What I found [in Hope County] was a redneck action odyssey I didn't ask for and never knew I wanted, until I found myself in the late hours of the night raiding enemy outposts with a trained bear and a shotgun-bearing pyromaniac. It's more fun than you'll expect to have, and after experiencing the ending ..., I'm left with vivid memories of a fictional land.
As I'm veering into my third All-Star Game with my created slugger, I think about how I'm putting the games typically in my wheelhouse — like another Sony creation, Horizon Zero Dawn — on the back burner to digitally partake in a game that I didn't think I enjoyed. Real-life baseball still has a long way to go to get my eyes on it more, but MLB The Show 17 is a pretty good place to start.
Resident Evil 7 is a welcome return to form and an excellent change of pace from a lot of the gaming fare that's either out or coming out. I'd recommend it to anyone, whether they like horror or not. There's a lot of good work in here, and if it takes getting frightened once in a while to see it, I say it's worth opening that door.
WWE 2K17 is the first wrestling game I've truly waded into in a while, and I'm reminded as to why it's been so long. I play the basketball, football and MMA games because it's basically what I see and experience on TV. As a fan of WWE who has viewing parties for major PPVs, I can't say that what I played touches on what I get from WWE programming every week. It resembles it, but it's got a long way to go before I see it the same way I see the real thing: art, done well, providing the perfect escape.
There are other odd issues to be found where ReCore keeps tripping over itself despite earnest efforts to aid the player, like a targeting reticle that appears below Joule whenever she takes big jumps — except the camera always prevents you from truly seeing it, so you end up witnessing Joule fall into chemicals or into a pit of death. I could go on, but I'll stop. Perhaps one day, I'll have Joule raid an easy dungeon with Mack just to see how they move and interact. That way, I won't die and have more than enough time to think about how disappointed I was.
I'm also probably going to head back into Tom Clancy's The Division in the weeks or months to come as more content emerges and bugs get fixed. Ubisoft has something with serious potential, and it'll be intriguing to see what shape this world takes. I also want to see what stuff awaits in unexplored corners of the Dark Zone. That's really it.
And yet, it sometimes doesn't seem like enough. As intricate as the multiplayer is, the lack of a true campaign or other content beyond terrorist hunt leaves the entire Rainbow Six Siege package of offerings feeling somewhat light, especially in comparison to something like Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which has a campaign and zombies to go along with its signature shooter experience. The same goes for the Halo series, which was built on the backbone of a space odyssey while also forging a multiplayer identity. It's not a question of quality with Siege but a question of value, and for players like me, sometimes the question is harder to answer than it should be.
Mad Max will probably not be for everyone, especially for those who are pining to find some kind of innovative leap forward for the open-world genre. Avalanche has provided an intricate, fleshed-out interpretation of a world I didn't think would get a chance to have its day in the video game sun. The good things done here, despite the lack of that one killer thing,should give fans something that Max himself might not have: hope for something better.
Madden 16 feels like EA has finally caught up to the current generation of gaming and can now start to improve the venerable football franchise by even greater strides. There's still some work to be done, but I feel like I'm playing Madden this year because it's fun, and not because I felt obligated as a football fan to have it. Compared to the hurricane of dark perceptions surrounding the National Football League, I'd much rather be playing this.
Games that attempt to push past normal boundaries and focus on the joy of simply playing have to go by a different set of rules for engagement, and The Chinese Room has offered something that reminded me of Journey – I didn't know what to do then, so I simply moved, explored and found the story on my own. But while Journey fostered a connection with others, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture left me feeling completely alone as a player and desperate to find out why. The answers came slowly, and they might not be utterly satisfying at first, but that's what can happen when you go where everyone is not.
Rory McIlroy PGA Tour isn't a bad game; there's just not enough of it. Its predecessors not only supplied a good time in-game but also stacked the deck with a lot of value. We've talked about the lack of golfers and courses, but there's also a lack of golf play styles and even a lack of differing weather conditions. As good as the playing experience is, a sports game should also feel complete. Instead, we're left with untapped potential and questions that will dog designers until the next hole.
Batman: Arkham Knight has been billed as the most complete Batman video game experience in existence, and it lives up to that billing in spades. There's almost - gasp - too much Batman to handle, and I find myself still grinding away in Gotham when the time allows it. It would appear that too much Batman is a consequence I'm willing to live with.
Divinity: Original Sin's propensity for the old isn't a simple case of wistful nostalgia. It's a conscious decision on Larian's part to resurrect tried-and-true threads that run deep into the bones of the CRPG genre. It's a culmination of those efforts and an unapologetic celebration of battle-tested concepts backed by solid co-op. Most of all, it comes together as a grand adventure that hearkens back to sleepless nights buoyed by the roll of a die and a pad of grid paper shared between fellow dungeon crawlers.
Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure is more than a love letter to the series' die-hard supporters. It's a solid adventure title that's loaded with brain teasers, personable characters, and a great musical score. The alternate endings add to its re-playability, and it's a time capsule of the '90s interactive movie rush, giving it a bit of retro appeal. Though it's not perfectly polished, it's a good business card for the hard-boiled gumshoe to leave for armchair detectives. Tex is back and is ready for his next case ... whatever that might be.
For fans of the series, there's enough glittery nostalgia and polish in Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse to gloss over the rough edges. The lighthearted banter, the brightly colored scenes, enticing mystery, and solid puzzles make this something that the original Kickstarter campaign promised: "fan service aimed directly at those aching to experience one more story involving one of adventure gaming's favorite teams."
For players who may never had heard of Shadowrun, Dragonfall is a firm introduction to what the world is all about. In many ways, it finally fulfills the promise of a real sequel. It won't brutalize players who are new to tactical gaming, and it won't stop veterans cold, but Dragonfall does an awesome job of translating Shadowrun's world into a digital battlefield fraught with shady choices.
Longtime fans might find the new take on Garrett hard to swallow. Thief's thin story doesn't explain much in the end when it tops things off, but I enjoyed the time spent in the City. I wouldn't mind revisiting for another go in Garrett's shoes, but I hope that by then, some of the training wheels will have been removed.
Cities of Tomorrow isn't a bad expansion if you're already a big fan of SimCity and are itching for new ways with which to test your city-building skills within Maxis' sandbox. The new facilities add alternative approaches to creating prosperous cities of utopian wonder or unbridled capitalism. They can be appealing and even fun to experiment with, as long as you're not hoping for this to do much more. On that level, Cities of Tomorrow works decently well. If you're expecting it to solve some long-standing issues, there's nothing to see here beyond the neon glow of the streets and the purple haze hanging above every smokestack.
As a D&D and Neverwinter Nights fan, I wanted to see what an MMO version offered, and I came away feeling that it accomplished its goals, if only for a month or so. It's like a single-player sandbox dungeon; when I reached what felt to be the proverbial end, it was time to move on.