Andrew Todd's Reviews
Valiant Hearts is a rarity: a game from a massive AAA publisher that plays out a personal and intimate story in a largely untapped historical setting. More of that, Ubisoft.
By pulling off an unforgiving juggling act of resource-management and survival, it nails the atmosphere of despair it aims for. But there's a point where the statement has been made and players need something more - and unlike Sgt. Burden and his crew, the player can simply walk away from Gods Will Be Watching.
It's all too rare that we get games like this, where the mysteries are genuinely intriguing and can be played at one's own pace. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is weird and macabre in delicious and often surprising ways. Its tales of madness intensify an already-oppressive atmosphere of decay, telling a compelling story of a town gone mad and a kid trying to make sense of it all. It's just that those stories are so well-hidden behind invisible game mechanics that players themselves may go mad in the process.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments is a member of an unsung breed of games: the kind that rewards critical thinking and judgement over twitchy reflexes, strategy, or putting the right pegs in the right holes.
By the time I reached the end of my sojourn on Sevastopol, I'd been beaten, bruised, shot, electrocuted, bitten, and burned. I'd gone into the heart of the alien nest and into the icy black vacuum of space. I'd jumped in terror at sounds coming from all sides, and forced myself to continue when all hope was lost. But I fought through it all, dammit, and came out on the other side a changed woman.
Activision injects some much-needed fun into their cash cow's bones, but its brain is still paranoid and its heart still cold.
Whether Far Cry 4 is worth it to you depends on whether you've played Far Cry 3 and are keen for more; or failing that, whether the changed-up setting and handful of new gameplay mechanics make it worth another suckle from that Far Cry teat.
I'd never heard of the Iñupiat people before this year, and I'm still not an expert, but through playing Never Alone, I've gained quite the appreciation for them. Playing and interacting with this story taught me about their culture better than any Wikipedia page could. It's a fascinating example of games as learning tools and cultural documents. But equally as importantly, it's a delightful, painterly, moving gameplay experience unlike any other.
The latest Telltale tale is funny, ambitious and better than the games upon which it's based.
BioWare outdo themselves with their most dauntingly enormous RPG yet.
[W]hile Telltale's Game of Thrones gets all the surface details right, it's the subtler elements under the surface - the narrative and thematic conventions - that make it a terrific adaptation of and expansion to an already-terrific story.
By cobbling together cliches, Dontnod have somehow created an earnest supernatural teen drama with clunky-ass dialogue but a real sense of love behind it. I actually like the weird distance between the game and reality, likely also due to the writers' disconnect from their subject material. The cliches are played with such heart that I can't get mad. After hitting the episode's Magnolia-esque ending, I'm genuinely excited to see where the story goes from here.
Aside from occasional distracting cameos by TV show characters, it's a self-sufficient tale that sits comfortably alongside the canon story, maintaining all the defining characteristics from the source material, for good or ill. Luckily, it's mostly good
Gravity Ghost is a prime demonstration of gameplay metaphor used for emotional effect, where everything has dual purposes and interconnects in clever ways. The story presentation may be obtuse, but that seems to be the point - it's about someone who's died trying to make sense of and fix what they've left behind. The result is a game full of understated melancholy and beauty.
In the first game, there was a sense of progress and achievement, and of variety in gameplay. Now, we're faced with repetitive rabbit-hunting and the bane of all open-world games, meaningless collectibles.
Valley of the Yetis is a decent piece of DLC for Far Cry 4, but it's not the Bigfoot game I've been waiting for.
It's more intriguing as a game mechanic than an actual game, and scarier and more atmospheric in the shadows than the light.
Bloodborne rewards deep play and deep thought. It's not for everyone, and it's definitely more accessible if you've played another Souls game first, but that doesn't mean newcomers can't pick it up.
Convoy is a great idea executed with mixed success. Visually and aurally, it's pretty gorgeous, but the gameplay feels too unpolished and simplistic to do justice to its scenarios.
Whispering Willows is a super-interesting story, bundled up with a gorgeously-rendered but tiresome adventure game.