Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a "return to form," but maybe a change would do the series some good.
It's not Battlefront III enough for the Battlefront diehards. It's not Battlefield enough for the Battlefield crowd. And it's not deep enough ... for me to believe the game has staying power - though it's noob-friendly enough that it may (temporarily) appeal to the masses of Star Wars fans that have never touched its predecessor or a modern shooter, but want to pick up a fun video game after seeing The Force Awakens.
Fallout 4's setting and conceit are strong as ever, but it feels quite a bit less daring and honed than its predecessor.
I've been addicted to 2205 all week, but remain disappointed Blue Byte doesn't push its ideas further with each new entry. The future's impressive. Just not quite as different as you might think.
Yeah, you should get Hearts of Stone. It's pretty good.
Playing as Batman? Awesome. Playing as Batman through repetitive, empty missions? Less awesome. Playing as the Batmobile? Awful.
Transformers: Devastation is a B-tier game that succeeds only by expertly capitalizing on its source material and your nostalgia.
A few of my complaints from last year remain - the user interface could still use some beautification and the tech web is borderline impenetrable for first-time players. But Firaxis has made some smart choices with Rising Tide. It's starting to distinguish itself from Civilization V finally, and not just in terms of the way units look. Playing Rising Tide - especially on a water-heavy map - feels appreciably different from previous Civ games.
Prison Architect is a mostly-honest and unflinching look at our modern society and its approach towards prisoner rehabilitation...or lack thereof. It's a fascinating game, in no small part because it so expertly casts a real-world debate in video game terms and in doing so forces players to examine their own beliefs. And it's a hell of a lot of fun, besides.
It's an unconventional game with interesting ideas—questions we don't ask often in games, mainly because most games aren't interested in this sort of dialog. We subsist mainly on a steady diet of summer blockbusters, and it's not often a weird art house game like The Beginner's Guide comes along, let alone gains any traction.
Dropsy's a pretty good point-and-click, but more importantly it's clever and weird.
Unfortunately [Corpse of Discovery] is broken. This is one of those instances where I find the idea of a game more interesting than the game itself, not least because I quickly tired of trying to first-person platform at a herky-jerky 12 frames per second crawl. I'll try and update this review if it gets fixed, but in its current state Corpse of Discovery is nigh-unplayable.
It's not that Mad Max is bad. It's just the latest in a long line of Ubisoft-template open-world games.
The fact is, The White March Part One is good fodder for those coming in fresh and a fine addition for those looking to replay, but isn't compelling enough on its own for you to come back to Pillars of Eternity if you've already finished the game.
Shadowrun: Hong Kong isn't the best RPG Harebrained Schemes has put out, but it's still a great game in its own right.
OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood is the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 of side-scrolling skateboarding games. And yes, that's a good thing.
It's more than a bit silly and mindless but, well, the whole aRPG genre is a bit silly and mindless. Victor Vran strips out some of the complexity of its peers, but makes up for it with a dynamic combat system and incredibly modular character customization. And the most awful hats. And stale jokes that are so stale they're almost funny again. Almost.
I have a few quibbles . . . but in general this is a grand start to what I hope is a grand adventure. Long live the King.
The Talos Principle almost staged a last-minute Game of the Year upset on PCWorld last December, and for good reason—it's one of the best puzzle games ever made. And Road to Gehenna is that most boring and yet occasionally most earnest of compliments: "More of the same."
It's not enough though. Traverser is also proof that all the pretty graphics in the world can't make up for staid mechanics. I want to love Traverser. Taken piecemeal, I do love Traverser. But it's not enough to have great ideas—you need to execute on them too. And Traverser doesn't quite nail the execution.