Jonathan Barnes's Reviews
After filing our initial review of Destiny last year, I said that the experience lacked soul, put the game aside, and felt I wouldn't be coming back. Around the beginning of the summer I needed a game that I could pick up and play for about 30-45 minutes at a time and jumped back in. Before I knew it I was hooked, playing the DLC content, running Strikes, rolling a second (and now third!) character. "The Taken King" and Destiny 2.0 have taken that experience to a new height that is worth diving back into for old players and warrants the price of investment (into the new Legendary Edition) for new players. Bungie has put in so many small, new tweaks and wrinkles that it will take dozens of hours before you'll see and do everything. Destiny is not perfect and is still a grind that is best experienced with friends, but the addition of new and repackaged content fleshes out the experience to a point where it becomes an easy recommendation for shooter fans.
Simply put, Dishonored 2 is a must play for stealth fans and an easy recommendation for most gamers.
The quality and quantity of the content in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are beyond compare and without peer. It is now the gold standard to which all other RPGs will be held. With hundreds of hours of rich, detailed story, a plethora of side quests, incredible aesthetic design, deep combat systems, and unprecedented sense of place and character, it checks off all of the boxes for excellence in the genre. Those plaudits come at a price, though, as the game can be a technical grab bag of minor (and major) bugs and glitches. While there is little doubt that CD Projekt RED will be giving the game consistent patch and DLC support to smooth out the majority of these marks, you can only buff out the dents in the horrific control scheme so much. Fortunately, these technical gripes and moments of mechanical frustration are easy to overlook when examining the experience as a whole. This is a game that should not be missed by RPG fans, should be tried by curious gamers, and will be looked back upon as one of the best ever. Consider it a must play and say goodbye to your summer.
Like Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon before it, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood sets a new standard for standalone, downloadable content. At $19.99 (or your regional equivalent), it represents one of the best values in current games. Between the 8-10 hour campaign full of fantastic moments and scenarios, the challenge maps, and the nightmare levels there's a lot to love for the money. While the massive file size (over 37 GB!) may cause some internet connections to cry, it is well worth the space in your Xbox One's hard drive. The New Order was one of the underground hits of 2014, and The Old Blood has taken that torch and ran with it. Get psyched and consider it a must play.