Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX tells a good Pokemon story from a unique angle and with visuals that help enhance the storybook feel. However, gameplay that might have held up in 2005 has not aged well.
Marvel’s Avengers is an identity crisis of a game. Moving from some excellent linear missions that capture Marvel fandom from the point of view of the fantastic Ms. Marvel, to a sudden smattering of seriously generic co-op missions featuring the most boring of enemies defending the most tedious of objectives, made me feel like I was moving between two entirely different games.
During the course of Tchia’s tropical adventure, players will experience many great, carefully-implemented ideas. The open world influenced by New Caledonia remains sensitive to its cultural inspirations, the unique soul-jumping mechanic is a joy to use and explore, the boat controls and fully-functional ukulele are overkill in the best kind of way, and the story has both unexpected darkness and humor. Unfortunately, a handful of good ideas can’t save Tchia from running out of steam before the finale and crumbling beneath a wave of performance issues.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite sits squarely in the middle of other Alien games. There’s certainly worse out there, but there is also much better. It’s an uninspired struggle through a tired gameplay loop that just happens to be slathered in Alien slime and plays like one of the older Gear of Wars.
Sledgehammer Games is no stranger to righting wrongs, as seen with its previous Call of Duty entries, but even with additional balance tweaks and new content, I’m certain five years from now that Vanguard will be looked down upon as one of the weakest games in the series.
Unfortunately, I feel like fixing this game goes beyond patching glitches, fixing bugs, and then cramming in expansions.
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition can be tolerable on the right system. Both PS5 and Xbox Series X offer users the best chance of brute-forcing past the performance barriers but, even then, occasional bugs and glitches can occur. Fun can be had on those current-gen systems, especially by those with some sentimental attachment to the original trilogy, but there’s still likely to be moments of frustration. When it comes to the Nintendo Switch version, as enjoyable as a portable version could be, the experience is heavily compromised and I can’t recommend players drop serious cash on this product.
Perhaps a severe drop in price would make this worth a look, but for now only extremely hardcore One Punch Man fans should consider making a purchase.
Modern Warfare Remastered is a near-perfect remaster. The developer has fiddled with things only when absolutely necessary, and though I do wish some of the multiplayer perks had been tweaked or removed altogether, I can understand why they have been left alone. Just be sure to brace yourself for the rapid time-to-kill, the frustrating deaths at the hands of un-counterable grenades, and the permanently active enemy UAVs. Get past all of that, and you’ll see the Modern Warfare magic that sparked huge changes for first-person shooters and pushed them to the forefront, becoming the industry’s powerhouses.