I'd classify River City Girls as a fun, anime-inspired romp that's worth the time if you're looking for a balance between the visceral satisfaction you get from pummeling enemies on-screen and some of the off-center humor one can find in pieces like "Scott Pilgrim vs The World." It has that kind of vibe, and it's a great change of pace from the more heavy-handed stuff out there.
I enjoyed a lot of my time with The Foundation, but I'm left wondering how much of a lasting impact it'll have on the Control universe as a whole. It felt more like an entertaining distraction than a large step forward, but I had no problem eating up all the lore, info and strange encounters I could find. If you're a fan of the game and thought it was one of the best games of 2019, you'll see that poking around in the underbelly of the Oldest House is well worth the time.
MLB The Show 20 might not be a giant leap forward, but it's more than enough of a leap for fans to enjoy a game they're missing right now.
Death Stranding is not for everyone. This isn't the first game that asks players to push through and grind. Ask anyone who's played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. But that game asks you to fight through chaos and fury. Death Stranding asks you to embrace the process of work and the journey, trusting that you'll feel rewarded at the end. For my part, I did. If you think of a Kojima game as an event, then you should know what you're signing up for. That's the best way to enjoy it. If not, you'll be in the middle of a beautiful landscape, wondering what the hell you're doing out there, maybe even a little stranded.
I would recommend Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to anyone who's even remotely familiar with the universe. There are plenty of Easter eggs and geek-out stuff for the fans (you can build a custom lightsaber!), and the gameplay is less about reinvention and more about refining pieces to fit the experience, which is what a lot of great art is built upon. If anything, this game made me feel like I did back in the 1990s, when I truly felt the Force in the game space for the first time. It's a special feeling, and I look forward to seeing where this path goes.
If you're trying to sell me on the idea that Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is some kind of tense, elevated tactical action experience instead of an elaborate and unpolished loot chase, then I know someone interested in giving you a hat with a higher gear score.
I can't remember the last time I was willfully ready to risk getting a headache to play a game because I enjoyed the world and challenges so much. I've played through the main story twice, and I am still picking away at the side missions and running around the Oldest House to see if there's anything else worth finding. Staccato mass-combat issues and other burps aside, I'd recommend Control to anyone. Its world may be frightening and confusing, but it's also truly a sight to behold.
If you're looking for good-to-great football, you'll likely find what you're looking for in Madden NFL 20.
Even with all the promotion we're seeing now, Days Gone still carries the aura of a title that could be miscast and possibly overlooked at a glance, like it was for me a few years ago. You don't know until you play, and this stands as one the more pleasant and satisfying surprises of the year for me. It's been a long road to this game, but the ride is worth it.
Each incarnation of The Show I've played has been better than the last, and MLB The Show 19 keeps pace. I do wonder, however, if there is a "next level" coming for the series or if we're content to accept a layer or two of steady improvements for the next few editions. I'll take it. After all, it's a long season.
I will probably fire up Anthem more than a few times again, if only to experience the joyous nature of plopping down a Colossus in the middle of a firefight and unfurling fiery, shelled death upon the landscape. It's a wonderful distraction. But unfortunately, Anthem doesn't look like anything more than that. I can't recommend it.
This was a tale of two (or really, one-and-a-half story playthroughs) for me. During the first one, I was like many people and wanted to mash through the story and reach its end, and it was a truly satisfying experience, aside from what I thought was a really soft ending. Then I jumped in again, this time looking to interact with every possible encounter, using as little fast-travel as possible. That's when I ran into most of the crazy side-stories I mentioned above. That's when Arthur really got to know many of the people in camp instead of just riding with them on designated story missions. I've gone from waiting for it to end to sort of gearing myself up for the end when I see it the next time. We know what happens to Arthur Morgan at the end, but there's a moment during that end where he gets to see a pretty sunset, and the game lets you take a long look. He's dying, but that long look ends up being just enough.
Marvel's Spider-Man: The Heist might not have been revolutionary, but perhaps it's not supposed to be yet. It is the first part of a series of DLC, and as such, it leaves a lot of unresolved questions. I feel like I've officially "met" Felicia Hardy, and I'm certainly looking forward to where her story goes next.
This is the kind of game where you could wipe out days of time paying attention to one piece of the greater story, with the true joy coming when you get to take a step back and see the story you've built.
If I have one issue, it 's that the path of the main story feels a little short and a little too neatly tied up at the end — if you simply choose to mash through it. I feel like you have some room to let things breathe at the end of a trilogy, and I didn 't feel like the story did enough of that as I progressed. With that said, it feels like the best way to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider is to embrace all of it and take some time to sink into the world Crystal Dynamics has crafted so that Lara 's journey feels more filling. That 's when her journey and everything she does feels a little more ... right.
Marvel's Spider-Man does what a lot of good art does, which is examine techniques and concepts that work well, and then blend and refine them to create something unique to itself and possibly greater. I've made this point before: Art and artists have built on and inspired each other since the beginning of time. So yes, I've heard and seen the Spidey/Arkham hot takes, and I ended up not caring at all because at no point did I forget I was playing a Spider-Man experience. I was too busy swinging around in Manhattan, with buildings whipping by as I tailed a police pursuit, thinking about how right it all felt.
If you're looking for something that massively overhauls the Madden experience, you're probably not going to find it in Madden NFL 19. Instead, I see it as a generally solid dose of improvements and consistency, with an emphasis on tightening up the on-field product for better, more natural football action. It's got me looking forward to binging the next season, at the very least.
I am still working to unlock floating branches on this Yggdrasil of a story tree, so I'm almost certain there are dark corners of this world that will give me more of what I'm looking for. The concept of self-aware robotic people has been explored for decades, and Detroit: Become Human makes sure you have plenty of reasons to explore it for at least more than a few hours. After all, the story, much like Chloe, shows plenty of life.
Despite the volley of these and some other issues that'll be unique to your experience, committing to the universe that Warhorse has built in Kingdom Come: Deliverance still carries an ultimately rewarding feeling.
Road to the Show remains the soul of The Show 18 to me, with everything else feeling like a fun distraction, like getting to step into the shoes of baseball's past greats or the tasting the 8-bit flavor of retro mode. As I progress more into my player's career, there's this unshakable knowledge that he's never going to be better at some things than he is now. He will be in a box — an enjoyable one, but a box nonetheless.