Chandler Wood's Reviews
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is truly an incredible masterpiece. The writing and building of the world alone should be lauded as some of the best in video games. Stories weave in and out of one another surprisingly. The consequences of every decision are far reaching and unpredictable while also making complete sense once they happen. The world is organic, dangerous, and fun to explore. There is a true sense of reward and accomplishment. While minor design choices keep it from being absolutely perfect, The Witcher 3 will go down as one of the best games of this generation of consoles.
For a standalone DLC, I am impressed. MachineGames took the best parts of The New Order and gave us the moments leading up to its opening. While The Old Blood could have definitely either turned up the grindhouse factor in part two, or stayed more true to part one, it still had incredibly fun combat and satisfying Nazi killing. By itself, it could feel like it was lacking something, specifically in the character and story department, but Wolfenstein: The Old Blood performs as both a supplemental work for fans of the series and as a vehicle to introduce players to the world and play style of The New Order.
Mortal Kombat X is the biggest and boldest entry in the series, pushing the boundaries on gruesomeness, offering an abundance of content, game modes and unlockables, and altogether bringing the franchise forward into the current generation. MKX succeeds in exploring what originally made it great while continuing to build on the possibilities that the future holds, finding that fine balance point for both long time fans and newcomers alike.
This PlayStation release pretty much completes the rounds for Bastion. Chances are that you own at least one of the platforms it is available on, and it's a game that simply needs to be experienced. It's a game that breaks the traditional rules that we're used to, giving us an experience that is still doing things that most other games are not, even four years after its original release. Depth in simplicity. A basic melding of ingredients. A heart. A soul. These are the elements that make Bastion transcend time, being a relevant and necessary release regardless of the year or platform.
Paperbound is a riot, and a ton of fun to play with a group of people. As easy as it is to quickly hop in and set up matches, and the fairly simple control scheme overall, it's a great party game. Sadly, Paperbound may not reach its full potential for you if you don't have three other people to play with locally. That doesn't mean it's a bad game, it just means that it is meant for four local human players by design. If you are looking for an excellent party game and a way to relive that classic, long-lost experience of simple, crazy gaming with other people in the same room, Paperbound is a chaotic festival of unpredictable madness that really deserves a home on your PS4.
If you want to look at Atlas Mugged by itself, it's nothing special by any means. But let's take a look at it for what it is. This is the second episode. It is a follow up to getting to know a bunch of great characters and the crazy situation they have just landed themselves in. Atlas Mugged is about coping with the events that happened in the first episode and setting up the things to come, all with hilariously written dialogue and excellent voice acting to match it. It is an awesome piece to a whole story that is shaping up to be one of, if not the best, Telltale Games series. Let's just hope it's not the end of June before we get to see the next part.
Altogether Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is everything the first game was, with improvements that change and evolve the game enough to feel like its own bloodthirsty monster. Playing as a variety of characters keeps your skills sharp and there are a ton of levels to master and enjoy. If extreme violence isn't your cup of tea, then you're probably not even still reading this, but if you enjoy a dark, yet neon story full of crime and murder, along with a rage inducing challenge, then Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is a bloody good time.
While it doesn't do anything vastly new for the genre and treads the ground of repetition that puzzle games like to, Shiftlings is a solid puzzle based platformer for both solo and co-op players. Combine that with the detailed and colorful visual aesthetic, and the fairly unique main mechanic of swapping gas between the conjoined janitors, and you'll find a game that is interesting to play and fun to look at, at least until you find it getting tedious. Just don't let yourself get too carried away with the contrived plot point to get gas into their suits, or how the physics of an alien fart would actually work.
Helldivers brings a fun and intensity to cooperative play that I have not had in a long time. Single players may want to skip this one, but if you have some friends to sit down with, either on the couch or via the PSN, I highly recommend getting your squad ready to defend Super Earth from impending doom. Just watch out for that turret.
The Order: 1886 flaunts its interactive cinematic presentation, and it plays that card well. Despite this, it will continue to incite debate about overall length, being story heavy, and not allowing much freedom for the player. If these are things that bother you, then The Order was not developed for you. The decision will need to be where each player places value in their video games. This is an immersive game for people who want to sit back — or on the edge of their seat — and let themselves become engrossed in the story of a Knight in turmoil fighting against a supernatural force. Give The Order a go yourself, and perhaps you'll find yourself diving back into it as much as I've rewatched Jurassic Park over the last twenty years. It may not be perfect, but The Order: 1886 is an immersive cinematic experience and a damned good ride worth going back to.
Fortunately the missteps in the combat do little to impact my overall enjoyment of the Hand of Fate, and my spats of bad luck did little to deter me from playing further. I was hard pressed not to immediately start up a new session right after I would die, just to see. Just to check what the deck might have in store for me. Some sessions would last less than ten minutes before my health was drained. Some would nearly see the hour mark before a stupid decision sent me cavorting to my death. And sometimes, just sometimes, I would successfully make my way through to the boss and defeat it, each victory feeling like a true triumph and another chapter closed on a tale that I was creating for myself, all with a mysterious man in a mask and a deck of cards. Hand of Fate may not be that game that is shoving the visuals and story down your throat, but Defiant Development is allowing my imagination to be a part of their development team in order to help craft my own tales of failure, success, and luck, and that right there is a fantastic hand to me.
Like watching a classic old movie, Grim Fandango Remastered feels like a hearkening back to the golden days of gaming, when PC adventure games ruled and games didn't have difficulty settings so easy that it seems like the game is playing itself. This is as much a history lesson as it is entertainment, lest we forget the roots of great gaming. Sure, the backgrounds and cutscenes are untouched, but remember the fit everyone threw when they edited the original Star Wars trilogy too much (Han shot first…)? Grim Fandango Remastered has been put together with care as a passion project from Tim Schafer, and is sure to delight both players new to the game and long time players of Grim Fandango and the LucasArts graphic puzzle adventure genre. Perhaps most important to this release will be the potential effects that bringing this game back into the limelight will have on the future development of adventure titles, and the thought of a merging of great classics and new technology really excites me.
If you've already played Saints Row IV, Deep Silver was clever in their release, and are offering a bundle with Gat Out of Hell. Unfortunately, this review isn't for the full combo with Gat, and by itself, Saints Row IV Re-Elected doesn't fully justify its campaigning for another term. If it's your first time in office, however, then this is a great opportunity to jump in and take part in what is a pretty awesome open world super-powered (anti)hero game.
Is it worth it? That's hard to say. For the ultimate Destiny experience, yes, you will need The Dark Below. You may find more of the same content, with some palette swapped enemies and similar bounties to what we traditionally had access to, but the new content allows Destiny to continue to surprise us. I put a ton of time into Destiny, and The Dark Below is just extending that clock even more for me, though I can see how it will bring on a ton of complaints from many players for at least some of its facets. The divide between those that love Destiny and those that hate it is growing with the release of The Dark Below, but I personally can't wait to see how these additions allow the game to continue to evolve and expand until the next expansion release.
Telltale has given us an excellent first chapter in what is gearing up to be one of their best series. While it had its hit and miss moments with the humor, and some of the choices outside of dialogue were less than impressive or nonexistent, I loved getting a different view of Pandora and the Borderlands universe. Putting you in the shoes of people who don't have the mindset of 'shoot-and-loot first, ask questions later' brought an experience that I didn't even know I really wanted on Pandora. I thought that I was content with how Borderlands told its stories, but Telltale proved that there is another side to hearing the tales of the vaults with a superb inaugural episode that barely lets up and ends on a note that left me wanting so much more. Let's just hope they can keep up the pace, humor, and bring more choice to the action for the other 80% of the season.
Far Cry 4 is a good game, but the lack of any real significant improvements or advancements over its predecessor may be enough to turn some people away. The major difference here is the Himalayan setting, which looks absolutely stunning and is a joy to explore using the Far Cry mechanics. The dearth of motivational integrity in the narrative aside, Far Cry 4 is a game that will have players losing hours of their lives as they get lost in Kyrat, either by themselves or with a friend.
With Unity, I felt like I was playing Assassin's Creed 1 and 2 again, with improvements that made sense to the series as opposed to the odd additions that strayed too far from the creed. The entire experience was enrapturing, and the odd skating citizens in crowds were not enough to deter me from thoroughly loving every moment that I spent with Arno. I don't give Assassin's Creed Unity a perfect score lightly, but a return to the core of the series and a strengthening of those central pillars makes Unity shine like the glint of a well polished hidden blade and stay true to the creed.
They say if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and Just Dance is a series that remains the same at its very core simply because it works. It's a fun party game. It's simple and gets you right into the music and playing the game without a complicated mess of menus. It lets you just dance without any other worry. In some respects, that simplicity is a great thing. In others, it almost feels like a blind eye is being turned on some additional features and aspects that could really help to elevate the series. Even simple things like difficulty ratings are left out. Despite these misgivings, Just Dance 2015 does what it aims to do with a flourish in its step, and if the dancing is good, do we really need much else?
Fluster Cluck seemed like it might be fun and have potential as a party game, but I would honestly be more embarrassed to load this up and try to convince people to play it. Some people may be attracted to its simplicity and quick nature, but the frustration will quickly set in as the floaty controls, lackluster design, and poor explanation of the gameplay become apparent. You can buy a lot of things with $9, but Fluster Cluck shouldn't be one of them.
While I loved getting that classic RPG nostalgia, much of the game found certain levels of tedium that quickly drove the experience of Pier Solar from nostalgia to a chore. Whether it was finding the correct path to take, healing after battles, or finding myself fighting the same set of enemies repeatedly, the lacking narrative and characters did little to drive me through the overly tedious moments. Pier Solar HD has a lot of potential, and fans of the classic 16-bit RPG may find a lot to love in a game that abandons a lot of the more modern day conventions that we see in games, but don't be surprised if you find that classic feeling starting to hide behind all of the little problems that litter the playing field.