Aaron Riccio's Reviews
Despite its title’s declaration of intent, though, Rift Apart isn’t willing to stand on its own. That’s most evident in the game’s Anomaly puzzles, where you must interact with physical representations of all of Clank’s and Kit’s dimensional possibilities. This is predetermination in action. There’s only one acceptable route for you to guide these representations, like lemmings, down, and that’s the one that has them marching in lockstep along the same path that has defined every Ratchet & Clank to date. In the end, Rift Apart is a superficially entertaining but deeply unfulfilling adventure—one that, like the latest Star Wars trilogy, mistakes a shiny new coat of paint as reason enough to exist.
The choices you make throughout The Outer Zone's engrossing cyberpunk therapy adventure may just keep you up at night.
The more you learn about Selene across the game’s gripping campaign, the easier it is to relate to or, at least, agree with her observation that “I deserve to be here.” That line is also more than a little apt, as it perfectly sums up just how simultaneously rewarding and punishing it is to live in the world of Returnal. Each time you make a perfect jump and air-dash to avoid a cluster of bullets, you earn your way forward, and each time you awkwardly fall off a cliff or gawk as an explosive squid flies at you, you earn the right to try it all over again. The terse thrill of all that fragility makes this a timeless adventure well worth returning to.
Poison Control rarely goes beyond the cheap laughs to be had from its story.
It Takes Two uses a smorgasbord of gameplay techniques to set us adrift in the field of couples therapy.
The gameplay throughout isn't freighted with moral urgency, which is disappointing given the game's eco-terrorist themes.
The gameplay blunts the effectiveness of the game's aesthetic, because there's no real danger to exploring the environments here.
You never lose sight of No Straight Roads's thematic intent during its big show-stopping numbers.
The game lacks for Samurai Jack's smooth, stylish animation and deceptively deep characterizations.
Even when Fall Guys is working perfectly as intended, its appeal is limited.
Everything about your quest feels dragged out to mask how little substance there is to Blessing in Disguise.
While a lot of care has gone into refining the game's combat, there's no shortage of things to do outside of battles.
Metaphorically speaking, the developers at Pugstorm have left more than half the carrot buried in the soil.
The game feels like the brainchild of students who were into debate club as much as programming.
While the plot and characters in Desperados III may be familiar, each scenario feels distinct.
The game's attempts to distinguish itself from other first-person shooters ultimately feel superficial.
The scarcity of the game's puzzles is frustrating, because, slight repetition aside, every one of those puzzles is cleverly designed.
It retreads the same ground of the prior games' fetch-quest-driven, backtracking-filled action-adventuring.
The game's campiness doesn't extend to the shark combat, which flounders as a result of it mostly hinging on button-mashing.
It has just enough bells and whistles to suck you into its world, but not enough to compel your immersion.