Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is a bit of a flawed masterpiece. The core fighting game is the best it has ever been, expertly balancing approachability for newcomers and intricate depth for hardcore fans. If the core Smash Bros. experience is all you are after, then the Wii U's iteration is a no-brainer.
Gameplay shines in Bayonetta 2, but the game's heroine falls flat
Never Alone is, nevertheless, an important game offering a fascinating window into a rich and ongoing culture among native Alaskans. And if you are open to accepting that cultural exchange then the barriers dividing the people of the world get a little bit smaller, and we all grow closer to never really being alone in the world again.
To be clear, Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut is still not an easy game. It is a better-paced and better balanced game, allowing even relative newcomers to zero-gravity dogfights to be able to build up the skills to become ace pilots.
Knack has its moments, and PlayStation 4 owners starved for something to play on their shiny new console will appreciate that the game actually becomes more fun to play the second time around, allowing it to keep players busy during the several month drought that seems to follow every system launch. But had Knack released as it plays now at any time other than a new system's launch, it would have been overlooked and overshadowed without a second glance.
Ultimately rewarding, 10 Second Ninja puts both your reflexes with a controller and your own personal mettle to the test for a game that can be just as hard to put down as it is to pick back up again.
Letting go of the past can be hard, especially if it's a past you have great fondness for, but sometimes letting go is necessary in order to move on. Perhaps that is a lesson both Clementine and the players controlling her will learn together during the course of The Walking Dead: Season Two.
Much like the sibling rivalry at its core, Max: The Curse of Brotherhood is a game of extremes. The game can get so frustrating you'll wish it would just go away, but then on the next puzzle everything works as it should and it becomes difficult not to fall for its charms.
The Swindle is a good game on the cusp of greatness, but falters from a structural identity crisis that is hard to ignore.
Make no mistake, Torchlight 2 is nothing revolutionary. It favors a remix of genre conventions over any true evolution of the action RPG formula, but it is a pitch-perfect execution of those traditions that remains satisfying from start to finish and beyond.
Screamride is an odd case of a game where I enjoy it while I'm playing it, sinking hours at a time into mastering a screamrider track, finding the perfect pressure point to detonate a demolition level, or tweaking a roller coaster of my own creation for the best balance of speed and excitement. But the hooks aren't fully there, and when I step away from playing I'm neither eager nor excited to return.
In Gods Will Be Watching, however, its rare successes are overshadowed by an abundance of design decisions that are not only frustrating to play, but actively undermine any cohesion the story attempts to salvage.
In the end, I think I wanted to like Dying Light for its flashes of brilliance more than I actually liked the overall experience of it.