Godzilla is an emaciated experience, with a dangerously ambitious price tag that smacks of men in suits preying on fans hoping for the best. Once again, this oversized, irradiated monster has been let down by video games.
Daylight's claim to fame is its reported replay value; that no scare will ever be the same twice. While it is technically true that the level geometry does change from playthrough-to-playthrough, the scares certainly see some overlap, and the writing isn't worth a return visit. There are no nascent ideas in Daylight – just the desperate, flailing attempts to throw every horror cliché at the wall.
Zombie Army Trilogy feels exactly like what you think it is – a collection of DLC packages. With a bare-bones frame propping it up, the game is an emaciated experience with an overly ambitious price tag attempting to tie it all together.
Bladestorm: Nightmare is a game that suffers from its fundamentals. The act of moving your troops around the battlefield, and engaging in combat, is too far removed from the player's input – leading to frustration rather than gratification. Adding dragons to the mix doesn't shake up the formula, and highlights that not all games can act as frameworks for other concepts.
Boring at best, sickness-inducing at worst.
Woefully inadequate AI makes boring combat frustrating.
The game is an anachronism, proving that transposing ideas from the past (without thinking critically about how they should be represented in the present) doesn't always work.
The PS4 version of Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed does carry some extra features (like Twitch chat integration, and modifiable visual filters), but none of it alters the core – a funny idea embedded in mediocre combat. Endearing character interactions allow you to overlook some of the mechanical elements, but the rampant sexualisation drags the whole thing down.
MXGP has a solid, interesting control scheme that is rewarding when you figure out its quirks. The lack of meaningful content, however, in addition to its graphical presentation, severely limits any impetus to continue playing it.
Still visually striking, but poor voice acting has undone much of the gravitas it once had.
Charming tabletop presentation, let down by boring combat.
Driving and customising the buggy is a lot of fun, but not at the expense of tight parkour.
If the best time you can have with Dying Light is through avoiding the main content, maybe that says a lot about how you shouldn't be structuring an open world game.
Solid core systems, but poor presentation and technical issues hold it back.
There’s something meditative and introspective about No Man’s Sky. It’s size and scope elicits feelings of wonder and irrelevance in equal measure, creating metaphors from calculus and code. Those feelings are savagely curtailed by oppressive systems that transform it into something smaller: a videogame.
Exhilarating combat, marred by awkward interactions and pervasive bugs.
Paints a beautiful picture, but it’s a small one.
Design missteps and combat randomness don’t defeat this sombre tale.
Destiny: Rise of Iron isn’t the hardest hitting expansion. That isn’t due to the content being poor – what’s there is solid, even if there isn’t a lot of it. It just doesn’t reimagine some of the core concepts the way that The Taken King did, which puts it at a severe disadvantage when comparing it. But if you don’t mind interfacing with Destiny’s familiar grinding elements because you appreciate the shooting, and you have a team of like-minded players to tackle the new raid, then Rise of Iron is an acceptable footnote to the sci-fi FPS.
The driving in GRID Autosport is fantastic, and certainly more in-line with Codemaster's (and the fan's) vision of what their series should be. While the singleplayer A.I. detracts from the overall experience, and the lack of personality is disappointing, these are all just minor issues that orbit a game with a solid foundation.