SnowRunner is all I want to play right now.
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is dense, detailed, and varied. It is more dense, detailed, and varied than I considered possible for a video game before playing this. It is a stunning accomplishment, and the 500-to-1,000+ people who worked on it should feel proud. It has its problems. Combat is clunky, the menus are a slog, and leveling feels off. But those issues never made me want to stop playing. I want to keep playing right now.
Few online games have clicked with me as quickly as Mario Tennis Aces, and I expect it'll end up on my top 10 at the end of 2018.
The kindest thing I can say about the game is that it does make for an entertaining livestream. I broadcasted my play on Twitch, and my audience seemed to really enjoy watching me suffer. So I guess this is a great one for all those fans of masochism out there.
Code Name: STEAM has gone from an unplayable tragedy to something that's not quite as terrible. Nintendo, thankfully, addressed the biggest problem when it enabled fast-forwarding with that recent update, but it shouldn't stop with that. Intelligent Systems needs to patch in a way to get a better understanding of your surroundings. The way it's set up now, this game is like playing chess where certain pawns secretly have the powers of a queen.
Games have to fit into our lives, and that's not always fair. Mass Effect: Andromeda might've worked a decade ago on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but it doesn't work in a world that is delivering games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In this reality, BioWare's latest role-playing game is old, broken, and often boring. Worst of all, it's going to disappoint fans of the Mass Effect series.
The adventure isn’t Super Rush’s real flaw. I’m used to the series coming up short in that aspect at this point. Instead, this game’s issue is I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. If I had time and a regular crew to play against, I imagine we would make an appointment to play the game together. That seems like fun, but it’s also a hassle. And the game doesn’t do much to alleviate the pains of getting a group together.
This lack of variety in the style of play makes every run feel samey, and they begin to blur together. That leads to a roteness that made me want to put down the game when I was struggling with the difficulty. I like challenging games, but roguelites need to walk a fine line between familiarity and routine. Familiarity is the warm embrace of something that feels like home. Routine is boredom, and it is poison for a game like this.
It’s fine to make a game like that — for many, that’s the promise of Cyberpunk 2077. It just wasn’t the promise to me.
I really like the way the RingCon feels. I also enjoy leveling up and running through the environment. But the core mission of Ring Fit Adventure is to make you forget that you’re exercising, and I think it’s only partially successful at that.
Score: 60/100
Nintendo didn’t do Yoshi’s New Island any favors by adhering so closely to the game that spawned this Mario subseries. For Yoshi’s Island fans, New might feel odd. Despite that, solid gameplay and diabolically well-hidden collectibles have me sticking around.
The Order is thrilling and frustrating.
With Burial at Sea, Irrational's greatest accomplishment is resuscitating Rapture. The city is a visual feast, and the developer once again proves that it has some of the most talented environment artists in the industry.
It's good to see Nintendo flexing the strength of its back catalog. NES Remix was a nice start, and NES Remix 2 is an improvement. Plenty of people, including me, love this era of gaming, and this game does a good job of capitalizing on that.
I have issues with Mario Golf: World Tour, but they are completely unimportant when I'm playing the actual golfing parts. It feels great, it looks very nice, and it plays at a fast pace. And while the campaign packaging is a faint echo of Mario Golfs gone by, that didn't stop me from loving the 20 hours I spent with this entry in the franchise.
At the very least, I happily recommend that everyone with a 3DS give it a shot. It's free to download, and you'll get an idea of whether you dig it long before you'll feel any pressure to spend money.
This is a game I expect to go back to regularly throughout the life of the Switch. But when I do, it probably won’t be for the multiplayer. Those modes are fine, but cooperative play adds a bit too much stress. But as a classic WarioWare, Get It Together shines.
The Climb has a really sturdy foundation built on entertaining mechanics, great feedback that keeps you moving, and deep hooks for multiplayer. At the same time, frustrations with the controls and a lack of an audience damages a lot of what Crytek has built.
It’s a call back to the sci-fi and adventuring stories that form the foundation of so many of today’s geeks. Roaming the galaxy as a lone explorer who has to rely on their wits to survive harsh planets nestled between light years of empty space is something I’ve played in my mind since I was a kid.