The effort that went into creating Rive is apparent, from the art to the music to the precise controls, but it manages to be extremely punishing without enough sense of reward and the depth of options in combat are substandard. The story is an afterthought and the characters’ seeming self-awareness of that doesn’t connect with enough of a comedic punch to save it. It’s a side-scrolling shooter with stock parts that I don’t foresee leaving a mark on the genre, but is at least worth a spin if you’ve got the patience for it and a thirst for a major challenge.
There’s not much that’s outright wrong with Master of Orion, but there’s not much memorable or endearing about it either. It’s built on a moderately successful but bland execution of the inside-the-box space 4X formula. The moments when its flair for leader characterization and an enjoyably complex combat engine take center stage are the only times anything about it really stands out. There’s definitely enough game here that I wouldn’t turn anyone away from giving it a spin, but I also can’t say you’d be missing anything special by skipping it.
Nova Covert Ops Mission Pack 2 is definitely more enjoyable when it comes to the meat - the actual missions - of the experience. However, the storytelling remains sub-par. Many characters Blizzard has spent years making us care about have up and disappeared, while others are given barely anything to do or only a tenuous reason to even be around. In its final moments, it did hook me with a plot development that would make me go out of my way to play Mission Pack 3, just to see where it’s headed. But it simultaneously fails to fill me with hope that there will be anything but another bucket of lukewarm storytelling waiting for me if I take the bait.
Starbound excels as a crafting and exploration game, as a 2D platformer with varied and engaging combat, and as a Zelda-esque story RPG with a detailed world and memorable alien cultures to interact with. The sheer volume of different kinds of locations to discover, items to craft and build great structures with, and flashy ways to vanquish aliens prevent any part of the experience from getting boring quickly.
This is the sort of game that great uncles and grandmas are going to buy for the young people in their lives because they heard Ghostbusters was popular, or that littler kids will point out in the mall just after seeing the movie. But no informed gamer should fall for the siren song of that catchy main theme. It’s not actively painful to play if you happen to be at your eight-year-old cousin’s house and need a co-op game for six to eight hours that’s not going to require much skill. But you could do so much better. I can’t imagine ever wanting to drop a full 50 dollars on it, especially considering there are plenty of games out there that are equally fun to play for kids and adults.
All the little reasons The Technomancer is worth experiencing, all the little moments where the vision of a better game shines through, aren’t quite enough to justify choking down its shortcomings.
Hearts of Iron 4 wields complexity like a swift armor division during the blitzkrieg, allowing it to serve the idea of layered, cerebral, strategic warfare instead of letting it needlessly bog down the experience.
Deep hero progression and a well-executed Chaos invasion round out a campaign that, while it has some flaws in set-up and pacing, fulfilled all of my deepest fantasies of seeing giant, impossible armies clashing amidst the shrieking of griffins and the glow of flaming meteors summoned from the sky. It's just a damn good time.
Nova Covert Ops Mission Pack 1 stumbles out of the gate by being too timid to go all-in and fully flesh out some of its more interesting ideas. Kicking ass with Nova’s diverse equipment builds can be entertaining, and the new and returning voice cast do a laudable job bringing the StarCraft universe back to life after the conclusion of its grand arc. Unfortunately, they’re given a pretty lame environment to do it in, both in terms of the scenario design and the story execution. I sincerely hope the remaining six missions get a better footing.
Once you break free from the tactics-focused mindset of most RTS games, Ashes of the Singularity is a challenging, engrossing, and cerebral exercise in strategy that has me mentally iterating on army compositions, build timings, and board deployment schemes even when I’m not playing it. The campaign comes across as an unwanted stepchild beside the strong multiplayer, and the terrain art is dull and uninspired, yet Oxide has delivered on the promise of bringing back capital-S Strategy to the RTS space. This is a warzone where the shrewd general looking at the bigger picture will triumph over the fast-thinking ace with lightning hotkeys.
Pillars of Eternity: The White March Part 2 offers a focused, fast-paced endcap to the Watcher's tale, answering all of the lingering questions from Part 1, and then some. The encounter design brings some ongoing problems with Pillars combat to the forefront in several areas, but the overall experience is balanced out by high quality storycraft, interesting new locales, and momentous, world-shaping decisions available to the player.
Bombshell is a fast-paced, energetic, deliberately absurd action shooter that's mostly competent at everything it tries to do. Stunningly crafted, downright epic environments and tight, responsive gamepad controls steal the show. But it certainly doesn't pull off anything innovative or revolutionary, and the whole experience is dragged down by spiky difficulty, half-baked RPG mechanics, and poorly constructed (though varied) boss battles.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is a deep, exciting, varied RTS with all the right tools.
Anno 2205 is an engaging and strategic city builder with a forgettable story and too little motivation beyond profit.
Rising Tide's great new diplomacy and artifacts can't quite fix Civ: Beyond Earth's replayability problems.
Blood Bowl 2 is a smashy, satisfying, goofy tactical melee that leaves just a bit too much up to the six-sided dice.
Total War: Attila is an adept refinement of Rome 2, with a great, harrowing campaign that sets it apart.
Grey Goo oozes with enjoyment for old-school
CoH 2: Ardennes Assault is an adept interweaving of the strategic, tactical, and personal facets of warfare.
Ancient Space's tactical depth and unit variety are tarnished by excessive micromanagement and vexingly slow combat.