Playground Games can offer up an iterative experience and rake in the money, because Forza Horizon 5 is in a world of its own. It's wonderful, but it's also sad.
[Far Cry 6] is happy in its groove, delivering a fun and immersive Latin American experience, an open world sandbox you can mess around in, and giving you the tools to do what you want. Better yet, it lets you enjoy all of that with a friend.
But even if EA does get its head out of the pile of gold, it's got troubles on the pitch too. FIFA doesn't feel like football anymore to me. To be fair, it never really was — thanks to pitch size, pace dominance, and all that — but now it just seems to be going away from the sport it claims to represent each year. Maybe a new challenger can shake things up. We badly need it.
Ultimately, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a by-the-numbers 3D action-adventure game. It might look like a modern Zelda game but doesn't play like one. It's largely just a series of arena-based combat routines, stitched together by long stretches of traversal, and cutscenes that are well-designed but feel like a forgotten Hollywood B-movie. Too often, Kena: Bridge of Spirits reminds you of better games you've played and that it's borrowing from — which is not a good sign. There's no harm in learning from others, it's certainly well made, but it's lacking in originality. There's little personality to Kena: Bridge of Spirits, for it's adopting the sheen of others. For a debut title, this is undoubtedly a good effort — but I fear Ember Labs have played it too safe.
It's been a polished experience otherwise, yet again proving that games are better delayed than rushed. Psychonauts 2 has faced a long uphill battle, but its release is proof that some battles are worth the slog.
When it all comes together, Outriders can be good fun. The gunplay felt a little stilted and laboured to me early on, but I've found it to be really satisfying at times, especially when you empty a volcanic-charged cartridge into an enemy's head — and they plop to the ground. And Outriders keeps you on your toes as you're constantly balancing various elements: where to find cover, dodging grenades, when to jump back out, who to target first, how to maximise your powers, and working with your squad. Outriders was built with co-op in mind and that's when it comes alive. It's nice to have a friend to lean on, and that goes for Outriders too, as they can help revive you. In fact, some of our most intense conversations have come out of debating when it's a good time to attempt to revive someone.
The era of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X has arrived, but Cyberpunk 2077 is currently running on those next-gen platforms via backwards compatibility. A true next-gen update isn't due until sometime in 2021. That means CD Projekt Red developed a game for three platforms, and it's running on an acceptable level on just one (PC), provided you have the hardware. That is just plain ridiculous.
For all the deserved flak coming Immortals Fenyx Rising's way for delivering a brazen Zelda clone, the Ubisoft game deserves some praise for executing most of the ideas well — and even adding to them.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is too much of the same thing, and it's not nearly engaging enough.
If the sticker price isn't a concern, in Spider-Man: Miles Morales, you'll find a game that is lacking in originality but thankfully built on a solid core that needs a few tweaks. It's a successful expansion of Insomniac's Spider-Man universe, but it's a new paragraph, rather than a new chapter. Hopefully it will give us the latter next time around. And though it's also good for representation, it still has a ways to go. (Though the game wasn't anything special, Marvel's Avengers gave us a Muslim-American lead in Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel.) Hopefully we can get Spider-Gwen from Insomniac next, or a Spider-Verse game, though given the lack of setup, either seems unlikely. For now, Miles continues his upward trajectory. He walked in 2018, so he could fly in 2020.