Billy Givens
In its quest to mimic other successful franchises, Amplify Creations has created the Frankenstein of video games. Decay of Logos is an unbalanced, unresponsive mess with little soul to pick up the slack. There are far too many better alternatives to waste any time with this fundamentally broken adventure.
Layers of Fear 2 has some mildly redeeming qualities, but there are too many better horror games available to waste your time and money on something that requires you to dig so hard for fun.
Déraciné had potential but its disappointing to see it become nothing but a rudimentary slog.
The Kraken is an insignificant addition to The Surge 2's campaign, so only diehard fans looking for 100% completion will find anything worth their time or money.
There is some fun to be had piloting the robots in Cyberpilot, but the mission brevity and padding really dampens the experience and steals away control right as you're settling into a groove. There are worse ways to spend a few hours of your day, but there are much better ones too.
Sniper Elite V2 Remastered is a conflicted game. It's one part phenomenal sniping experience and one part clunky, run-of-the-mill third-person shooting gallery full of awful AI. If you're able to overlook its glaring faults, there's fun to be derived from its attention to realism in its sniping and its brilliant bullet cam gore, but overall, the one's best left in the past.
There's just not much to The Lego Movie 2 Videogame that stands out as original. The core mechanics are mostly sound, but the rehashed movie story is told in a disjointed, unappealing fashion, and most of the things the game does well were done even better in previous games in the series.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 might just be the series' worst installment yet.
Chronos: Before the Ashes is neither terrible enough to disown entirely nor deep or engaging enough to warrant a recommendation for anyone but the most genre-craved diehards.
AO Tennis 2 can be a hell of a lot of fun, but if you're easily annoyed by some inconsistent controls and a steep learning curve, you're better off avoiding this one.
Sea of Solitude isn't a bad game, but it's one that could've been far more profound if it handled its delicate subject matter with more care. There's an engaging story to be told, but all of its compelling narrative ideas are constantly undermined by its cringe-inducing voice acting and bad dialogue. Meanwhile, gameplay suffers from a general lack of things to do or discover in its beautiful world, leaving players with a sense of fatigue as the game wears on.
Observation combines an excellent narrative and presentation with some often cumbersome gameplay elements that really drag the experience down. It's absolutely worth seeing through to its conclusion, but it may not come easy to the impatient and unforgiving.
In Bright Memory: Infinite, a brief campaign doesn't keep the game from providing some above-average shooter excitement.
The Surge 2 builds on what made the original a sleeper hit, but it regrettably maintains some of the visual and design foibles that deserved to be improved on in a second outing.
NHL 20 brings enough new to the table that it feels like a worthwhile upgrade over last year's entry, bringing the incredibly fun new Eliminator mode and revamped commentary that breathes some new life into the experience. Sadly, the AI remains occasionally nightmarish, and the game's consistently-growing collection of modes means EA is leaving some older modes out to die, resulting in a lot of fluff to sort through to get to the good stuff.
From a gameplay perspective, there's no denying that NBA 2K20 reigns supreme as the best basketball game you'll want to play this year. Sadly, 2K Games seems to be expanding its microtransaction plague throughout the experience to a point that it feels oppressive. Still if you're able to wade through the muck and deal with the advertisements and pay-to-win modes, you won't be disappointed by the stellar updates and excellent presentation you've come to expect.
EA has an impressive sports line-up, but this year's NHL entry clearly got a bit less love than some of the more universally adored sports.
NBA Live 19 is a great improvement over previous years' iterations, but the developers need to show some extra confidence to ever make the game feel like a true slam dunk.
Blackout is the highlight mode in this year's iteration and zombies mode is fun, but the awful single player content drags down the overall experience.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II doesn't quite live up to the heights set by the game it reboots, but it's still great for those just looking for some fun online shootouts.