Road Not Taken is an fun mix of puzzling and roguelike, but it doesn't have much staying power.
Though its changes to the MOBA standard are creative, the multi-round structure leads to drawn-out matches
The intriguing gameplay and myriad difficulty options are enough to make Way of the Passive Fist an intriguing curio, but it falls into the some of the traps it tries to escape
Divorced from the need to spotlight its commentary or be clever, Superhot's shootouts make its case better than its narrative layers ever could. Its methodical take on shooter combat forces you to linger on the consequences of your actions without saying a word. And that's all it needed to be. But when it tries to connect the dots for you, it feels overbearing and self-congratulatory, diluting the potency of its novelty.
39 Days' premise is promising, but its short runtime leaves lots to be desired, making for a fun but ultimately forgettable romp
Metal Gear Survive has plenty to do, but the story mode is a dud and the endgame loops don't hold up
#WarGames is interesting enough for its two-hour runtime to keep you invested, but feels more like a proof-of-concept than a fulfilling tale
Age of Calamity improves on the combat and structure of Hyrule Warriors, but saps much of the weight from Breath of the Wild's backstory as it fills in its gaps.
A New God pushes Immortals Fenyx Rising puzzle-solving tools to their limit, making for some interesting challenges--but also a lot of frustrating and tedious trials.
Narcosis tells a grounded, emotional, and surprising story, but you have to wade through a lot of plodding moments to see it through
Little Town Hero wants to endear you to its tiny village and light card-based gameplay, but its repetitive battles and boring story make it hard to care about its residents or their plight.
Immortals Fenyx Rising's second DLC takes the game to an entirely new world, but it still doesn't stray too far from its old one.
The constant pull to repeat a set of activities to see numbers go up permeates every game like Devilian. Even now, I'm thinking about running a few more dungeons and seeing if I can't get some Heroic gear out of it. But almost any game with loot will make you want more of it, so hitting that part of the brain's reward center isn't enough to make for a good game.
Whatever qualms I might have with his prose or approach to self-promotion, I can't disagree.
Playing Albino Lullaby, you'll begin to feel like so many of the people you may have tried to convert into understanding the surrealist media the game so desperately wants to evoke; you'll raise an eyebrow, and think "that's it?"
Then, about three-fourths into my playthrough, I found a legendary warhammer with an unbelievably powerful perk. Whenever I used a Weapon Technique, it created an enormous bubble that slowed any enemy within it to a crawl. It didn't rely on a trigger, ailment, debuff, a percentage, or anything. When it dropped, I read the description in bewilderment. Was this thing for real? It was so out of line with anything else the rest of the game had given me that I doubted it'd be useful. But it was. It made tough encounters a breeze. It destroyed bosses. The rest of the game went by in a flash. It was the most fun I'd had with Godfall, and I held on to that warhammer even after it was one of the weakest pieces of loot I had, just because of that one perk. I wish I'd found more items like it, because it was a welcome change of pace.
The Medium starts off personal and poignant, but ends in cliché
That's a huge letdown, because the encounters feel tuned for co-op rather than solo play. Playing alone, I could feel the absence of other players; although enemies are tougher when playing with friends, having another person to divert a boss' attention feels more natural than having you and a boss circle a pillar as you whittle down its health, or slowly working your way through the unrelenting hail of bullets that some of the later encounters subject you to. You also get to revive your friends in multiplayer (you even get one self-revive), which makes some of the tougher fights a little easier.
Resident Evil Village is the perfect cocktail of horror and action
Skyward Sword wanted to keep Zelda fresh and exciting, but it did this by making the things you already did as part of its formula feel good instead of finding new ways to do them. But for a series about exploring at your own pace, simplifying dungeons to make them more fun to complete wasn't going to cut it for much longer. The focus on action, on pulling off simple-but-cool things, only works on a platform built around how fun its controller is to use, and it only works once. After this game, Nintendo had to do something different.