The people and aliens who fill its space—and the reasons Morgan has for spending so much time picking through its confines—are retreads of ideas and conventions visited many other times before. As much as its opening objective prompt promises, Prey doesn't represent change. It's just more of what what's been done before.
There is much beauty to see in the game's world—such incredible vision and craft exercised in its conception—but it's subservient to a poor story, lackluster combat and, worst of all, an evident paranoia that players won't appreciate the world Aloy inhabits unless it's put within the context of a laundry list of tasks that have to be completed.
Every work is entitled to express its own worldview, but the value of one as profoundly distrustful as The Division's is questionable. In an era when such cynicism colors our collective culture and political processes, influencing popular views on issues ranging from immigration to international relations, indulging in a fantasy so ready to justify our paranoia can be hard to swallow.
The end result is something that feels like little more than the finished product of a well-oiled entertainment machine—a safe appeal to a mass audience. This is unfortunate since there is genuine joy to be had in simply navigating Techland's fictional city. If the same attention was paid to narrative development and visual design as has obviously gone into the player character's movement, Dying Light's world would be much more inviting.
Final Fantasy VII Remake manages to balance the introduction of new concepts with faithfully recreations of the original game's most memorable aspects, but it also unnecessarily pads out this first installment in a larger story with too much downtime between its most striking moments.
The Last Tinker, despite nailing the aesthetic of the games that inspired it, doesn't have this strength. For every one of its lovely vistas there is an unsatisfying bit of platforming to be done; for every quirky character there is a group of enemies at which to swing some floaty punches.
While the interactive core of Quantum Break is a serviceable ode to pulp science-fiction, the episodes are a reminder of what makes the genre enjoyable beyond metaphysical thought exercises: the ridiculousness.
There's a great urge to celebrate what Type-0 is trying to do. There's a temptation to laud the concept of a series best known for simple fantasy making an effort to grapple with the seriousness of a topic of which it has skirted the significance for so long. But Type-0 shows that Final Fantasy, despite its best efforts, probably doesn't know how to grow up in the way it wants to—that it can only grasp at greater dramatic impact even as its battle systems are further refined, its attempts to dig something out of the ancient muck of a subject as heavy as war itself constantly curtailed by concessions to the iconography of its past.
Whether any of this is enough to put off an audience inured to Call of Duty’s detached depiction of brutal warfare is anyone’s guess. Plenty of people can put up with a bit of ugliness if there’s still a pretty good time to be had overall. For Modern Warfare II, the good time offered by its multiplayer and in glimpses within its campaign may be enough.
None of this is anything like progress—Westerado isn't exploring new frontiers when it comes to genre work—but the romance inherent to the game's emphasis on freedom sometimes comes close to overpowering a bitter remembrance of the very real history it cribs from.
Fortunately, Soul Suspect's fairly uninteresting play takes a backseat to a fast-moving plot that, as predictable as it often is, remains engaging from start to finish.
Gears 4 takes only half measures. It discards a lighthearted adventure premise for another fate-of-humanity monster invasion. It gives up on the anti-militarist bent of its early fight against the COG for another plot about soldiers trying to save humanity.
Needless to say, the 2013 release of Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto V generated a great deal of excitement.
Despite how [The Park's] conclusion stands out as both horrifying and emotionally resonant, the plot suffers in a lead-up that can feel a bit aimless.
When Dark Room moves beyond its initial twist in order to return to the mystery at the centre of the game's overarching plot, it succeeds at offering exciting gameplay in lieu of maintaining its thematic focus.
[Halfway's] developer is an enormous fan of a few things: well-crafted pixel art, 1980s science fiction movies, and XCOM.
Every part of [Dead Rising 3] exists in service to the simple act of knocking over zombies like so many shuffling bowling pins.
Vagabond Dog has developed a title that, despite its rough edges, ends up offering an interesting look at a character coming to grips with themselves and their place in the world.
Leviathan often feels more like a short novel than it does a traditional videogame.
Costume Quest 2 is at its best when the repetitive role-playing combat system takes a backseat to its adventure-style exploration and dialogue.