Paul Tassi's Reviews
[W]e're back to tightly packed cities and crowds for two years running now, like we've warped all the way back to the Assassin's Creed II trilogy. And no matter how pretty the games get and how tight the mechanics are, it never feels fresh anymore.
[I]t's been a long time since I've had a game feel relatively off-putting at the start, and then slowly reel me in until I couldn't help but love it by the end. I went to the party, got hammered, made out with a lampshade and went home, full of warm, fuzzy memories. It was an absolutely ridiculous experience that I would heartily recommend to anyone.
Destiny may have seemed like a total letdown a week after launch. but I think what it does bring to the table is enough to have attracted a large, passionate playerbase, and the game is going to have legs well into the future. We're living in an age where for better or worse, many games eventually evolve into what we hoped they'd be at launch. If current trends hold, that's going to be Destiny too, but two months from its debut, it hasn't had a half-bad sprint out of the starting gate either.
It may not shake up the series like the initial console port did, but the game has been refined and distilled into something pretty great all the same. I have an unsubstantiated hunch that there may yet be one more expansion coming, given that D3 has sold 20M copies across all platforms, so we may see more variants of this game yet. For now, enjoy Ultimate Evil as either your 4th go-round in the D3 universe, or your first.
Like Grand Theft Auto V before it, sometimes it's not enough to simply be big and well-made. Watch Dogs feels like a collection of promising concepts with nothing solid holding them together. Aiden Pearce should have been that something, but instead, he's just a character meant to sell cool looking hats in collector's editions. Perhaps that can be rectified in a sequel, but for now, Pearce is pretty big issue, and so is his propensity to kill people in boring, cover-based shooter-y ways.
It's just plain (hopelessly addictive) fun. Obviously, loot based dungeon crawling kind of has to be your thing, as even with all the new changes to gameplay, it may still feel rather repetitive to outsiders. But I have to imagine that barring any unforeseen issues that may not have cropped up yet, both past and present Diablo fans will be very happy with Reaper of Souls, and with how the game has improved a thousandfold since launch.
Infamous is a good game. I don't know about great, but "good" is enough to be the best in the series, and the best exclusive PS4 has to offer right now. With 100% completion and new missions to come there are plenty of worthwhile hours to be spent with the game, and it's definitely worth picking up if you're a fan of the series or the genre. The powers are innovative and a lot of fun, I just wish there was a bit more to do with them, and a more compelling story that perhaps took itself just a little more seriously.
Titanfall is a great game and an incredible amount of fun. Combat is creative, exciting and never, ever static. It lacks depth past its core concept however, and hopefully that's something that can be rectified well ahead of the inevitable Titanfall 2. But right now, this is the game the Xbox One needs, and it's the first true must-have of the new console generation.
In the end, despite an unmemorable story, I quite liked Shadow Fall's campaign simply from a design perspective alone. By ditching overbearing auto-aim, bending linearity and actually posing a real challenge at times, it's a fun experience and PS4 could do a lot worse for a debut title. I don't know if the series will ever explode in popularity, but for now, it's done its job showcasing the new abilities of the PS4.
Need for Speed: Rivals is one of the more fun installments in the series, and certainly a great PS4 launch title. But it needs deeper customization and tweaks to racing SP loss in order to more fully realize its potential, and a more involved attempt at a story would inject some life into a relatively stale campaign mode. Fortunately gameplay is so intense and fun you forget about most of the game's other issues, and it can certainly be enjoyed despite its lingering issues and relative lack of depth.