Offworld turns a spreadsheet simulator into a knock-down drag-out scrap for Martian resources and almighty dollars. The pacing is almost breakneck. But with so much transparency in delivering the numbers, it maintains a sense of fairness, even as black market tactics from less-scrupulous rivals threaten to tear down your 30-minute monehy-making empires.
Koi is cute, it’s simple, but worth a swim if you’re in the mood for a low-rent Journey.
Catlateral Damage isn't a cat simulator, really. It simply takes the shove-things-off-the-ledge aspect of a cat's personality and runs that concept into the ground. Different cats don't do anything different, and different rooms don't feel all that different either. Cute for a little while, and fun for a couple swings, but boredom set in before I'd even unlocked every cat or wrecked every room.
Automatron pays off by taking advantage of Fallout 4's pulpy, ludicrous--yet still somehow slightly dry--sense of humor. Like any good sci-fi involving robots, it exposes people's humanity and inhumanity. And it adds new toys and settlement pieces to your toolbox. It's a well-rounded piece of DLC, and introduces you to the Mechanist, one of Fallout 4's more memorable villains.
Sky Fortress cranks up Just Cause 3’s bombastic effects more, if that were even possible. The addition of the jetpack wingsuit and Bavarium rifle make a video game-y video game even gamier. They change up the game enough—and in enough good ways—that I wouldn’t want to give back the new toys.
Even better than presenting its dangers, Firewatch presents the threat of danger. This is no feel-good summer beach read; this is a brutally beautiful and fragile story of people running from their problems—and problems running away from any tidy conclusions. This is the video game equivalent of a page turner, and adventure games have rarely been in finer form.
If My Little Ponies trampled a bouncy house and shot it toward Saturn, then you'd have an idea of what Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime looks like. It'll be tough to make an FTL-like more adorable than this one. The frantic one- or two-player co-op is mandatory and makes for a not-so-lonely outer space.
Tharsis, you hate me, but I like you. Your small and meticulous craftsmanship. Your board game sensibilities. Your dancefloor rhythms thumping out the soundtrack to my cyclical death. I couldn't stop myself from voyaging (and dying on the way) to Tharsis again and again.
Just Cause 3 gets away with more stunts and high-flying hijinks that, let's be honest, even Hollywood can't get away with much anymore. Come for the explosions, but stay for the, well, stay for even more explosions.
Divinity: Original Sin knows when to be whimsical, and when to take its strategic gameplay seriously. The trade-offs can be heavy. The penalties are stiff. The payoffs feel great. Old school role-playing game fans: There's a lot here for you to take in. It'll often fascinate and it'll occasionally frustrate. Getting into Original Sin's groove is a great niche to find yourself in. This Enhanced Edition on PS4 is indeed better in many, many ways.
Fallout 3 was seven years ago. Fallout 4 is one you can play, off and on, for the next seven. Congratulations, Bethesda: You've outdone yourselves again. You've made the Wasteland more beautiful, ugly, open ended, funneled down, thoughtful, and frantic than ever.
The Talos Principle is a meaningful exercise. Sure, I worked out my brain with some good old fashioned puzzle solving. But the real workout began when I started sweating questions of why-am-I-here existence, of what constitutes consciousness—and whether the end is really the end, or if it's really the beginning, or if it's somewhere along the way.
Tearaway is something like seeing Where the Wild Things Are, hobbled together with Elmer's glue, cut along dotted lines with terrible little grade school scissors, and creased with papercraft folds. It's an adventure that's big on controls, a bit weak in dialogue, and best enjoyed in smaller, bite-sized sessions. Tearaway is unusual, in every sense of the word.
Journey is masterful. It's meaningful. You won't remember the details of every journey, but every journey is unforgettable. You'll have no choice but to play it again and again.
When it comes to psychological scares, this whodunit of a ghost story introduces you to your own worst enemy: Being inside your own head. You may anticipate more horror than you'll actually run across, but that's a horrific thought in its own right.
Sometimes you're a rat in a cage. Sometimes you're a lion. But when all your planning, patience, and possibly plain old good luck finally pays off, The Escapists rewards in a rare way. Because in The Escapists, whether you catch a break or catch a beatdown, you'll know you've earned it.
Rack N Ruin is a twin-stick shooter (sort of) with a juvenile appreciation for wanton destruction. The role-reversal, with you as the bad guy, brings up some interesting questions, but the story doesn't take neart enough advantage of that fact. It can be good to be bad, but Rack N Ruin's character isn't all that deep.
The premise behind Nom Nom Galaxy wears thin after a can or two. Its neatly focused premise and evolving puzzles don't progress at a rate to keep things stimulating for more than a few planets' worth of corporate conquest. The minimalist art is, at times, print worthy. The music makes me want to move back into a dorm room. But Nom Nom Galaxy doesn't often inspire the sense of exploratory wanderlust that should underpin Terraria-like worlds such as these. And the narrow gameplay and tightly wound clock makes everything feel like too much work, not enough play.
Marvel's Avengers–Age of Ultron looks like a 10-car pileup glued together with overly looping dialogue and a few forgivable missteps. Even without prior existing knowledge of these superheroes' thoughts and motivations, it's still a challenging table with subtle rewards.
Take simple, Pitfall-like platforming (minus the rope swinging), mix in a hint of Sword & Sworcery's art style, and then you have an overreaching X-meets-Y makeup of The Deer God. I feel like its motivations are far better than half-hearted; creatively and intentionally. But The Deer God keeps asking me to return to a life I find less and less interesting with each reincarnation.