After three games starring the cute, black-eyed burlap doll Sackboy and a mammoth 11 million user-created levels, Media Molecule, the developer behind LittleBigPlanet, yearned to take community-based game making to the next level. It took seven long years, but Dreams is a far more visually wondrous example of the “play, create, share” mantra from the U.K.-based, Sony-owned studio.
The overall result is a spectacular experience that wins with varied play, humor and amusement park-like excitement. But the experience is lessened, too, by predicable narrative, and the limited reactions of the non-playable denizens who populate this open world island of Manhattan.
'Where The Water Tastes Like Wine' is a giant leap forward for video game storytelling
I won't play Xenoblade Chronicles 2 again. A wondrous game lies in there somewhere. But like those viscous cloud seas in Alrest, it's too often too difficult to swim through.
While some of "Longshot" equates to creditable narrative, its tone deafness has to be dealt with in the next Madden, the landmark 30th anniversary.
While "Pinstripe" can feel uneven at times, there's talent, full-of-heart here that's worthy of nurturing.
What Nintendo has created is an all-encompassing mind-body possession in which you find yourself inside something unusually, hauntingly engrossing.
It’s the best of the horror bunch.
Story is still very important. But I am saying that under VR’s heavy-ish headset, it’s easy to become bored and impatient when a game plods on.
Four things prevent “Here They Lie” from being completely creditable. It’s unrelentingly depressing. You never feel you’ve triumphed against anything. And although you make the occasional moral choice, it’s less a game than an experience. It’s also the most nausea-inducing VR offering I’ve ever played. The developers care more about affecting your mind and controlling your emotions than they do about your physical ability to complete their slice of grim fantasy.
In this Lego game, there's just enough comedy to get you by.
Once you deduce how to use the multifarious forms of interactivity, The Show is wonderfully calming when the rhythm of pitching becomes zen-like. As the controller beats like a frantic heart when the bases are loaded, the physiological feeling of vibration sends you inside yourself.
Yet Spike Lee's nuanced plotting and oftentimes poetic phrasing yield a promising beginning for sports game narrative, a beginning so affecting that Lee's last scenes left me staggered. It's a cautionary tale that should be refined to become far more interactive in next year's game.