Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age is a beautifully designed game from story to gameplay construction. To boot, the game is absolutely gorgeous and is fun to watch in motion. The fact that you have easily over 70+ hours of gameplay (teetering on 100) makes the longevity of the adventure more memorable. This is how you make an RPG, and I hope that the good folks at Square Enix continue to develop the series the same way.
Phantasy Star is the best release so far from the Sega Ages series. It shows off innovation, outside the box thinking, and, after all these years, it is still a blast to play. It's one for the ages, folks.
Overall, Skelattack is a solid game that will put you to the test as much as it will mesmerize you with story and visuals. It might be a bit much for some, but the story makes the journey worth the trouble.
Horizon Chase Turbo is simple fun that doesn't offer up an overbearing challenge for its racers. It contains some good rewards, which help keep the player motivated, but needs to be just a bit deeper in the physics department. All in all, though, it's a fun arcade racer.
The Nintendo Switch version of L.A. Noire maintains everything good about the original release, while adding a few new tricks to the mix to make the game a little bit more interesting, including 'touch'. Beyond the Switch tricks, L.A. Noire is still a game I enjoy playing, especially in a portable form. It's like a violent Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego mixed with the open world structure of a Grand Theft Auto, both intelligent and dumb fun.
Berzerk Recharged from SneakyBox and Atari gives a tip of the hat to a wonderful 80s arcade experience, even at times when the hat tip means carrying some of the original frustrations.
Sairento VR is a fun experience and one that is far more complete than most VR gaming experiences out there. With it you get a good story, fantastic gameplay mechanic design and a good set of multi-tiered levels to use those mechanics in. This is more than just a gimmicky, short experience, which most VR games slip under these days, as it is a bright spot in a sea of VR shipwrecks.
Battlefield V is full of a lot more content than people might be expecting. War Stories contains meaningful experiences in short spurts, the maps in the game are huge and well designed, the modes of play raise the entertainment bar when compared to Battlefield I, and the customization/progression system will keep people occupied for a while, as well as provide motivation to keep playing. This feels like a Battlefield game, which should tame concerns of lack of launch content.
The gameplay design of Torchlight III is fun and motivating, but it has some deeper flaws that need to be addressed. Players must have a balance of difficulty and challenge. Giving players too much advantage at the beginning and overpowering them will not benefit the longevity of the game. If you need proof, go look at Bungie's Destiny 2, which is struggling to maintain challenging content, while believing that making players 'grind' for shoddy rewards is the right solution for the issue. Finding that balance of building up a character properly and delivering difficulty and challenging enemies along the way is what other action RPGs, like Diablo, classics. Echtra Games did a great job with the initial groundwork of Torchlight III's gameplay design, but it needs a bit more balance in some backend areas.
The gameplay certainly isn't perfect, as the younger audience that Tose and Square Enix are trying to reach rears its head in the gameplay structure once in awhile through the game's flow and simplicity, but World of Final Fantasy is diverse and deep enough to keep the excitement going from beginning to end. Just come prepared with a good GPU to push it on the PC. [Nathaniel Stevens separately reviewed the PC (8.3) and PS4 (8.6) versions. Their scores have been averaged.]
Frantics is a fun four-player party game that does its beset imitation of being a Mario Party lite. It's engaging, fun, at times frustrating, but nonetheless a good addition to the PlayLink game family.
Overall, this is the best version of Hitman you can get, as it is the complete version. This is especially nice, if you don't own any of the prior content.
The majority of my experience with Destiny 2: Forsaken over the last two weeks has been overwhelmingly positive. I think the addition of Gambit, the change up of gameplay design and leveling, the raid, and the sense of scale with the two additional maps has really notched the entertainment value for this series up quite a bit. Forsaken truly is the best thing that has happened to the series. They do need to get crucible cleaned up, though, and sooner rather than later.
Overall, if you liked Patapon 2 back in the day, you're going to enjoy this release on the PlayStation 4. It doesn't do anything particularly special other than giving you the game you might have loved in 2009 on a bigger screen.
Overall, with all its gameplay design simplicity on the surface, Journey to the Savage Planet still held some fun discoveries along the way that was drenched in short stints of tongue/cheek humor. It does bring a solid adventure and the fact that you can co-op with a friend helps to keep it all fresh and fun.
The Wizards creates a nice environment to explore and provides a short adventure to draw gamers into a magical land. Unfortunately, the unpredictable VR controls frustrate gameplay and are a distraction from totally enjoying an immersive wizard experience.
I'm shocked with the scope, the size, and the feel to a game that is now two years old (as of March 7th). It is still very much a unique title that offers up about everything you ever dreamed in one single experience. The fact that you'll want to replay it speaks volumes about what is in store for you. There aren't a lot of games that make you want to revisit them so quickly, but NieR: Automata is definitely one of them.
It’s a bold release that they took a chance on. For the most part, they executed it decently. I wish more developers took on something oddball like this, as it does provide a unique journey that most wouldn’t have dreamed could be translated.
At the end of the day, Red Wings is actually a good game. Is it great? Probably not, mainly for longevity reasons, but it's fun to play. It feels like a well-designed and executed WWI dogfight game and it certainly is a comfortable bit of fun on the Nintendo Switch. Will it be replacing your Flight Simulator on your PC anytime soon? No, but that's okay. It's honestly not trying to do that at all.
As it stands, you get classics, and a hopeful outlook there is more to come in the third installment of the series.