Outlast 2 can't compete with its own legacy, and while it's still a decent horror game with plenty of scares to offer, there is nothing I can point to here that I could claim as an improvement over the last one.
I wish this game had a head so I could stamp on the back of it and push it mercilessly into a pile of sick and guts.
The remaster itself, tragically, is really quite good. It runs beautifully in 4K at a smooth 60 frames-per-second, with characters and environments that still look striking today. Aside from some occasionally buggy ally A.I., it's polished up nicely, and I wish I could say it was worth rushing out to buy.
The Sexy Brutale deserves as much attention as any Horizon, Zelda, Nioh or Persona.
Andromeda is fun… sometimes. Other times it's a dreary slog through recycled cutscenes, infantile character interactions, and a lot of badly masked loading screens.
Yooka-Laylee is a game out of time, clinging so desperately to past glories it doesn't seem to understand the Earth kept spinning after the N64 was discontinued. It's everything wrong about the formative years of 3D platforming and it somehow retained none of what made the genre's highlights endure. Yooka-Laylee is, in a word, rubbish.
Few games are able to showcase the power of the medium like Nier: Automata.
Truly, I wish I could say I understood what all the critics were raving about in their onslaught of 10/10 reviews, but I don't. I see too many things getting in the way of the brilliance, too much repetitive busywork and full-on dick moves for me to say this is even close to my favorite Zelda game, much less in the top five.
Vaccine is shit, but it does say its own name in a creepy deep voice when you start it, which is the single thing it has over Resident Evil 7.
Berserk and the Band of the Hawk isn't a bad time, but it's not quite the Berserk Warriors I was hoping for. The story mode is great fun for a while but soon falls apart, character unlocks are tantalizing until you realize how thin on the ground they are, and generally nothing good the game does comes without at least some minor caveat.
Horizon: Zero Dawn is just brilliant. I speak as a critic who has played more "open sandbox" games than any one human should and has grown so very weary of them. I should have gotten sick of this thing in an hour, but I've been glued to it for days and days and I don't want it to end.
After spending several hours playing this cheap looking knock-off, all I could think about was digging up my old copy of Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition (that's its real name) and playing some real Omega Force action. Not this misleadingly titled exercise in mediocrity.
Nioh got attention for its similarities to other titles, but it deserves to be remembered as its own special game, one that sees and raises the efforts presented by its inspirations. With fast and uncompromising combat, an engrossing economy of loot, and a mesmerizing artistic style, action-RPGs have rarely been this refined or this captivating.
Life of Black Tiger is a massive piece of f***ing shit. Also it has multiplayer.
In its current form, Resident Evil 7 is a damn fine game. Damn, damn fine. Although it initially looks like a desperate chase for Outlast‘s credibility, it slowly reveals itself to be more of a traditional Resident Evil adventure than one might believe, while taking successful elements from contemporary horror games and utilizing them effectively.
Playing Yakuza 0 has been a revelation, one tinged with excitement at the prospect of what I’ve been missing and can now experience. As a first foray into Sega’s world of gangsters, BDSM, and fishing minigames, it’s been an utter joy to play.
Even if it wasn’t a good game at its core – which it is – it’d at least get some credit for the soundtrack. I realize this is an odd note to end a review on, but I couldn’t find a natural fit for it in the rest of the text and just had to make a note of how great these bloody tunes are!
Final Fantasy XV, despite significant and glaring problems, is still a lovely time that managed to make me like Final Fantasy again. It's a character piece, and the characters we spend our time with are fully realized and play off each other so well. It's a lighter journey that nonetheless knows when to get serious, spurred by a charismatic nemesis and a quartet of lovable, beautiful boys. And good God is it weird.
It’s definitely worth the time, especially being free to start, and I would recommend anybody with a PS4 and a love of brawling check it out. It’s a well put together little game with a good dash of trademark Grasshopper oddity. As a throwaway bit of violent action with some clever online features, it’s a good time.
I wish I could say I love the game, that its plagued by only minor setbacks, but I cannot honestly do that. I can't look back at how much time was spent not enjoying myself, at how much time was spent actively wrestling with the game to wring anything worthwhile from it, and say I played the masterpiece many are going to say it is.