Aaron Riccio's Reviews
The game is beautiful to look at from a distance but disappointing up close and ultimately functionless.
It benefits nobody to see heroes so emotionally minimized in their single-minded pursuit of a powerful artifact.
Thimbleweed Park ends up feeling like a flashback to the good old days of LucasArts adventure games.
The game isn’t interested in coasting on nostalgia, but in establishing brand-new memories for the next generation.
Instead of boldly striking out into the unknown, Mass Effect: Andromeda merely imposes its most predictable habits onto it.
The overwhelming size of Wildlands‘s open world is often used to disguise the game’s lack of real freedom within it.
Tales of Berseria, the 17th entry in the Tales series, is always pushing through to bigger and better things.
Much like an actual modern-day factory, Splash Team's Splasher abides by an assembly-line philosophy.
This port of the 2015 Wii U title Yoshi's Wooly World doesn't try to break the mold, though it's certainly cuter.
Although Rise & Shine may sometimes look like a more cartoonish version of Contra, it doesn't play like one...and the majority of battles ultimately play out as fast-paced puzzles that test how well a player can prioritize targets.
Gravity Rush 2 should be a sleek and swift experience, but it feels like a local train stuck in traffic.
Figuring out The Last Guardian's puzzles—like the one in which a broken wheelbarrow must be used as a makeshift catapult—isn't nearly as difficult as getting Trico to cooperate.
Watch Dogs 2 not only represents a massive upgrade over its predecessor, but over similar open-world titles.
The game’s best moments use the story’s futuristic and space-bound setting to find new dramatic opportunities.
There's an odd dissonance found in the five social games that make up Jackbox Party Pack 3. With each new Jackbox Party Pack release, the included games increase in production value, but diminish when it comes to actual substance. Scripting is at an all-time low for the franchise, replaced by the unevenness of a book of Mad Libs.
The player has full control of each character, but not their fate, and so the senselessness of war always sticks out.
Exist Archive is bound to end up as a footnote, perpetually overshadowed by the titles that it so earnestly emulates.
In a world of all-too similar platformers, Hue is a literal palette cleanser.... We may never be sure that we're seeing the same blue, but it's hard to imagine anyone not being entertained by Hue.
Checkpoints are frequent and the Game Over message keeps comically cycling between nostalgic pleas to “Insert Coin” or puns based on your method of death (“Kentucky Fried Pilot” if blown up, “What the Hell?” upon burning alive). These grim jokes serve to reassure players that Rive knows exactly what it's emulating (“Cool, a rising lava level” and “That AI activated my auto-scroller somehow!”), and that each scenario, no matter how ludicrous, is beatable.
Players are offered no real choices within this tersely edited walking simulator, and yet the contemplative nature of the game keeps things feeling unusually satisfying. That’s because you’re given the imaginative freedom to engage with what they’re seeing, more so than in Dear Esther, such that the game feels like an interactive studio tour through a detective’s dreams.