintendo have again produced the goods and delivered another system seller. Many companies long for one true example of this in a console's lifetime; Nintendo now has two within a year of each other. The driving is exquisite, the track design is wonderful and the overall presentation is marvellous. We have here perhaps the finest Mario Kart to date, aside from battle mode, and an entry into the series which whilst being so special, only serves to highlight the series' flaw more prominently. Good job then that that flaw was never seen as one anyway as that's not what Mario Kart is about. This is what Mario Kart is about - wonderful, prolonged fun.
Ultimately what RedLynx has done here is create Trials for the current generation, and brought it to more folks than ever before given the cross-platform availability. They've managed to retain the brilliant physics-based gaming we've seen before and ensure it's possible for newcomers and old pros alike to succeed - to some extent, at least. Where they've brought new elements into play the results are mixed. Quad bikes are great fun but stunt-based tracks are less exciting than they should be. Regardless there's a lot to do, a lot of ways to do it and it can all be done in a pretty and entertaining ecosystem. Whilst it's not going to wow anyone familiar or otherwise with the series, it's going to keep most happy for a pretty long time.
So here we have a glorified prologue which showcases the new generation with aplomb and makes the mouth water at what Kojima Productions can do over the course of a full game. You'll revel in the backstory provided and audio logs littered throughout if you're a Metal Gear aficionado and you'll just about get what's happening in this mission at least if you're not. Either way when playing it all out you'll find a wonderful bag of tricks that doesn't bore a great many hours after first reaching the closing cutscene and its unsurprising lack of closure (it is a prologue/prequel after all). After all of this you'll still be salivating. If this truly is a sign of things to come, then we might just get that perfect score.
So what we have here is a future-classic, old-school indie title for individuals and like-minded folk alike. The visuals are retro but work, the soundtrack by Daedelus is dynamic and ever-changing in tune with the onscreen action. The code is so precise the fighting is always balanced and true to your inputs - whether that is a disarm, throw of your knife and preference for fisticuffs, or a straight thrust to the chest (with a little wiggle up and down for that achievement) - that the result is always joy, whether you win or lose. Some might question the idea of paying for a game that's been available free in one form or another for a few years. The riposte to that is that the game is worth it. The developer deserves to be rewarded and this is the best version of the game you could ask for - tournament mode on the living room TV with joypads is, well, quite exquisite.
Ferraris. That's where we came in. We said that's all you really needed to know about the game and that you should just go and play it. Having now shared various other thoughts, that recommendation still holds. It is wonderful to be able to race Ferraris around the gorgeous game map - as well as many other cars - and you're doing so within a structured, enjoyable game with fantastic handling, a super sense of speed (but not quite on a par with the very best) and the very on-the-edge mechanics which underpin this twitch racer. Unfortunately what keeps this title from hitting the heady heights it had the potential to reach are significant factors, like the forced end of racer sessions or impossible free roam type approach to the game. It also doesn't feel like the fastest thing ever. So a very good racing game, rather than a great one. Nevertheless it does make you long for Ghost Games' next attempt at Need for Speed.
Burial at Sea might be a challenger for the best-ever narrative-based DLC yet presented to the gaming community at large.
Everything adds up to what could have been.