Dying Light presents a dynamic and frustrating parallel; it's quick to dazzle its audience with heaping stacks of energetic (if not wholly borrowed) content, but equally capable of coming apart under the burgeoning stress of weaving it all together. A reticence to acknowledge its own pratfalls leaves the responsibility of proper assembly to the player. If you're up to that particular challenge, Dying Light's one of the more impressive games of the modern generation.
There are times when Saints Row IV feels like the greatest super hero game ever made and there are times when it feels paralyzed by all of its power. Even when Saints Row IV retreats into molds it's perfectly equipped to destroy, it's always operating under the some of the most ridiculous and hilarious context seen in a videogame. Humor sharpens Saints Row IV's experience, though it won't stop you from wondering of what it could have been with a bit more focus.
Wrapping American cultural stereotypes and the feckless disposition of politicians around an effigy of Earthbound is an electrifying thesis, but not one that Citizens of Earth quite sees to its potential or conclusion. The ingenuity of its character-based progression systems is stacked against tedious battle mechanics, suspect level design, and demoralizing performance crashes. Citizens of Earth is ultimately a victory, but not without a few conspicuous bruises.
By tying humor and outrageous context to its moving parts, Saints Row The Third and Saints Row IV became viable systems in the modern open-world paradigm. Gat out of Hell (mostly) forgets all of this, sheds (mostly) all of its psychotic humor, and bolts on (mostly) dated mechanics. Its intended function may be a stop-gap between major iterations, but its execution feels like a failed audition against its recent past.
Mystery of Mooil Rig continues Sunset Overdrive's maelstrom of colorful and chaotic action. As far as downloadable content goes, Mystery of Mooil Rig is wholly traditional - but when it's applied to a game as whimsically defiant as Sunset Overdrive, it's tough to complain.
Far Cry 4 is radiant with opportunities to both seize and indulge in its power. This speaks to its fondness for connected progression systems, an insistence on emblazoning its geography with scores of content, and meaningful improvements to the blueprint laid out by Far Cry 3. It's the latter that gives Far Cry 4 the most trouble, a sense of déjà vu permeates an otherwise honest artifice, but it keeps a straight face amid its more prominent transgressions.
In its third mainline iteration, LittleBigPlanet's momentum shifts from a bastion of adaptive entertainment to a lightning rod of tailored inspiration. It's a logical progression, one that sacrifices personal moments of professionally crafted clarity, but in their place is a tidy collection of tools and concepts masquerading as purpose-driven levels – and the hope that talented players will embrace enough of them to fill in LittleBigPlanet 3's considerable gaps in content.
Legacy Collection 2, while imperfect, provides a suitable direction to follow four mainline Mega Man games across modern hardware.
The creative energy fueling Sunset Overdrive is an agent of change for a genre in creative decline. Its jubilant deluge of light and color, meaningful revisions to control and combat, and the sweeping diversity of skill-based missions push the open-world paradigm harder and faster than any of its peers. With Sunset Overdrive, freely accessible content isn't a passive and plodding support structure, but rather a demanding and attractive call for constant engagement.
The Legend of Korra dissipates potential as quickly as it disappoints a prospective audience. Korra's fiction and Platinum's development lineage impart a veritable dream team of narrative and design, but neither party seemed to bring the necessary hardware to live up to their respective and respected standards.
Alien: Isolation projects an authoritative and unrepentant sense of despair consistent with Ridley Scott's 1979 classic. As powerful and affecting as its influence may be, it's applied with enough force to drive Isolation off its rails. It never crashes, but after an aggressively defiant start, it teeters and wobbles its way toward an unassertive and obedient conclusion.
Bayonetta 2 expresses a meticulous devotion to excessive elaborateness of style and action. It's a calculated brawler that not only minds its rules with painstaking diligence, but trusts its operator with how to best interpret them. The delicate engineering of merciless destruction has long been Platinum Games' modus operandi, and Bayonetta 2 is the purest and most potent declaration of their intentions.
Deception's always been an implicit facet of Dark Souls' architecture. With Crown of the Ivory King, it steps out of the shadows and transitions to a palpable theme. Paired with Crown of the Sunken King and Crown of the Old Iron King, it's enough to wish From Software could extend Dark Souls II's life with interminable rounds of additional content.
Neverending Nightmares revels in tension and survives through conservation of its primal resource. Unfolding it exposes a weird paradox; a game that actively campaigns against a traditional desire to play it, and yet seeks to capture attention all the same. What Neverending Nightmares sacrifices in playability, however, it gains raw and relatable emotion.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is an impassioned monument to its prestigious foundations. A product-of-assembly depiction makes for an idle assessment, but it's difficult not to look at Ethan Carter and see narrative guidance from Twain and Vern, Lovecraft's proclivity for the destructive supernatural, and Chandler's pulpy detective fiction. The tale Ethan Carter ultimately aches to tell isn't as complex or natural as its influences, but it finds ample success in directing a curious story through an interactive ensemble.
Dead Rising 3's inability to operate without consistently crashing wasn't a simple technical shortcoming, but rather a comprehensive failure that came to damage and define every aspect of its experience. Looking back on my time with Dead Rising 3, I'm not thinking of open-world mayhem under the stress of a cataclysmic time crunch, but rather the ugly and sudden halt of everything I found enjoyable in the intended game.
Crown of the Old Iron King is a showcase of Dark Souls II's aggressive enemy encounter design. It folds a few other cards in favor of its ace, but such is the endearing nature and defining risk of inspired post-game content. Applied to Dark Souls II, Iron King stands as a thoughtful one-off that fits neatly alongside Sunken King.
CounterSpy revels in the consistency of its chaos. When its directed assemblage of menacing systems are behaving with candid sincerity, CounterSpy is an exciting model of action and reaction. When its pieces collude together in a remorseless coincidence, CounterSpy feels like it's coming apart at the seams. Drawing inspiration from a satirical appreciation of the Cold War, it's fair for CounterSpy to teeter on the edge of principled oblivion. Finding value in its eccentricity, however, controls whether you can hang on or fall off.
The Last Tinker's worldly charm belongs with the colorful and carefree platformers it longs to emulate. Most everything else, on the other hand, feels less poised to be a big time contender and more like a flyweight absently swinging at everything in the way. A heart of gold surrounded by endless color makes it all easier to swallow, but you're left wondering what could have been had The Last Tinker's gameplay come on as strong as its presentation.
Surgeon Simulator Anniversary Edition is still giant dripping bucket of stupid fun - and most of the new content is great - but absent is the howling laughter and pure novelty from its debut. Playing it all again, it's more of a tedious game and less of a pristine collection of interactive nonsense. If it's your first time, however, managing Surgeon Simulator's commitment to inane detail alongside its savage construction is a great ride.