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.
Murdered: Soul Suspect's story is better than the ways in which you interact with it. Despite several clever gameplay ideas, it may be better suited to being a miniseries. The detective work feels like ticking off items from a list, not creative thinking. Still, it's a fun, novel experience to play as a ghost. Especially when you get to possess a cute cat.
Ubisoft's new IP might be really good someday. But today is not that day.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is the best kind of exploitation: the kind that lures you in with an outrageous premise, but then surprises you by committing to that premise completely, delivering the promised spectacle but telling a great story in the process. It strikes a precarious balance between silliness and sincerity, and for the most part pulls it off. I for one am amazed at how well it works.
The Bastion followup has intriguing characters, great gameplay and a murky story.
Octodad: Dadliest Catch's back half wouldn't be so disappointing if the front wasn't so wacky and enjoyable. The titular octopus has the potential to gain as iconic a status in indie gaming as Meat Boy or Minecraft Steve - he just needs a consistently great game to achieve it.
The Thief name has a significant legacy in the stealth genre, and Thief, confusing title and all, is clearly straining to live up to it, with its inclusion of water arrows, "taffer" references and more. It's even sort of successful. Even with concessions to 2014 game design - the optional Focus vision mode, the linear escape sequences that might as well be quick-time events or cutscenes - the core stealth still works. But the weakness of everything around it made me wish I was playing Dishonored.
Whispering Willows is a super-interesting story, bundled up with a gorgeously-rendered but tiresome adventure game.
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.
I hate and love Dark Souls II, much as I hate and love myself. In presenting such a challenge that I question why or even if I truly love video games, Dark Souls II achieves exactly what it sets out to do. Is it for everyone? No. I'm not even sure if it's for me. It does keep me trying, trying again though, and that's something.
No, The Banner Saga hasn't reached its destination yet, but again: it's all about the journey.
Like the terrific TV miniseries The Staircase that appears to have inspired it, Her Story is less about determining guilt than growing to understand a set of characters. That's more interesting than a guilty or not guilty verdict anyway: a verdict closes the book, while understanding leaves it open for further contemplation. And as a narrative and as a game, Her Story is worthy of much contemplation indeed.
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.
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.
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.
Among the Sleep wants to be a combination of Gone Home and Slender, but doesn't quite reach the emotional and storytelling highs of the former or the bowel-rending scares of the latter. Krillbite have done some fine design work, though, and the core idea is new and unique enough to give the promise of greatness to come from the new studio.
Jazzpunk ends with an unconventional boss fight culminating in an excellent subversion of boss-battle tropes. If the whole game were as smart as the final confrontation, it'd be a much easier recommendation. As it stands, I still don't know whether its worst jokes are intentionally bad or not.
Titanfall makes big AAA shooters fun again.
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.
Continue?9876543210 asks big questions, whether direct or hinted. It doesn't provide answers, but perhaps that's the point. You see what you want to see.