Akhil Arora
Its insistence at not providing answers and straying away from the safety of regular rewards can be off-putting. The Witness wants to be more than a game filled with puzzles, but Blow's singular vision lets it down.
Plainly put, ACC Russia is just not enjoyable on the whole.
Lego Marvel's Avengers is likely to impress no one except diehard Marvel fans, ones that have adorned their walls with posters of Captain America and wear Iron Man costumes for Halloween. And if all you're looking for is a bit of Lego-infused action, there are unmistakeably half a dozen better entries to choose from; the game's own predecessor - 2013's Lego Marvel Super Heroes - one of the more entertaining options.
With the right weapon, there's a sense of dominance the game awards you with, and as you decimate your opponents, it feels rightly satisfying. By striking the proper note between challenging and fun, Good Robot manages to craft a game that is rewarding in its achievements.
For what it's worth, the AI is designed intelligently and adapts quite well. It is good at identifying your weaknesses and responding with a force that stresses on those points. At the same time, it never makes you feel that you couldn't have averted the disaster and plugged in the holes, which is proof of a well-programmed difficulty curve. Outside of its lacklustre campaign, Ashes of the Singularity has the framework for thoroughly engaging matchups but the final product fails to land a convincing argument.
[T]he UEFA Euro 2016 expansion for PES 2016 brings very little to a seven-month-old game, and that's unacceptable. But hey, at least it's free.
Where the previous Total War instalments have tried their best to faithfully recreate 15th century Japan or 200 BCE Rome, Warhammer's setting is a love letter to the devotees who painstakingly create miniature figures, infused into a game that combines high strategy and micro-management.
Avoid it all together, if we're being honest. If you do want some delicate bike physics action, you're much better off with the previous major entry: Trials Fusion.
The largely solitary experience of No Man's Sky is monotonous, easily frustrating and loses its charm way too early. For a game with the promise of all the wonders of the universe, it delivers so little.
Unsolvable moments are far too common with Obduction, and hence it’s best that whenever the game makes you want to bang your head against the wall, put it aside for the day. If there’s one trap the game falls in, it’s the puzzle maker’s most obvious fallacy. The logic, while apparent to the creator, can be quite opaque to the player.
Owing to the shift in development course, Champions of Anteria comes off as a confused title. It’s got its fingers in two completely different pies, and it can’t pull off even one of them properly. Its cookie-cutter approach to battles, along with the highly constrained city building elements, make it a rather forgettable experience.
Much of what the game shows or talks about has been discussed elsewhere in the past. That too in a better fashion, to be completely honest. Nevertheless, it's present here in a well-packaged puzzle entry that is by no means revolutionary, but still manages to do enough to not come across as a poor rehash. Helped by terrific voice acting and accompanied by a tense soundtrack, The Turing Test is an admirable effort.
Firaxis has done a good job making its long-running franchise leaner than before, while introducing new things (such as Districts, Eureka and Inspiration) that make Civilization VI more straight-forward, in a bid to appeal to a broader audience.
If what you want is to plonk down a bunch of rides, be creative with your layouts and create a happy mini-universe for guests and yourself (you can go on the rides too, in first-person view), which brings out and caters to your imagineering side, then Planet Coaster is the game for you.
For Honor is a truly engaging experience when you're out on the battlefield, and playing mind-games with your opponents. It goes beyond its contemporaries by adding depth to combat in a way that feels true to reality. But all of its niceties threaten to be overshadowed by the poor taste of the non-playable elements, which seem to be becoming a bit of norm with top-tier video games.
Overall though, the ex-LucasArts game veterans have created an appealing, and effective love letter to the movement they started back in the day. If you loved growing up with those titles, your decision has most likely already been made. For everyone else, Thimbleweed Park's darkly humorous and self-referential approach, in combination with its oddball bunch of characters – everyone will have a different favourite – makes it an adventure well-worth pointing your cursor at.
For what it's worth, 'Tangled Up in Blue' does do a good job with its emotional beats, and it's going to be interesting to see where it leads.
Although there are pieces of a good arcade basketball game here, it lacks polish, and seems to have been rushed out the door. Playgrounds is inherently fun because it lets you play out outrageous dunks, but it just doesn't do enough to stand up to the greats of its genre, let alone push the bar in any way.
Ultimately, it makes for a new Dirt chapter that doesn't share the ethos of its numbered predecessors, and it doesn't feel right for the game to be called Dirt 4. That's not to say the game isn't good; fans of Dirt Rally, Project Cars, and other simulation titles will find enough to enjoy here. But if you're getting into Dirt 4 to relive the joys of the earlier hits, this is the wrong game.
Ultimately, Phantom Trigger lacks any new ideas out of its own, and fails to be more than a passing imitation of the classics that spawned this genre, or be visually appealing like its contemporaries.