Dennis Scimeca's Reviews
Prepare to happily pour months of your life into Dragon Age: Inquisition
This War of Mine tries to give us the barest taste of what it might be like to be trapped behind the lines of a war, with our entire world crumbling all around us. If that feels uncomfortable, if it is no fun whatsoever, the developers have accomplished precisely what they intended to.
I have spent more than 60 hours in the Xbox One version of the game and don't feel anywhere close to having tackled most of the content. Fallout 4 could be the only game you buy for the next six months, and you might never get bored. It's everything that Fallout fans were hoping for. When it comes to game releases in 2015, the best was truly saved for last.
The idea of Super Mario Maker continuing into the future is wonderful, because this is a game that can bridge generations. When I was a kid, my dad and I had no idea how Nintendo created a Super Mario Bros. game. Now, I can sit down with the next generation of my extended family and not only show them what Super Mario Bros. is through Super Mario Maker, but also peel back the curtain and figure out together how video games work.
XCOM 2 has everything you could want in a sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown
That Dragon, Cancer is a family's beautiful tribute to faith, loss, and love
Every so often a game jam produces something special that is both interesting and commercially viable. A game like Superhot.
Destiny 2 is everything you could ask for in a sequel. The systems of the original Destiny have been tweaked and tuned. The graphics quality is superlative. Destiny 2 feels less like a grind, is easier to get into, and is a superior project to the original Destiny in almost every way.
The Division 2 is surely the game that fans of The Division wanted to play and that Massive Entertainment wanted to deliver the first time around. Good things come to Division agents who wait.
Where The Elder Scrolls Online fails is when it doesn't break enough from the traditional MMO formula, which is the same mistake other massively multiplayer games keep making, but the only places I've felt that weakness so far are in the monster behavior and quest systems. If the endgame and player-versus-player content I haven't gotten to yet also stick too close to typical MMO formulas, then it's going to be difficult for Bethesda to justify the cost of a subscription for The Elder Scrolls Online unless additional, fresh, and substantial story material is regularly added to the game for high-level players, maybe even on a monthly basis.
Paper Mario Color Splash isn’t frustration-free, but compared to the Mario platforming games Color Splash is light and refreshing, an opportunity to have an adventure with Mario and his friends that doesn’t require lightning-quick reflexes and high frustration tolerance. You’d better be ready for some cringe worthy puns, however.
Telltale has proven again how well their episodic storytelling format lends itself to adaptation of successful franchises. And the binge-playthrough taught me that anyone who hasn't been following The Wolf Among Us episode-by-episode, and who therefore might feel like they missed the boat, couldn't be more wrong.
It's always a pleasure when a game is a no-brainer to recommend. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor fits into that category. It is dense with content, will envelop you within its world, and is worth every second of your attention it demands.
The variety and quality of stories written by the community playing Elegy for a Dead World demonstrates the game's success at enabling its players to write effectively. Writing is so much more difficult than waggling a joystick or pressing buttons, and yet Elegy for a Dead World makes writing accessible to just about anyone who has the heart, and the courage, to try.
Other than this potential flaw, I can't think of any shortcomings (though it should be repeated that this is my first Yoshi game, so any repetitiveness from previous installations isn't accounted for). Yoshi's Wooly World is a challenging yet accessible platformer that weaves a venerable Nintendo icon into a fresh aesthetic.
Splatoon proves Nintendo has the chops for online shooters
For existing fans, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker checks all the boxes as to why they love Nintendo. For the kids this game might be gifted to for Christmas, Treasure Tracker provides an adorable demonstration of what Nintendo is all about. And for that, I think this is one of the strongest titles Nintendo has released in 2014. It's a must-have for Wii U owners.
Get ready to lose hours of your life to Civilization: Beyond Earth
The Division sets a new standard of excellence for shared-world shooters
Doom's triumphant return to hell makes old school the new hotness