John Cal McCormick's Reviews
With stellar writing, challenging combat, a compelling central quest, and dozens of worthwhile side activities, Divinity: Original Sin II is one of the finest role-playing games available on PlayStation 4. There's the occasional small issue and some scant technical hiccups – particularly when playing online – but these are minor quibbles. This is a dense, engrossing adventure, packed to the hilt with stories worth hearing, conflicts you'll want to resolve, and secret treasures just begging to be discovered.
The Banner Saga 3 is a fantastic tactical role-playing game that confidently concludes the overarching storyline of the series in a manner entirely befitting with what has come before. Little has changed on the combat front - although this game does perhaps feel a mite easier than first two Banner Saga titles - but it's the storytelling where the release truly excels. The stakes are high, and after two and a half games spent getting to know dozens of wildly different characters, watching their fates unfold during the superb finale can be both exhilarating and soul-destroying.
The Lost Child isn't a game bereft of merit, and we're sure that there's a number of people who'll enjoy the visual novel slash first person dungeon crawler approach taken here. But it's certainly a game with limited appeal - even among the role playing game demographic - thanks to the lifeless battles and cumbrous dungeon design. It's a game that pays more than a passing nod to numerous other RPGs - Pokemon, Persona, and other Shin Megami Tensei titles - but sadly, never approaches the quality of any of them.
Jurassic World Evolution sits happily in the difficulty sweet spot: it's easy enough to pick up and play that park builder novices will likely have a good time, but it's involved enough that genre veterans should enjoy it as an amusing diversion between more hardcore titles. While there's a couple of tedious processes involved, building a park is generally entertaining, and dinosaur fans – who isn't a dinosaur fan? – will likely be enamoured with the array of creatures available, and the mischief they can get up to.
Yoku's Island Express is one of the most surprising games of 2018. The combination of pinball and Metroidvania is, on paper at least, a little like dipping your French fries into your milkshake; as good as the two elements are separately, they shouldn't really work together. But thanks to an array of smart design choices, a wonderful art style, and some genuinely inventive puzzles, Yoku's Island Express is a game that only rarely frustrates – and frequently delights.
God of War is one of PlayStation 4's most wonderful exclusive games, and undoubtedly one of the great games of the generation so far.
Past Cure is a bad game. It's bad bad. But it's also the best kind of bad game, in that it's not for a lack of effort or that the team were bereft of ideas that the finished product doesn't come together. If anything, the game is too ambitious, with too many ideas, and it inevitably crumbles under the weight of numerous poorly implemented gameplay styles and a total lack of a cohesive identity. It's a bit like when your mum tries making Baked Alaska for the first time – sure, the end result is a sloppy mess, but you've got to applaud the audacity to try it in the first place.
Final Fantasy fans will likely be enamoured with the array of classic locales to battle in, re-imagined songs from previous games, and the impressive roster of fighters on offer here, but it's all downhill after that. Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a disappointing fighting game that crumples under the weight of poor design choices and crippling technical issues, leaving little reason to recommend it to anyone other than fervent supporters of the brand.
The Sims has always been pretty bizarre, when you think about it. It's different to most forms of escapism in that it turns the monotonous tasks we hate doing in real life into a game, replicating the very thing most of us are trying to avoid by playing it in the first place. The Sims 4 is the latest and best in the long running franchise and there's absolutely nothing else like it on the market for PlayStation 4. It's the most faithful recreation of the drudgery of daily life on the market, but it's also marred by a bewildering array of control quirks, annoying bugs, and overnumerous menus. If you're prepared to persevere with the more clumsily implemented aspects of the game then there's a lot to love - and there's a ridiculous amount of content - but some will likely be put off by its often obtuse nature.
It's a broken, bewildering, shambolic mess, and never speak of it again.
Guardians of the Galaxy has been a bumpy ride, with the occasionally poignant character moments and amusing dialogue exchanges drowned out by perfunctory action sequences, tepid puzzling, and the unshakeable feeling that the whole endeavour is just a pale imitation of the Guardians movies. The finale's heightened pace plays to the series' strengths, removing much of what made previous episodes so frequently frustrating, and so perhaps if there is a second season of Telltale's Guardians -- and, like any Marvel movie, you should probably stick around until after the credits for hints as to what might happen next -- we can only hope that it follows the blueprint of Don't Stop Believin'. It's not perfect, but if you're a fan of Telltale's formula or the eponymous Marvel characters, the improved latter half of the series makes Guardians of the Galaxy just about worth playing.
The only area in which South Park: The Fractured But Whole can't compete with The Stick of Truth is surprise. There's nothing here that will rival the childish glee we felt seeing 8-Bit Canada for the first time. But it's still riotously funny from start to finish, and on top of that there are some genuinely poignant moments in the game that we weren't expecting. With a much improved battle system and a larger, more well-rounded cast of characters, The Fractured But Whole is practically everything you could want from a Stick of Truth sequel. And there's a bunch of fart jokes, too.
Episode Four - Who Needs You showcases the best and worst of the Guardians series so far. The jokes repeatedly fall flat, the story is largely irrelevant, and the characters are still pale imitations of their big screen counterparts, but after a fantastically dull first hour, the episode manages to conjure up some surprisingly poignant moments in order to make the second half the highlight of the series so far. While it's by no means a home run, or even on par with much of what the studio has done in the past with other properties, the ending of Who Needs You has enough emotional weight to make it the best episode so far, leaving us with some hope that the upcoming finale might stick the landing for the series.
With each passing episode of Telltale's Guardians of the Galaxy, the chances that the series will evolve from a mildly entertaining diversion into an essential purchase grow dimmer. There's nothing here that's especially bad, and it's certainly not the worst series that Telltale has put together, but so far there's precious little beyond the easy Platinum Trophy to warrant a recommendation to anyone other than those enamoured with either the Telltale format or the Marvel characters. More Than a Feeling, quite simply, is more of the same.
Pillars of Eternity is a wonderful role-playing game, expertly weaving deep, tactical combat and captivating writing - a combination that will appeal to unabashedly old school gamers, but will also yield abundant rewards for players new to the genre. What Obsidian has crafted here, ostensibly as a love letter to the isometric computer role-playing games of the late '90s, is not merely an exercise in tickling the nostalgia itch of those pining for another Planescape: Torment or Baldur's Gate, but a contemporary to those classics, and one that will surely be held in as high regard in the years to come.
Imagine what would have happened during World War II if Winston Churchill had issued orders and his subordinates had just stood still – slack-jawed, disinterested, and non-compliant. Or perhaps what would have happened if Johannes Blaskowitz had directed a battalion of German panzers to move through a tight alley in Stalingrad, only for the first tank in line to inexplicably grind to a halt four metres into the alley, leaving the rest of the squad to be picked off by Soviet anti-tank soldiers. Consider how Stalin would have reacted had he found out that an entire squadron of his finest Russian soldiers were indiscriminately wiped out when his own tanks blew up the building they were holed up in aiming at enemies on the other side of the structure. Thanks to a control scheme that doesn't make sense and sometimes doesn't do what it's supposed to, and appalling AI for both allies and enemy units, Sudden Strike 4 is a game that answers all of these questions and a bunch more you were probably afraid to ask.
When Aven Colony is at its best, it's making a strong case for the viability of the real-time strategy genre on console via an addictive mix of easy-to-grasp city building mechanics, a surprisingly intriguing sci-fi story, and a tight campaign that offers variety and never outstays its welcome. Unfortunately, it has a number of annoying technical issues which -- while they might not affect every player -- are persistent enough to undermine the experience depending on your tolerance for slow down and hard crashes. If you can weather the storm of technical shortcomings Aven Colony throws at you, you'll find an impressive, accessible strategy game that feels right at home on PS4.
Fallen Legion isn't a home run. The story is somewhat trite and undercooked, and most of the cast are little more than stereotypes, but there's an earnest charm to the game that's hard to overlook, and the brevity of the campaign actually works in its favour. The frenetic combat is undoubtedly repetitive, but it's occasionally thrilling, and the choice system is well implemented and thought provoking. This won't change the mind of anybody who generally avoids action role-playing games, but for fans of the genre, there's enough here to warrant recommending Fallen Legion as a bite-size adventure to tackle between bigger games.
Valkyria Revolution is like a bizarre, alternate reality version of Valkyria Chronicles in which everything that the original got right has somehow been twisted into something awful. The devolution of interesting and quasi-relatable characters into eye-roll inducing stereotypes is upsetting, and the technical shortcomings of the game are disappointing. But it's the combat of Revolution that suffers most in comparison to Chronicles, and indeed, in comparison to practically anything else in the genre. Where Valkyria Chronicles was a constantly rewarding strategy game, Revolution is an action RPG so utterly devoid of any potential to challenge or delight that the only strategy you'll require is working out the quickest bus route back to the shop to get your refund.
Poignant character moments and some impressive use of pop music make Under Pressure a better episode than Tangled Up In Blue, but still nowhere near the lofty heights that we know Telltale is capable of. There's enough good work here to indicate that by the time the series is over it'll have given us reasons to care about the cast and what they're up to, but if you're on the fence about whether or not to pick up the season pass, you're probably best waiting a little longer to make that decision. The series has potential, but whether it'll ever manage to escape the shadow of the movies it is so desperately trying to recreate remains to be seen.