With The Climb, Crytek has taken a throwaway traversal mechanic from games like Uncharted and masterfully turned that into its own compelling and complete experience.
ADR1FT is evocative, chilling, tense, and unlike anything I’ve ever played, even if it isn’t for everyone.
There aren't many games out there that I'd spend several hours creating a Spotify playlist for. But American Truck Simulator scratches the exact same itch that Elite: Dangerous does. While they're vastly different games, both evoke a sense of the wide open road, of the perfect road trip. Both give you freedom and put you in control of your own destiny and your own direction. Both are ridiculously compelling and they let you set your own pace.
Not perfect, but absolutely worth experiencing.
What you get out of Star Wars Battlefront depends entirely on what you expect from it. If you're looking to capture that feeling of playing in a beautifully-realized Star Wars sandbox, albeit one lacking variety and depth, EA DICE nails it. If you're looking for a shooter stacked with substance, engrossing character progression, and endlessly addictive gameplay to sink your teeth into for the months ahead, Star Wars Battlefront misses the mark.
With respect to the excellent Cybertron series from High Moon Studios, this may be a short experience but it's one so densely packed with nostalgia, non-stop action, and attention to detail that I couldn't help but fall in love. It has its minor weaknesses, but they're not enough to override an enthusiastic recommendation if you're a fan who can't enough Transformers in your life.
Rock Band 4 may have lost a few features (some temporarily, some permanently) in its transition to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but the core gameplay is dramatically improved by allowing us to be more expressive, while preserving the older mechanics for those resistant to change. It's player choice at its finest, and a welcome return to fake plastic rocking
All told, There Came An Echo is a journey worth taking. The story takes some unexpected — if sometimes uneven — turns, the voice acting is on point, and the advanced speech recognition Iridium Studios has developed is beyond promising. I fully expect them to have a secondary revenue stream licensing out this technology. Go buy it, go play it, go support indie developers who take risks in the name of unique gaming experiences.
SuperGiant has created a world brimming with sophistication, mysteries, and tech-heavy sci-fi charm. It's a world with serious staying power should they decide to revisit it. It meets and then promptly blows right past every high watermark you'd expect a digitally downloadable title to reach.
Some of the scares in Daylight are genuinely chilling, but their shock value fades quickly. And after the opening hour or so, the hospital itself seems to become a character, which adds a needed layer of interactivity and suspense to the mix. But between dull writing, last-gen graphics, and limited game mechanics, Daylight devolves into nothing more than a glorified maze simulator with mood lighting.