James Stephanie Sterling
Iron From Ice is a strong start to the series, which some promising narrative setups, a believable atmosphere, and one particularly shocking moment that made my jaw drop.
Assassin's Creed Unity is a beautiful game that's fun to play with friends. It's also an outmoded mess that incenses with its dated controls and shoves Ubisoft's executive-minded priorities directly in the player's face.
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is a fun distraction that, while not exactly gripping, will provide several hours of enjoyable loot n' shoot adventuring. Whether you play with friends or go it alone, you'll have a well polished puzzle-platforming, dungeon crawling, Tomb Raider spin-off that you won't be playing this time next month, but you won't regret giving a spin.
The Talos Principle may spend a bit too much time stroking its beard and showing off how deep it is, but the fact remains that it regularly deserves to posture. Not only is it a highly accomplished puzzle game, it's a genuinely fascinating collection of reflective notions.
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is an accomplished update to a fantastic game, an experience as charming as it is sinister.
It was something both nostalgic and fresh, instantly familiar but teeming with macabre surprises and twists, keeping veterans guessing while giving newcomers a terrific reason to dive into the Spencer Mansion for the very first time. Everything that made the original Resident Evil a success was kept in, while almost all of the dated elements were overhauled and improved. It's good enough that Capcom can actually get away with remastering it and only earn sideways glances from yours truly – and that's saying something.
[T]his expansion is pretty enjoyable, but not essential. It's got some great new weapons and provides an easy excuse to dip back into a world of shameless comic violence – it's also a fairly disposable adventure that doesn't offer much in the way of essential material.
Parkour. Open world. Zombies. Online co-op. Crafting. Radio towers. Zombies. Collect-a-thons. Zombies. Zombies. Dying Light desperately tries to be all of the videogames in a bid to impress everybody. If only it had tried as hard to be its own thing, we'd have had an amazing horror game on our hands. Instead, we just have another indistinct jack-of-all-trades to throw on top of the ever growing pile.
As the series' opening gambit, it did its job. It didn't do much more than that, but it was a decent enough opener.
I'm still waiting for things to kick into high gear and truly take hold of me, but chapter two of House Forrester's tale leaves me in no doubt that such a moment is coming.
While its intoxicated physics can lead to occasional despair, the overwhelming joy of the whole experience is a strong tonic, over the handful of hours it takes to get through, I couldn't help maintaining a smile.
As an overall game, it offers a basic shooter with a nice gimmick, and I do think you can gather some friends together to get an afternoon's worth of laughs out of it. I don't believe there's enough mileage to have those laughs regularly, though, and certainly not enough to where I'd recommend rushing out and getting it so soon after launch.
The world built by 1886 is an engrossing one, and if nothing else the way it's presented is fantastic, especially when it comes to the strong vocal performances and beautiful character animation. As burly English people yell at each other, one could feel they were watching something from the Sharpe series of televised adaptations, even if the dialog is intensely cliched at times – for example, there's a cringeworthy "not so different" speech from an antagonist, including a bromide, "maybe one day you'll understand."
Minor annoyances aside, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse continue's Kirby's hot streak of lovable, imaginative, joyful adventures. As shrewd as it is straightforward, HAL's latest effort provides an afternoon of unassuming fun for a fair price, and no matter how much I try, I just can't ever over how damn wondrous it looks!
It's a "decent enough" little shooter can raise a smile, but not expectations.
Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires is everything a Dynasty Warriors hater thinks about the series made real. It's a contemptuously assembled recycling project, and I'm sick of it.
With its sledgehammer humor and clever blend of stealth and action, Helldivers is a lot smarter than a passing glance might have you believe. It's a game in which life is cheap but the deaths aren't, where carelessness gets you turned into kibble, and sustained battle will leave you with an empty gun and a horde of pissed off monsters.
At any rate, I dread to think how short Episode 3's review is going to be, because it's a damn effort to drum up much to say about even this one.
Nevertheless, we are here simply to say what we already know – The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D is a lovely game
Aside from some problematic resource balancing and some unavoidable repetition, Hand of Fate is a clever game of risks and rewards that is well worth getting dealt into.