Aaron Riccio
- Chrono Trigger
- Virtue's Last Reward
- The Stanley Parable
Aaron Riccio's Reviews
It's the mix of the mundane and the mercurial that makes Life Is Strange worth living.
Tales of Zestiria relies entirely upon its entertaining, colorful cast of characters to distract players from anything even remotely tedious or derivative.
Jackbox Games' Jackbox Party Pack 2 is a disappointingly sophomoric sequel, and in every sense of the word.
Gil Scott-Heron had it wrong, at least when it came to music: The revolution most certainly will be televised.
The Rock Band 4 experience is little more than an expensive new coat of paint.
[I]t's disappointing that Penarium feels so fatigued and repetitious by the third and final act, especially since it's scarcely even a two-hour game.
There are still plenty of thorns, but it manages to address and improve nearly every aspect of the original 1.0 release.
An impressive epic, even if it falls several steps shy of the open-world grandeur realized by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
If Tearaway was a diamond in the rough world of Vita gaming, it's an exceedingly polished masterpiece on the PS4.
It lives up to its title, as players will be glued to it all night, exhilaratingly racing to one of the many potential endings.
As with Dear Esther before it, it offers up an admirable and atmospheric experience that simply isn't all that much fun to play.
Even at only three-to-four hours in length, Submerged feels padded.
Unsurprisingly, the game runs as well on consoles as its predecessors, and its tried-and-true combat is a clean fit for the MMO format.
It lies somewhere between a fully formed game in which wizards learn to chain elements into powerful spells and a low-rent improv show.
It's aesthetically crisp and ninja-smooth, but the game all but vanishes from one's mind even while playing it.
Experience is earned largely through quests, which highlights the emphasis on thoughtful storytelling over mindless bloodshed.
Unless a player's favorite part of chess is waiting for their opponent to take their turn, S.T.E.A.M. might just end up wrinkling their brain.
A result of the lack of tutorials and handholding is that each bit of incremental, hard-earned progress provides an unparalleled adrenaline rush.
The game is as punishing and uncompromising as the continental war that it chronicles, and it will school you.
The class-based rewards, compendium of achievements, and the adrenaline of capturing and killing a trophy monster makes for a compelling game.