Andrew Todd's Reviews
Blow didn’t just meet expectations; he avoided them entirely, delivering a game that hides deceptive depth in its colourful environment.
Bungie has tied a neat little bow on a game that started as a clumsy experiment and grew into a handsome online experience.
No amount of extra quality assurance testing would fix the basic issues at the heart of ReCore.
Contained yet sprawling, outwardly simple yet inwardly complex, Cyan has delivered a welcome change of pace from 2016’s action-heavy release schedule.
Batman’s first episode ends on an exciting and intriguing cliffhanger, promising a story that feels genuinely new for the franchise.
Beautiful, innovative, and empty, it’s an amazing achievement but a boring game, all breadth and no depth.
At four or so hours, it’s an incredibly concentrated burst of imagination that outdoes its predecessor in just about every way.
Blizzard has brought all its experience to bear on the design of Overwatch, and the finer details make it a joy to play.
EA's sequel gets lost in its open world.
If you can get a group together, though, you’ll fall in love with Push Me Pull You.
If only there were a Lily following the developers around, Frozenbyte might’ve been guilt-tripped into giving Shadwen the polish it needed.
Naughty Dog has capped off its flagship series with a visually stunning, viscerally thrilling adventure, and incredibly, the studio says it will push the PS4 even harder in its next game. I can't wait to see what that looks like.
Hitman’s second episode adds another sprawling environment in which to enjoy doing bad murders, and sports gameplay options that demonstrate the game's mechanics are on the right track. But although Hitman will likely become a solid addition to its parent series eventually, it’s hard to recommend it at this stage.
For all the time-travel hocus pocus Remedy dropped into Quantum Break, the one superpower missing is the ability to get your time back.
1979 Revolution: Black Friday is a groundbreaking game, not in terms of gameplay, but in its depiction of real historical events in an accurate, thoughtful manner, and its exploration of a genre rarely touched by video games.
The core activity is a repetitive fetch quest, and narratively it has no satisfying conclusion or even any build-up. It's easy to get lost in Adrift's space environment, but in the end, Adrift is just as lost as you are.
FromSoftware's latest is typical of game sequels in that it's a refinement, not a revolution. This series' lore is so dense and so vague in its connections that there really isn't a "best" place to jump in, so newcomers might as well do so with this, the most polished game in the series. Veterans will relish the fresh challenges and twists, while reactions to the references to Soulses past will vary per player. But for all players, make no mistake: this is Dark Souls. What you get out of it is proportional to what you put in.
If only The Division's visual design was so memorable. While its 1:1 recreation of a slice of Manhattan is achieved with stunning accuracy, its devotion to realism is also one of the game's biggest problems. For one thing, it dictates that the overworld, while enormous and detailed, is samey and uninteresting. But worse, it makes the gamier elements stick out awkwardly, and actually renders some of them boring.
EA/Coldwood's charming adventure comes apart in the gameplay.
If you liked XCOM: Enemy Unknown, you'll be right at home in XCOM 2. Frankly, Firaxis doesn't seem interested in bringing non-fans along for the ride - the lack of console support and the in-the-deep-end story and gameplay confirm that.