Justin Woo
- Planescape: Torment
- Dragon Age: Origins
- Life Is Strange
The latest Dark Pictures Anthology installment takes narrative risks and refines mechanical gameplay. While I still take issue with photorealistic graphics, Little Hope is still worth visiting.
Tacoma tells a compelling story with a disappointing conclusion.
If you are a Call of Duty fan, you'll have a good time (hacks aside). If you aren't a Call of Duty fan, there isn't much reason to come back. Playing CoD: WWII is like eating a great salmon filet; if you're into fish, you'll have a great time. If not, you should go find a burger or something.
Skater XL tickles the same part of my brain as my favorite racing sims. It provides a compelling sandbox with enough depth that it makes me want to do a difficult thing well. It's simultaneously relaxing. You can fall on your face 500 times, but there are zero consequences for any of it. No one's keeping score, not of points or broken bones. In troubled times, a low stakes challenge can be a welcome one.
Star Wars Battlefront II has solid core gameplay and offers a wide variety of content to enjoy, but at the moment it's hard to look past the loot crate issues in order to appreciate what the game does well.
ECHO tries new and interesting things, but doesn't always succeed. The gameplay and visuals wear thin over time, but some players will appreciate the game for its originality.
Sea of Thieves has glimmers of promise and is gorgeous to look at, but single player play is virtually worthless, and the repetitive nature of the quests and empty world leave the game feeling incomplete and overpriced.
Despite my frustrations with its shortcomings, I want to see where The Council leads me, and if it manages to deliver a narrative payoff in spite of itself.
Vampyr would've been far better as Jonathan Reid's Point and Click Tale of Moral Adversity than what we got, which was essentially Jonathan Reid's Mashy Exercise in Combat Frustration Sparsely Sprinkled With Plot. Games do not need combat sequences if those sequences do not serve the game's themes and story.
I'm not sure if it's worth the $60 pricetag, but if you're a Mythos fan, you should definitely pick it up when it's on sale.
Mercenaries 5 needed six more months of testing and refinement before seeing the light of day. The game's mech combat is great for enthusiasts of the genre, but the lack of polish may leave newcomers cold. I recommend it for hardcore fans, but casual players may want to wait for the bugs to be ironed out.
The game occasionally creates wild, stupid situations that feel a lot like an 80s action movie, but that’s not enough to sustain a multiplayer game for a long period of time.
Project Cars 3 would've been more successful if it was called something else. It leaves far too many important features on the table for hardcore racers, with an AI that's too buggy and weird for new players. It feels rushed and could use some serious patches.
Despite a strong connection between the choice-oriented gameplay and the script's themes of free will and liberation, DBH's exploration of these themes is ankle deep.
An open world game needs to be engaging and exciting for dozens of hours, and JC4 doesn't manage that feat. It has amusing moments, but it isn't $60 worth of fun unless you really love the series. If you're interested in this game, I suggest you wait til it drops to $25 on sale. It's a nice distraction, but not much more than that.
The game is cute and looks great, but thanks to its control scheme, isn't very fun to play.
Overkill's The Walking Dead is pretty, but doesn't do anything that we haven't seen before in a number of other post-apocalyptic first- or third-person games.
Redout: Space Assault is a reminder that I should fire up Star Wars: Squadrons again. While it's visually appealing given its discount price, it fails to deliver fun and engaging mechanics. If you want an indie and don't dig on Star Wars, there's House of the Dying Sun, an excellent indie that's over four years old and retails for $20. Even in a genre as niche as the space shooter, there are better options available.
Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 combines two exciting properties into an uninspired package.
A:THO ignores the mechanical DNA that make open world games and survival RPGs so much fun. There's nothing revolutionary about depriving you of map functionality and an adequate tutorial. This isn't an evolution so much as a freak mutation that will die off in the wild. There are other games that achieve what A:THO attempts; play them instead.