There's not a shred of innovation or much of a concerted effort to evoke terror in players throughout the entirety of Daylight.
The game's 30-character roster has its pros (all hail Metal Mario and Pink Gold Peach) and its cons (too many babies, and the Koopalings aren't all that special either), but there's enough dissimilarity in weight classes that there's always a suitable option in any versus situation.
No matter what the type of scenery, the objectives are widely the same: lay waste to enemy officers, locate the boss character, defeat them in earnest.
In a year that the Wii U gifted us with Mario Kart 8 and Bayonetta 2, games that displayed what the system could do graphically, Rise of Lyric's graphics are simply unacceptable in 2014.
The process of earning respect is a key aspect of the game; establishing your team with only the most loyal companions is a tricky task among many other demanding objectives.
The game's progression, while unhurried in nature, stays true to the orthodox route of the conventional JRPG, keeping things engaging primarily by way of its kinetic, multi-faceted battle system.
Gone are the days of dashing in for a quick pummel, retreating, defending, counterattacking, and cycling said routine ad nauseam.
Even though much of Hyperdevotion Noire is indeed unoriginal, with its countless caricatures of trendy gaming icons, there's enough novelty and variety in its strategic battles to keep players, especially fans of the mainline series, interested for quite a while.
Xenoverse isn't a particularly great fighting game, or even an above-average one, but it's clearly the best entry in this long-running franchise in quite a while.
It wouldn't be a Battlefield game without a host of multiplayer scenarios, and Hardline is definitely no slouch in that department.