Michael Thomsen
As an intermittent admirer of the series, I found "The Phantom Pain" unexpectedly emotional, not as a story or as an arrangement of digital things to play with, but as a parting gesture to a community of which I have occasionally been a part.
I found "Twilight Princess" to be even better than when it was first released. It felt like coming home to one's childhood bedroom, revealing the impermanence of "home" while affirming the life-giving importance of having such shelters to return to from time to time.
“EA UFC 2” is an effective tribute to of professional sport fandom, the spirit that causes the crowd to roar to life not in appreciation of another person’s actions but because they believe it means something for them to have witnessed it.
It’s a gratifying to play for a few hours, and the overlay of experience points and weapon upgrades offer formulaic but still effective reasons to keep coming back. Yet, all of it feels like it’s speeding further away from its source material.
The latest in the series is proof that ‘Destiny’ will never end
South Park: The Fractured but Whole is a game that's too eager to laugh at cruelty
“Infinite Warfare” is arguably the most imaginative and wide-ranging game in the series, and yet every new idea it tries feels hamstrung by the conventions that have made the series so successful. There are a few interludes of space dogfights, but these feel strangely similar to on-foot levels, but with fighter ships that can come to a full halt and hover before zipping off again to chase a new enemy vessel.
‘Paper Mario: Color Splash’ makes a game of dragging the past into the present
As a system of addiction and obsession, “AdVenture Capitalist” works as advertised.
Another game asks players to re-attach the controllers to the side of the Switch console, remove it from its television dock and cradle it like a crying baby, complete with a crudely animated infant tossing its head back and forth on the console's portable screen. It was perhaps the most uncanny moment of all the experiences in the game — a human child used as a skeuomorphic wrapper for a software simulation.
"Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" feels like the most complete game in the series, with 23 remade tracks from earlier games and 25 originals, yet the racing feels like it's been tamed by the mild courses and gentle drifting system.
If too many games today entangle the mind with ceaseless complications, proliferating differences with only superficial distinctions in outcome, "Polybius" provides the feeling of having one's mind washed clean for a few moments, shaken free of clutter. Its biggest reward occurs in the moment when the headset is removed and the screen goes dark, a moment when it feels possible to see everything with what feels like new eyes.
In the same way, "Call of Duty: WWII" feels like a game in which the prospect of moving on is somehow scarier than staying in the battlefield for one more tour.
'Metal Gear Survive' turns survivalism into a theater of the absurd