Jed Pressgrove's Reviews
The world design and storytelling often fail to match the high standards set by the game's ambitious ancestors.
What hurts the game the most isn't the lack of follow through on its initial critical gumption, but rather a lack of compelling drama in its later levels.
If only the developer's care could have graced the poorly drawn cutscenes that lack the vitality of those in 1988's Ninja Gaiden. These sequences don't communicate the emotional sincerity needed to fulfill the potential of a story that humanizes its white-man villain while calling attention to the contemporary impact of his racism.
Street Fighter V feels more like an irritatingly incomplete service than a game that cares about its legacy.
You know your beloved action franchise is in a state of mediocrity when it struggles to kinetically and strategically compete with games that it helped give birth to.
The art of a game, however distinctive, matters little if it isn't accompanied by functionality.
Throughout, you may be gripped by the feeling that you've seen all that there is to see in the fighting game genre.
In a nod to the post-credits gimmick of comic book blockbusters, A Bird Story reveals itself as foreplay for Gao's next game. This shameless preview raises the question of why anyone should take the game's human-animal bonding as anything more than a tease. Earlier in the game, the boy and the bird are launched into space for a close-up of the moon, a shoehorned reference to Gao's To the Moon. Despite its well-meaning qualities, A Bird Story doesn't have the maturity or confidence to inspire much more than crying and buying.
There's little of that symbiosis here, as The Evil Within's more serious tone and greater reliance on non-interactive cutscenes leaves the player disengaged from the rollercoaster of action.
Neither the artificial screen glare nor actress Viva Seifert's performance lend credibility to the game's lady-psychopath clichés.
Creators like Chmielarz need an obvious symbol of false hope to sell (not articulate) their trendy nihilism that, if anything, should vanish.
The game fails to satisfy the natural urge to explore a three-dimensional realm of seemingly endless possibilities.
The tiring exposition of the writing and the lack of visual coherence to the storytelling are obvious from the start.
The cluelessness-as-heroism and over-the-top fighting don't fulfill or complement the infectiously positive tone.
It's interested only in presenting a near-pornographic level of human despair in a warped attempt at edifying players.
The sorry "story" segments largely amount to random combinations of the four main characters trading bad jokes, such as running the difference between "who" and "whom" into the ground.
This highly anticipated sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles is one of the most overindulgent games of the year.
Metal Gear Survive aligns itself with too many corporate gaming shenanigans to register as unadulterated fun.
The game comes down to two rival parties blandly lumbering toward each other on largely identical stages.
Right from the start, Mario Tennis Aces, the eighth installment in the Mario Tennis series, feels inadequate.