Hello Neighbor is a frustrating slog through a gauntlet of illogical puzzles that rely on persistence and thoroughness far more than cleverness, observation, or ingenuity. The stealth is hit-or-miss, alternating between feeling too punishing and borderline irrelevant from act to act. Some clever level design and a clear talent for making me feel creeped out eased the frustration, but don't present enough of a reason for me to recommend anyone put themselves through 15-20 hours of this. I wish I'd just stayed on my own side of the fence.
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.
At the Gates tries some ambitious new ideas that, in time, may leave a mark on the 4X genre. But today, it's far too broken to recommend.
The best-case scenario for ELEX is that it'll be worth picking up on sale a year or two from now after it's been heavily patched to fix its rampant bugs and infuriating balance problems. It has enough good ideas that one day it might be talked about as one of those hidden RPG gems that people play and wonder why it wasn't successful at launch. But the frothy mix of joy and frustration that ELEX presents today skews too heavily toward the latter. I wish it well, but I don't think I'll be calling it up for a second date.
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.
Once its major bugs are resolved, Wolcen's clever ideas could let it compete with the heavyweights of the action RPG genre. For now, though, too much of the mayhem is caused by bugs to recommend it.
A cool license and a clever time-twisting idea both go to waste in Reservoir Dogs: Bloody Days. With more mission variety, character development, and technical polish I could see this being an unexpectedly fun top-down shooter. As it is, its lack of ambition in scenario design makes too little use of its unique mechanic which, in itself, doesn't always work the way you'd expect it to. Bloody Days also fails to really capture the feel of the movie on which it's based, presenting iconic characters as cheap knock offs that spout their signature lines at odd moments like pull-string toys. While the shooting can be fun and challenging, this one's definitely not worth losing an ear over.
An underwhelming strategic take on the Three Kingdoms, especially compared to Total War.
Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr gets a lot of things right, but drops the ball where it matters most for an action RPG. We're left with a repetitive, not very tactically exciting combat system and itemization that arbitrarily forces you to gear for item level rather than better stats. Everything else is just a nice house built on a shaky foundation at that point. Even the Emperor can't protect this clumsy shoot-em-up from its own sins.
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.
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.
Space Hulk: Deathwing is that paradoxical game that's hard to dislike, but also hard to love. The glorious moments of fervent xeno-purging are too fleeting, and often left me standing in dark corridors, surrounded by my slain foes, looking for any kind of context or sense of lasting accomplishment. There is somewhere in it the embryo of the ultimate Space Marine game, but despite a lot of potential for simple, squad-based fun in multiplayer, it never moves beyond being a stripped-down and poorly running prototype for the kind of game I wish it had been. "So close, yet so far" will be the slogan etched into this terminator's hulking shoulder pads.
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.
Extinction is a sword-slinging, monster-decapitating action game that does a decent job of getting the blood pumping and reflexes twitching. The eye-catching, anime-inspired art will even give you some nice scenery to do it all in. It just never rises to be much more than that, and all the while it's inviting comparisons to other games that do. Extinction lands in that awkward position where, yeah, it's usually fun - but you're not really missing anything incredible by giving it a pass.
Ancient Space's tactical depth and unit variety are tarnished by excessive micromanagement and vexingly slow combat.
Underneath a forgettable campaign and unimpressive AI, Tiny Metal houses the seed of a really deep and entertaining multiplayer wargame. But until a head-to-head mode is added, it's not much more than a set of unchallenging training scenarios broken up by far too much overwrought dialogue. I had plenty of fun with it, but didn't get the kind of edge-of-my-seat decision-making moments that turned the tide of a difficult battle I could find in similar games. I'd recommend delaying your enlistment until all the pieces are in place.
While it's the weakest episode so far, More Than A Feeling still has some moments of payoff for leadership successes (and failures) earlier in the series. Integrating Nebula and Mantis into the team more firmly also enhances the dynamic ensemble without making the Milano feel crowded without reason. None of this could salvage the poor pacing, but the combination of new plot revelations, the consistently entertaining characters, and the overall attitude of this series has me looking forward to seeing it out.
Steel Division 2 does almost everything Normandy 44 did as well or better, but just about everything new it tries gets bogged down in the mud.
Below is a gorgeous, atmospheric dungeon crawler that is difficult to take in at the pace it deserves because of oppressive survival mechanics.
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.