Keri Honea's Reviews
Mortal Kombat X does a lot brilliantly, and the game has brought back in more non-fighting fans to the fold and forsaken MK fans than really any other MK game or fighting game before it. It's really too bad that a few poorly-put together ideas keep it from being a flawless victory.
Broken Age sadly suffers from a case of too much. The watercolor art style, humorous dialogue, and clever writing are unfortunately buried under too much backtracking, too much obscurity, and therefore, too much frustration. On the one hand, you can't help but get that Portal-esque "A-ha!" feeling when you solve a puzzle. But when you stumble upon a solution after frantically combining objects at random and presenting them to every NPC under the sun that makes you tap into your inner John McEnroe and say, "You cannot be serious," you can literally feel the joy sucking out of the room. I want to see a return of the point-and-click genre, but not at the expense of my sanity.
Simply put, this first Chronicle alone is must-buy for any fan of the Assassin's Creed series.
If you're looking for a Wolfenstein experience that has stark differences from The New Order, you're going to be heavily disappointed. But just look at the cover art that both Bethesda and Machine Games have designed for The Old Blood and you'll see exactly what you should expect.
DONTNOD has not announced when the fourth episode, Dark Room, will release, but I cannot wait to see what happens next with Max, her powers, Blackwell Academy, Chloe, and the mystery of Rachel Amber. This is one of the most fascinating mysteries I have experienced in years. It may have been a little slow with episode 2, but it's picked up full steam now and there is nowhere for it to go but barreling ahead. Those who like mysteries and point-and-click adventures do not want to miss what Life is Strange has to offer.
As it is good and not great, Adventures of Pip is good enough to play through once, but most likely never again.
LEGO Jurassic World is a fun little romp through the Jurassic movies, but it's not as deep as most other LEGO games and it has more bugs than the last several LEGO games combined. It's a must-buy for fans of TT's series, but it's not high on the recommend list for anyone new to the LEGO games. Although, it is a lot of fun to run through the parks as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Stomping on cars and watching the NPCs flee never gets old.
This new King's Quest may not be developed by the original husband-wife team from Sierra Games, but it's more than obvious that the developers are King's Quest fans who wanted to bring back some of that magic. Their first episode was very successful at doing just that, for both old fans and to bring in new ones. Any fan of point-and-click adventure games will enjoy diving into Daventry, and any King's Quest fan will love jumping back into Graham's realm.
Now we wait for several more weeks before learning all of the truth behind the horrific things happening at Blackwell and Arcadia Bay, and hopefully how and why Max was given this power. Even though DONTNOD made something a bit predictable, they have left plenty of roads open to continue their usual unpredictability. I can honestly say at this point, I have no idea what will happen next. So many unanswered questions, and I have my expectations high that all will be revealed without any disappointment.
The Ultimate Edition, even with its facelift, is pretty much more of the same, and will only appeal to series fans and possibly rein in newcomers just in time for a Gears of War 4 release. For a Gears of War fan, however, this remastered edition is a must-own for your library. Marcus has never looked more intense, the Kryll have never looked more terrifying, and the Locust have never looked more disgusting. The Ultimate Edition truly is the ultimate Gears of War experience.
Blues and Bullets has a very rough start, but it has enough shining moments to keep players intrigued to see where Ness's story will roll. If the developers work more with the gameplay, fine tune the controls and add some difficulty with the sleuthing sequences, and continue to ramp up the story, then they will have an indie sleeper hit, even with the low quality character models. They also need to prove that the choices players make for Ness mean anything, because it's hard to say how any of it at this point matters at all. Even as it is now, however, it's well worth the $5 an episode.
Mad Max is a fun ride, even without a deep, rich storyline. It won't change the minds of anyone who doesn't love these kinds of open world games, but for those who do, Mad Max will hit that addictive spot to clear all of the map blips.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a splendid narrative experience that is not to be missed. If this one is sitting in your Steam library, your wishlist, or your mental wishlist, just pull the trigger and find out what happened to Ethan Carter. It's a story unlike any other.
Even if the controls on the PS4 weren't so terrible and I could have finished the game on the console, the story and puzzles in the rest of The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 still would have brought the game down. If I was reviewing the game on the PC, I would give it a higher rating because the game was playable. It's an absolute shame that I had to finish the game on the PC due to the control difficulties, but maybe it was trying to do me a favor and save me from the rest of it.
LEGO Dimensions is a great first start for TT Games with the toys-to-life genre, but since their game is the most expensive of all of them, it makes it a hard recommendation, especially for parents. Once they find a nice balance between promoting other packs and their paywall to unlock other areas, it will be the best of the toys-to-life game out there.
It's not devastating, just disappointing for what it appeared to be and what it could have been.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate does incredibly well most of what they set out to do, and Ubisoft has redeemed the series quite a bit with this new offering. It's sadly still not as polished as it could be, which is most likely due to the annualization of this series. Regardless, Syndicate will provide several dozens of hours of entertainment for even mild AC fans, as, to be honest, it never gets old stabbing random Blighters in the street when they bite their thumbs at me.
Those who have played the series from the beginning most likely saw that there was only one evitable ending to the whole thing, but it doesn't make the big reveal any less heartbreaking. DONTNOD may be a newcomer to the choice-based adventure genre, but they have made their presence known and they can give any other adventure game a run for its money. Polarized has solidified Life is Strange's spot as a frontrunner for best adventure game of the year.
Everything looks and plays spectacularly in Halo 5: Guardians, and it was so close to having the complete package for a first-person shooter. Unfortunately, the hype oversold and underdelivered when it came to story, and the non-shooting missions should have been scrapped until the team figured out a more creative way to entice player exploration in the middle of a shooter. All that said though, Halo 5: Guardians is an absolute blast to play, which, when all is said and done, is the most important facet of any video game.
The nit-picking aside, Rise of the Tomb Raider is a front runner for action game of the year, if not Game of the Year for 2015. The traversing in a platform adventure is the most fluid and seamless I've ever experienced, and the story gave me chills the more I unraveled, especially with the collectibles I found. It's a downright shame that Rise of the Tomb Raider releases the same day as Fallout 4, as this gem will unfortunately get mostly lost in the shuffle.