Leif Johnson's Reviews
Absolver is a beautiful martial-arts fighting game that allows for an impressive degree of personalized play with its innovative combat deck system, which lets you learn skills from combat with other players and NPCs. Unfortunately, it only comes with a single PvP arena mode at launch, and its fascinatingly nebulous campaign breaks off early and abruptly. It feels like an early access game with a ton of potential, but it's not quite there yet.
Ashes of the Singularity delivers thoughtful real-time strategy with tons of units in play, but drab maps and a poor story.
Lords of the Fallen has fun combat and a good spin on Dark Souls' skill system, but its hero is overpowered.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II has some launch issues, but it's a respectable and funny action RPG.
Dreadnought in many ways successfully brings the World of Tanks formula to outer space with sci-fi flair, and the vertical movements of the ships add some depth. It's often fun, but if you want to advance at a reasonable pace you'll have to deal with an unreliably active PS4 player population and an XP system that requires a lot of grinding to unlock new ships.
SpellForce 3 competently blends RPG and RTS games into a generally enjoyable package, but there's not enough creative force to create a lasting spell.
Might and Magic X: Legacy delivers tough, but fair turn-based fantasy combat that largely works.
The Flame in the Flood is a beautiful procedurally generated survival sim that gains a welcome sense of momentum from the need to stay on the move. Its unwieldy menus and tendency to crash ruins some of the fun, unfortunately, but not enough to diminish the strength of the hopeful, riverbound journey at its core.
Though much too easy, Dead Rising 4 is sandboxy zombie-killing adventure that recaptures the series' fun.
A fun, serviceable update to the 4X legend that brings little memorable to the genre aside from its personality.
Styx gets its hardcore stealth right, but its controls and platform elements fall short.
Voodoo Vince's action doesn't deviate much from the standard conventions of early 21st-century platformers, but its jazzy music and bizarre New Orleans look render it a memorable experience. With modernized textures, resolution, aspect ratio, and frame rate, this remastered version updates Vince for a new generation, and hopefully ensures he won't get buried like he was in his former incarnation as an Xbox exclusive.
Dead Star has the basics of combat and ship balance right, to the point that even losses have their fun moments. Its primary shortcoming is that it allows too great an advantage for pre-made groups, which is especially a problem considering the wonky matchmaker.
Hand of Fate delivers a fun, atypical RPG experience that lets you act out the scenarios of a trading card game.
The first half of Jazzpunk is a non-stop deluge of gags and entertaining minigames, but it can't keep up that pace.
Both land and space combat lack punch, but there's a fun if predictable 4X game waiting underneath.
It's light on features for an expansion, but Mercenaries adds some welcome volatility to the 4X sandbox.
With the Dead Island Definitive Edition, Dead Island and Dead Island Riptide have never looked so good. The use of Dying Light's graphics engine means almost every setting looks better and more realistic than it did at the start of the decade, but it unfortunately doesn’t run any better now than it did then. With around 35 hours of gameplay packed in and a fun little retro beat 'em up to complement it all, though, it's the best way to play if you missed these zombie-smashers.
A beautiful JRPG that captures the spirit of the genre's early hits while playing things a tad too safely.
Blackguards is a grueling tactical role-playing game that thrives on brutal challenges.