Ultimately the success of Samurai Warriors 4 Empires rests on how well it has been able to merge action and strategy together, and while I feel this veers strongly on the side of action, compared with even the Dynasty Warriors Empires series, there’s still enough thinky stuff to do between battles to add nuance to the overall experience. For that, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires has become my preferred Samurai Warriors game, though I would strongly recommend people play one of the previous Samurai Warriors games to get a proper feel for the characters and setting before digging into the more abstract and cerebral experience on offer here.
Strong narratives don't age, and this one has a strong story to tell. Throw in quality port work that gives the art direction the detail and clarity that it really deserves, and Twilight Princess is a classic that has scrubbed up well enough to be a worthy Wii U title in its own right.
I’ve long been a fan of how clean and slick Nnooo’s art direction is, and this game is no different. Blast ‘Em Bunnies might be simple – no, it is simple – but it’s simple in the right way, and that’s something to be impressed with all by itself.
Screencheat is my favourite local multiplayer game on the PlayStation 4. It's a nice, small, download that I'm going to leave sitting on the harddrive for whenever I have friends over, and while that might not happen on a weekly basis (I like my space, okay), each and every time I pull the game out, it's going to more than validate its worth. Because it is simple, silly, fun, and it's a great start for Aussie games on the PlayStation 4 this year. [OpenCritic note: Matt Sainsbury separately reviewed the PC (3.5 stars) and PS4 (4 stars) versions. Their scores have been averaged.]
Heavy Rain is very much the kind of game I like to play; it's smart, interesting, different and highly focused. Cage might be a one-of-a-kind game director and thinker, and I do wish more developers paid attention to how he approaches his storytelling.
Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae has all the makings of a game that I would love to play, but it's only halfway there.
I have a real soft spot for The Witch and the Hundred Knight. I find that the complexity of its systems add a nice layer of strategy that most "Diablo clones" could benefit from. More than that, though, I find the narrative to be delightful in the way it revels in the Grimm Brothers' sense of villainy, and then sticks you right in the middle of it and left to figure out for yourself if you're comfortable helping a monster that completely evil.
Minor issues aside, I do think this is the best Far Cry game. Far Cry 4 did a lot to refine the formula and make it as enjoyable as possible. Stripping back the game to the fundamentals, limiting the resources and focusing the action does wonders for a franchise that was in danger of becoming too sprawling.
Street Fighter V looks and plays exactly like how you'd expect any instalment in the series to, but there's something unfinished about it, something that makes you feel the series has taken a giant step backward.
I have a lot of time for Deadly Tower of Monsters. More than Diablo, more than Fat Princess Adventures; this is the grindy, top-down action 'crawler that I am going to come back to over, and over again.
I really enjoyed this game. It's not quite on the level of the fighters I really love (that being Dead or Alive and BlazBlue), but I can see myself coming back to this one fairly often. And, unusually for me, I'll be coming because I enjoy the combat system; usually I'm looking for character, personality and even narrative in my fighting games. This one doesn't do any of that particularly well, but that combat is just too satisfying to resist.
ADIOS is a game I think many people can enjoy. I also think each individual will get something different out of it, as long as they stick with it and get a feel for the inner workings of the game. The fact that it exudes loneliness as a central theme is a unique enough idea that games like ADIOS are very few and far between. It certainly caught me off guard, and I tip my hat to Cosmic Picnic for reminding me of the important things in life.
Unravel is truly something special, and full credit to both the developer, and indeed EA, for stepping back from the blockbuster nonsense to back a more personal, artful project. It's a beautiful game about human emotions and memories, and while I hope there's never a sequel, I cannot wait to see what this team comes up with next.
It's different, it's creative, it's stark, and I loved every second of it. I do hope that the trilogy has been enough of a commercial success that Climax can be recruited to build more of these, because I do love the modus operandi; taking more "obscure" periods of history and then using them to frame Assassin's Creed games that simply wouldn't happen otherwise is something that I think is very worthy.
XCOM has once again proven that it is a powerhouse when it comes to tactical gameplay. Every decision counts and with permadeath is makes every decision even more powerful. Luckily game saving is encouraged, and if you forget to save manually there are copious auto-saves to fall back on. I do question if a sequel was warranted over something that brings freshness into the series, as if you enjoyed Enemy Unknown there's not all that much different added to XCOM 2. But then more of a good thing is good when it's this good, right?
It's not an earth-shattering work of art. Its narrative relies heavily on players having grown up with roguelikes and pixel graphics in their RPGs. Its systems are complex but rewarding. What Siralim is, ultimately, is a great deal of fun for a very select audience, and it gets there because it straddles the line between being something authentic, and something that understands that some design elements are best left in the past.
Even with the permadeath, the normal campaign can be finished easily in a matter of hours. This isn't a game with an incredible amount of content, and it's possible to see everything there is on offer after a couple of runs. The replay value is a little low since the base game is quite simple once you've figured out what the hieroglyphs mean, and there's just not enough depth to warrant repeated playthroughs. That being said though, Hieroglyphika is a fun distraction with lots of original ideas which brings the sense of wonder back into roguelikes.
I did enjoy this experience it was a change of pace from all the violent games that come out these days. The story could have used a little more work and if it did I feel it would almost have been better suited as an animated film, as the core themes that the game explores are a little inhibited by the need to throw "gameplay" in to the mix as well.
The Coma: Cutting Class is an excellent example of using the horror genre to reflect on real-world fears and social issues. The environment and the art style work well together to create a tense experience, yet this tension however is lost with a somewhat simple approach to game design, a shame to what is a quality horror game.
In most other regards Arslan is a fairly standard Warriors experience, but between the strong, epic, narrative, gorgeous setting, and the varied bunch of really enjoyable characters there is more than enough here to justify its place among Koei Tecmo's growing stable of licensed work. Even those who haven never had anything to do with Arslan before can get right into this one, and given that the game was developed as part of a cross-media initiative to try and develop the franchise globally, I can't see this being anything but a resounding success in that goal.