Phil Hornshaw's Reviews
Though it can be strange and fascinating, Slitterhead ultimately feels empty thanks to dull and frustrating combat and repetitive missions.
Fluid Omni-movement feels great in Black Ops 6 multiplayer, but design that facilitates intense close-range fights can feel limiting. Treyarch's latest entry into the Call of Duty series uses creative mission design and its new omni-movement system to tell a fun but sometimes nonsensical story. [OpenCritic note: Phil Hornshaw separately reviewed the campaign (8) and multiplayer (8) on behalf of GameSpot. The scores have been averaged.]
With a character-driven story and a focus on enhancing its gameplay on nearly every level, The Final Shape feels like what Destiny 2 has been trying to be all along.
The fundamentals of XDefiant are good, but conflicting ideas and mechanics stop it from standing above a crowded shooter field.
Though it has a somewhat steep combat learning curve and some dated open-world ideas, Rise of the Ronin does a great job of rewarding your time in its world.
Playing a medieval church cop hunting a vampire is a great concept, but blurry choices, weak combat, and a ton of handholding keep The Inquisitor from leading a compelling inquisition.
Returning to a 2D perspective lets Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown perfect its controls and combat while capturing everything that was great about the heyday of the series.
Though it includes a lot of familiar open-world elements, a minimalistic user interface, fun movement mechanics, and a gorgeous setting make it a blast to explore Pandora.
Operation Deadlock mixes Zombies with Warzone's DMZ mode, and while the combination can create some heart-stopping battles, you have to be willing to grind to see them.
Expanding and improving on the original in every way, The Talos Principle 2 is a brilliant puzzler that's most compelling during conversations with its characters.
Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a boring, buggy, totally unambitious game that isn't even interesting in its failures.
While Lords of the Fallen has all the right Souls-like elements, its disjointed pacing and painful checkpoint system make much of the game a slow and frustrating march.
Drawing from Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Thymesia creates a Souls-like experience that iterates on what's most important about From's beloved titles.
Developer Roll7 excellently mixes high-scoring skating gameplay with shooter ideas to make a hybrid game that's tough to put down.
Void Riders is mostly more OlliOlli World, and while its new challenges won't blow you away, more of a good thing is a good thing.
With an expanded endgame, new difficulty tiers, and new story content, Worldslayer adds a lot to Outriders, even if none of the additions are mind-blowing.
There's a lot of meme potential in Stranger of Paradise thanks to its willingness to be aggressively confusing, but fun, varied combat carries its most WTF moments forward.
Bungie continues to improve its shooter MMO with the best story campaign it has yet produced and a whole lot of great additional content to keep players engaged.
Horizon Forbidden West sometimes packs in so much that it gets in its own way, but the many well-drawn characters populating its quests keep it compelling.
Developer Roll7 has improved on every aspect of the OlliOlli franchise to create a huge, fun arcade skating game that's easy-going, but just as challenging as its predecessors.