When The New Colossus drops the difficulty spikes, boring stealth sections, and lets you out of narrow corridors, it becomes a thrilling shooter up there with Doom and the best moments from The New Order. Unfortunately, Machine Games seems determined to bring you out of the moment at every possible opportunity. Killing Nazis shouldn’t be this frustrating.
Steins;Gate 0 could be better. It could be shorter and do more to explain the complicated parts of its story. However, it's the follow up to one of the best visual novels out there. It contains the same awesome characters (and minimizes the impact of the annoying ones) and puts them through serious trauma until they come out the other end. It’s a tougher read than Steins;Gate, but you should persevere until you reach the other side. The reward is worth it and I cannot wait to see where this story goes next.
I fell in love with Gorogoa from the moment I moved one drawing over another to create a doorway for the character to move to a new location. The puzzles get harder, but the way you solve them is always wonderful.
Gears For Breakfast isn’t a slave to nostalgia. It knows what made early 3D platformers special in the late nineties and it knows what makes them hard to go back to in 2017. It's updated the genre but kept the nostalgia flowing in the process. A Hat in Time could do with being a touch longer, but I enjoyed the entirety of my fifteen-hour playthrough. Not bad for a $30 package.
SteamWorld Dig 2 is a beautiful and charming game with a satisfying mixture of exploration, puzzles, and mildly challenging platforming. The more treasure you collect, the more abilities you unlock, which in turn, lets you collect even more treasure. It's a simple yet addictive loop that pushed me forward until I beat the final boss. Unfortunately, the lack of a compelling endgame meant I didn't have much motivation to continue past the ten-hour mark.
Origins is a game full of flaws. With the exception of the environmental design, nearly everything could have done with an extra year of development time and a little more care and attention. And yet, Origins is more than the sum of its mediocre parts. I enjoyed most of the 40 hours I spent with Origins and I still have the urge to go back and tick off more boxes.
Doki Doki Literature Club is free and I feel slightly uncomfortable being so critical of it. However, it also demands over four hours of your time. We all have backlogs of games we’ve already payed for and yet haven’t found the time to play. Go and play one of them instead. Doki Doki Literature Club isn’t worth your time.
The Frozen Wilds isn’t a must play expansion, but it’s a damn good one. It challenges skills you thought you’d already mastered and there’s more Aloy. That’s enough to get a recommendation from me.
After finishing SOMA, my mind was consumed with thoughts of what it means to be human. Did I torture and kill people in my attempt to escape? Or were they not really people at all and I can sleep soundly? That SOMA made me ask myself these questions is the reason why you should play this game, despite the inclusion of unnecessary and frustrating “video game moments.”
The Evil Within 2 is a better game than its predecessor; however, it’s also a less interesting one. The first game was fascinating and yet hard to recommend due to problems with pacing, sloppy storytelling, and plenty of bugs and glitches. The sequel corrects most of those problems and, to use a term I hate, is a far more polished experience as a result. I just wish Tango Gameworks hadn’t abandoned everything special about the original in the process.
Cuphead is one of the most visually interesting games I’ve ever played. Its gameplay is a throwback to old-school bullet hell shooters and tough boss fights, without the need to worry about running out of lives. I wish I could tell you to ignore the discussion around difficulty and just buy the game, but that’s not fair. Cuphead is a challenging game that requires a lot of practice and patience. You may not enjoy it and that’s fine. However, if you’re at all interested in what Cuphead has to offer then you should take the risk. Dive in and see what happens. I played Cuphead for 15 hours and most of them were a hell of a lot of fun. Not all of them, but most.
The gunplay in Destiny 2 is excellent. Unfortunately, Bungie still doesn’t understand how to handle an MMO grind—especially in the late game—and the storytelling is atrocious. After about 15-20 hours, the loot stopped rolling in and I realized how tedious the game was without a regular flow of new shiny things. Destiny 2 will sell by the millions, but I’m going to need some huge changes to go back for Destiny 3.
The Lost Legacy is another very good game in a franchise almost unrivaled in its consistently high quality. It’s just a shame we’ve seen it all before.
The Evil Within has all the elements of a great survival horror game. There’s a great story… eventually. There’s satisfying tactical combat… sometimes. The world looks suitably grim and foreboding… when it’s not breaking apart before your eyes. It’s a game that needed another twelve months to meet the developer’s vision. That’s what sequels are for. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend The Evil Within, but I can encourage you to keep an eye on the sequel. It could be something special.
Remasters often make me reconsider my fondness for old games. That’s not true of the N. Sane Trilogy. Crash 1 is an okay game, Crash 2 is a good game, and Crash 3 is an excellent game. That’s as true today as it was twenty years ago.
Great Sonic games are a novelty these days. Fortunately, the novelty doesn’t wear off in a hurry. Sonic Mania is fast, fun, and full of surprises, from the first level until the last.
Nioh is difficult and the frantic pace of its combat means that even Soulsborne veterans can expect a challenge. The lack of level variety is an issue, however I enjoyed every single fight thanks to the varied and deep combat. With three stances, five weapon types, skills, ninjutsu, and magic, it’s hard to get bored during a fifty to sixty-hour campaign and you’ll likely jump straight into new game plus without stopping for breath. Team Ninja set its sights high with Nioh, seeking to create a samurai-inspired Soulsborne game, with a distinct personality and combat style. Somehow, Team Ninja pulled it off.
The combination of strict linearity with varied snippets of gameplay might just be the ideal combination for these type of narrative experiences. What Remains of Edith Finch leaps right into my top three games in this genre alongside Gone Home and The Stanley Parable. In fact, I think it’s leapt right to the top.
If you are truly desperate for a System Shock 2 successor then Prey might just scratch that itch. However, my mom always told me not to scratch an itch because it only makes things worse. She might have been right. (NOTE: Detailed analysis video available on the website)
NieR: Automata has far too much padding and would be better as a 20-hour experience instead of a 40 hour one. Despite all that, I can’t deny that there are parts of this game that simply have to be experienced. The music and the story are phenomenal; it’s just a shame the combat doesn’t live up to the highs I experienced elsewhere.