Even the zombie material, which is still painfully boring and overdone conceptually, manages a few surprises.
Invisible, Inc. has the right tools and the right talent, but it's not quite the flawless caper it almost was.
Kerbal Space Program is a monumental, exhilarating, and frustrating gaming achievement worthy of admiration.
This 8-bit throwback perfectly emulates the era, for better and for worse.
The part of the game that matters is an impressive romp for anyone whose inner adolescent is looking for a cheap, satisfying, bloody thrill.
The 'Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron Pinball' table does its job as far as tying back to its source material, and its got just enough going on to be a passable, welcome addition to the collection, but one can't deny there's more that could've been done to make this one a hell of a lot more super. Still, the fact that every new commercial for the film the happens I end up wanting to play this means the game has done its job well
Nostalgia is its own genre of film, TV, and music these days, which isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, with enough creativity employed. 'Shovel Knight', however, is a better kind of nostalgia, the kind that proves there's still plenty of life in a concept rather than trying to remind an audience the concept was good once. 'Shovel Knight' isn't an attempt to remind us of better games; it IS the better game.
This isn't just a nostalgic copy of the games of the medium's youth, but also a fever dream of what the 8-bit era was capable of.
In I Am Bread, both the joke and the game carry on far too long.
Dark Souls II comes to current gen with a vengeance.
'Paperbound' feels like a game on the wrong platform. As a Vita game, or a mobile title, something to play on the go when you have a half hour to kill waiting for something bigger to download, 'Paperbound's simplicity would be a boon, a perfect slice of hectic mayhem to pull out of your pocket on a whim. As a PS4 game, though, it just feels thin, a delicious bite that makes one pine for the satisfying main course that doesn't come. Still, it's hard to be immune to its charms in the moment. There's nothing to dislike about 'Paperbound' aside from the fact that there's not more of it. That's the best kind of problem to have.
The final nail in 'Slender: The Arrival's coffin is the simple fact that it's been uprezzed and cleaned up for the wrong gen, a generation where Hideo Kojima/Guillermo Del Toro's 'P.T.' has many of the same ideas, executed with maturity and expert dread, where progression isn't dependent on escaping the horror, but being forced to walk up and let it terrorize you face to face, and most importantly, it's an experience that's 100% free. 'Slender' offering something a similarly unique experience, but undoubtedly lesser, predicated on the success of successive, telegraphed jump scares and repetitive exploration can't hope to compete, and couldn't even if 'P.T.' wasn't in the picture. The result is a game that feels, pun unintended, thin on content.
As a whole, 'Battlefield Hardline' manages to reinvent 'Battlefield' as a goofy cop drama, and as a successful one, though its ambitions and advancements are few. It does, however, succeed in freshness, a much-needed course correct away from its grim wartime roots into something far more likely to warrant repeat binge viewing ahead of the next season--er, game, even beyond its ever-lively multiplayer.
A mix of Musou, strategy, and pure insanity, Bladestorm ends up missing the mark with all three.
Deathtrap is a solid genre mash-up that goes on the (tower) defensive.
A cynic would be justified in thinking this edition still has its work cut out for it trying to bring back DmC fans who held the reboot in contempt.
Shelter returns, bigger than before, yet somehow lesser for it.
The game is our best example that we can play a movie. The fact that the movie in question is a leaden, unimaginative waste is almost incidental.
All the energy that should've gone into giving players a good reason to want to survive in Harran went toward an uninvolving multiplayer.
Citizens of Earth wins hearts and minds, but still loses in a few key states.