Mafia: Definitive Edition is tedious enough as it is by 2020 standards. Clunky gunplay and lousy vehicle handling make the shootouts as frustrating as the getaway drive. The promising setup can’t avoid getting whacked either as it disappoints through its inability to meaningfully execute on its multiple beats. The talented cast and better realized 1930s world outdo its 2002 counterpart, but the rest of its blunders come together and result in an offer that’s relatively easy to refuse.
Mindless co-op shooters can be alluring and Zombie Army 4: Dead War tries be one of those brainless games, but ends up being more braindead instead.
Stories usually need some sort of momentum and Life Is Strange 2 had trouble maintaining it for multiple reasons.
Intentions to do something different are appreciated, but the way these additions sabotage the previously pristine core mechanics will only make your blood boil instead.
Addressing more personal mental issues is novel in gaming and that much is admirable but trying isn’t always enough. Storytelling matters as much as — if not more than — the story you’re trying to tell and the game’s clumsy script and amateurish performances demonstrate how one side can spoil the other.
Whereas the first episode was a promising start and the second episode seemed like anomaly, this third episode appears to disprove that by setting a disappointing tone for the rest of the season. And we’ll have to wait yet another four or so months to see if that’s accurate or not.
Life is Strange 2 Episode 2 feels more like a crossover bonus sequel to The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit than a true continuation of the first episode
Desert Child is built upon the promise of solid ideas that don’t quite come together. And sadly, they’re so deeply intertwined that a mistake in one aspect of the game critically injures the other part of the game.
Zombies feels more like a limited-time Warzone event cobbled together from existing ideas and assets and that sentiment permeates throughout MWIII. Each pillar is an inferior patchwork of past ideas from its stunted campaign to its multiplayer that, while the strongest mode, is comprised of systems lifted wholesale from MWII with maps from 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This year’s COD is a threadbare expansion masquerading as a sequel and an embarrassing way to mark the series’ 20th anniversary.
Giving players the freedom to capture anything sounds liberating, but its lack of structure makes it all a hollow endeavor, a feeling that’s only made even more extreme during its general, unsatisfying ending.
Pumping out tired horror adventures annually instead of taking the time to develop more refined, original experiences has led to an overall disappointing Dark Pictures season with a finale that fittingly encapsulates that unrealized potential.
Midnight Fight Express needed more focus to realize its potential. Constantly throwing out different hazards and enemy types at a dizzying pace doesn’t work if the foundation is rocky, and confusing variety for quality is one of its structural problems.
Shadow Warrior 3 did take the series back to basics, but a Wang this basic is not always as satisfying as it should be, especially when it isn’t hard enough.
Solar Ash is a little more ambitious than Hyper Light Drifter with its jump to 3D, but it has traded ambition for quality. The gameplay puts up the impression that it wants to be a kinetic platformer, yet it’s a shallow imitation of one that repeats a depressing number of times before it hits credits. Like a solar flare, Solar Ash hits players with a sharp burst of energy as it opens with some promising, speedy mechanics. But that energy quickly dissipates as it loses momentum right after its initial explosion as it trudges from level to level and never picks back up.
Shovel Knight was an example of an indie platformer that did hold up its end of the deal on both ends and that comparison doesn’t work in Cyber Shadow’s favor. Its boss fights and soundtrack can compete with other modern indie greats, but the rest of its gameplay inherits many of the antiquated parts that have been stripped out in other thoughtful throwbacks. This dichotomy makes Cyber Shadow a lot like its protagonist as it is made up of parts both old and new. But unlike Shadow, Cyber Shadow is made up of obsolete pieces, resulting in a rusty, defective cyber ninja that’s stuck in the wrong time period.
Destroy All Humans 2 - Reprobed is better than the first remake on paper, but Reprobed’s advancements are severely diminished because of its repetitive nature.
Bright Memory: Infinite is, ultimately, a demo, one with slick gunplay that deserves to grow into something more than a teaser with a painfully ironic subtitle.
Those 13 years should have led to something better, and it’s surprising that they haven’t. Alan Wake’s gunplay has gone from dull to frustrating in the sequel, while its venture into true survival horror has been plagued by predictability and amateurish jump scares. Its narrative has a few memorable moments and is able to periodically use its outlandish antics to its advantage, yet it is still dragged down by its refusal to provide enough rewarding resolutions to its litany of riddles. Alan Wake 2 doesn’t improve on what made the original such a cult hit and is instead an uncharacteristically rough draft that needed more edits. It’s not a lake or an ocean. It’s a disappointment.
It’s ironic that a game all about breathing life into pictures can’t breathe life into its own core mechanic. Witnessing a flat picture expand into something tangible or using photography to reposition the existing stage is a technical marvel that hardly goes beyond being just a visual spectacle. These systems deserve much more than that, but, like film lacking contrast, it’s underdeveloped and only a faint outline of what it should be.
It seemed like Alex was damned to wallow in limbo until the end of time, but it’s Oxenfree 2 that ended up being caught in a loop. Some of those replicated features work in its favor, like its fluid dialogue and cast of decently well-realized characters, yet it’s too heavily anchored to its predecessor. The aforementioned dialogue system is mostly the same and hasn’t been further streamlined or upgraded. Traversal is still too slow. And even though its narrative builds on what came before, it struggles to provide a comprehensive summary of that first game and contextualize those all-important events. All of these stumbles mean that Oxenfree 2’s signal isn’t lost, just full of unnecessary static.