Danielle Riendeau
At only a couple of hours,The Park doesn't linger or overstay its welcome. It makes smart use of established horror tricks and tropes, and gave me a character that I immediately liked and cared about, even though I recognized I'd been on this ride before.
After a few hours with Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, I know I'll be returning upon its release ... It's a clever twist on the classic formula, with an inspired use of the Wii U hardware, and a spooky, pitch-perfect Halloween game in its own right.
Valiant Hearts is an effective, playable history lesson
It's an earnest look at life under tough economic pressure, at love when things don't go according to plan and at a creative career during its shittiest lows. It has a lot to say, and importantly, it speaks from the heart.
Murdered: Soul Suspect is awash in tropes, but somehow, that's part of the charm. It's a pulpy detective tale remixed as a classic ghost story, and it works as a sort of playable B-movie.
Transistor's grace and beauty go far below skin deep
Full Bore is deeper and smarter than its simple looks belie
NES Remix 2 makes decades-old games feel fresh and new
Kirby: Triple Deluxe is smarter than it looks
Ultimately, Moebius' technical glitches and visual blemishes mean nothing. In a stronger game, with good writing and consistent puzzle design, they'd be small distractions. But Moebius' ugliness goes right to its core, with a misogynistic tone, awful main character and poor storytelling.
Lego the Hobbit complements both franchises
Kinect Sports Rivals is too loose and inconsistent
Escape Goat 2 is pure brain candy
Yoshi's New Island earns its place in a classic series
Developer Bloober Team has promised to address some of the issues with the game, but as it stands, Basement Crawl is a trainwreck.
Tropical Freeze adds intelligently to the formula, with new characters that imbue subtle nuance to the gameplay, a better-tuned challenge level and an increased emphasis on replay value. These features make Tropical Freeze consistently worth coming back to, and mark it as a high point for the series.
Bravely Default is a masterful blend of old and new
You could play literally any other competent third person shooter from this or the last generation, and have a comparable — and very likely better — experience.
Mario Party: Island Tour is too random for its own good.
NES Remix is intelligent, well-designed Nintendo nostalgia