Losing to a devastating horde in Conan Unconquered makes victory later on that much sweeter. But it's difficult to know if this kind of challenge-based real-time strategy game can maintain a long-term appeal.
Although A Plague Tale: Innocence features spectacular artwork and excellent characters, they can't make up for the boring, predictable gameplay.
Although Rage 2 features fantastic close-quarters combat, things tend to slide downhill once you drive out into the open world.
Mortal Kombat 11 pushes the brutal fighting action up to new levels, but fighting can quickly turn into a chore once the initial dust settles.
With hyper-fast action and super addictive gameplay, One Finger Death Punch 2 is a near perfect kung fu fighting game featuring stick figures.
Tropico 6 doesn't mess with the island building formula very much, but the new features kept me hooked for hours.
Although We. The Revolution has the potential to be a deep and challenging political strategy game, its gameplay becomes too shallow to be much of anything.
Although far from perfect, Metro Exodus provides a breathtaking game experience across a post-nuclear apocalyptic world.
Trials of the Blood Dragon offers a fantastic challenge and features an outrageously funny storyline. However, the lousy platforming shooting elements and frustratingly difficult levels can seriously drag the gameplay experience down.
The Game of Thrones adventure game is really good at piling up bodies, but has trouble finding direction in between the bloodshed.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that Beyond Earth fully captures the feel of the Earthbound Civilization games yet, but Rising Tide makes for a far better game than the original.
Heroes 7 does have that "one more turn" quality that eats away the hours, but the game-breaking bugs, along with cheap cinematics and sound effects, ruin the experience. Also, since the stories take place in the past, there's no sense that players are impacting Ashan's fate until they unlock Ivan's campaign. Perhaps Heroes 7 will meet its potential after a few patches and expansions, but for now, it's tough to look past its flaws.
All the stumbling around trades away any sense of suspense. It's hard to feel scared of monsters after you've walked circles around them several times. Not even tricks like suddenly switching off the lights saves the mood. Soma does a great job of making me feel lost and frustrated. Perhaps too good.
Warhammer 40,000: Regicide cleverly combines two different strategy games, but it also loses something along the way. It took me a long while to grow accustomed to the Regicide rules, and I still can't honestly say that I like having my Librarian shot up by a bunch of pawns. Or how a laser toting Loota can kill my Assault Marine in one shot. Sure, Regicide takes strategy to an all new level, but this level is a tad too brutal for me.
Shacknews travels the world with Renowned Explorers: International Society, the adventure strategy game that requires intelligence along with might in order to succeed. See what it takes to become the best explorer in the world in our review.
Playing is both a joy and infuriating, depending on your back stabbing/stabbed ratio. In either case, I found myself wanting to go back for more.
All taken together, getting through Satellite Reign can be a painful and slow process until you can amass enough tech, skill and firepower to repel waves of soldiers. It wants to be a game that gives you different choices, but the stealth gameplay wears thin so quickly that the game just gets boring.
Artifacts of Power hits most of the right marks. . . . At the same time, there's a feeling that the game lost something when it went fully 3D.
There's a decent collection of unlockable challenge missions, but game loses some of its charm when a mission forces too many criteria, like time limits and crew selection. Still, this is a game that ended up totally getting under my skin, and I couldn't help coming back to prove myself as a criminal mastermind.
Sorcerer King has a lot of great ideas, but they don't necessarily come together well.