If only Naka, staying true to form, had given the whole thing a dose of high speed; his work only holds together when it hurtles past our eyes, growing vivid with velocity.
While the spectacle of a gruff, coffee-pounding Pikachu in a deerstalker hat will never not be charming, Detective Pikachu Returns is less enjoyable than both its breakthrough predecessor and, somehow, the surprisingly decent Hollywood movie spin-off. The odd world-building is still on point, though, and younger players will doubtless find some fun in the not-so-murky corners of Ryme City, even if the intrigue is light and the detecting itself is a little rote.
Indeed, there remains about Saints Row the air of a slightly desperate brainstorming session.
Far more damning is the fact that The Quarry, though happily thronged with beasts, is barren of scares.
If only House of Ashes were possessed with something malevolent enough to actually scare us; sadly, it commits a litany of sins, none of them original.
A choose-your-own horror without any fright, The Casting of Frank Stone has an intriguing plot that doesn’t end up delivering.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is not, nor was it, a good video game, but this loving remaster makes you think of what may still come.
A bright and vibrant world filled with dull combat and a plodding story.
Skull and Bones is a dull exercise in checklist progression, spiced here and there with some impressive sailing.
More than any other studio, Ubisoft is willing to mutate its existing IPs until they scarcely resemble what they once were.
As it happens, though I played for much longer, I had had more than my fill after the first four hours, with no desire to venture back in.
In an odd way, then, Glass Bottom Games has captured the truth of the situation; contrary to its mission of cuteness, it has made a game that feels hollow-boned, caged by unflattering mechanics.
At the end of The Artful Escape, all I could think of were the words he fired back at a heckler, angered by the electricity in the air: I don’t believe you.
There are, of course, multiple endings, and the minutes leading up to each resolution can be flavoured with violence and revelation, or laced with deceit. The question is: Do we care?
Its skyline is happy to quote at length from Blade Runner, but the poetry is in short supply.
We begin to see our hero’s life as a line—darting and looping instead of living.
Reaching the credits, I sat back, exhausted and disappointed at where the series had ended up.
The best time I had with the game was a ten-minute stretch that contained (a) no crashes or bugs, (b) the right level and world tier-essentially, a measure of enemy toughness-and (c) a harmony of tactics, sorcery, and gunfire.
Bloober Team has summoned a rich atmosphere, under all that writing, and one or two sequences offer glimpses of a purer game.
Where the action comes alive is in the leaving behind of bodies altogether. Most missions involve breaking and entering, and the thrill lies in the absence of any breaking.