Rory McIlroy PGA Tour may not win any awards for visuals, but it's a solid experience in the gameplay department with flexible controls, entertaining modes and enough depth to keep you going for awhile.
Planetside 2 is entertaining, huge and still a work in progress. It's certainly worth a go, if you have the available time on your side.
Legend of Kay Anniversary is a worthy nod to a 2005 game. Despite its flaws, such as the irritating camera movement, it contains some fun moments, improved graphics and a few other little things to remind you how good it was back in the day.
The Swindle is frustrating at first glance, but smooths out to spread its steampunk wings thanks to some good depth, variety and quick gameplay style.
The Descent is a good addition to the Dragon Age: Inquisition family. It has great atmosphere, wonderful level design and motivates the player to explore the Deep Roads a bit. It does get repetitive in the enemy department, and brutal at times in terms of difficulty, though the rewards help to ease the pain a bit.
Until Dawn doesn't hide what it's trying to do. It's a game that focuses on story and QTE heavy gameplay. It has linear design driving it, while only deviating from the course with player choices, which affect the direction of the story. If you can accept these things, and realize it's not perfect, then you're going to probably enjoy Supermassive Games' horror show.
Overall, the gameplay for Madden NFL 16 has been refined, simplified and improved. It feels like it's going back to a time where playing a football game was less of a chore and more fun. I think EA Tiburon hit the right notes with this year's Madden and has opened the door for everyone wanting to play a good game of football on their current generation system. Kudos to them for logical and entertaining gameplay improvements.
The joy of I Am Bread is the frustration that you have to go through to get to its goals . The wacky control scheme and the uncooperativeness of it all is a planned design, as well as the driving point for the game. Much like Bossa Studios' Surgeon Simulator, which is more about the complication of trying to perform surgery with individually assigned buttons for fingers, I Am Bread is lighter version of that same concept where it's not quite as frustrating, but still nonetheless a chore to play through.
Back to Bed is a visual upgrade from its mobile brethren, but it still maintains the quick, casual fun that the mobile side sported. If you like a decent puzzle game, this might be worth looking at on the PlayStation 4.
The Taken King resets Destiny for the better. It brings a lot more fun to the table while taming all the things people complained about up to this point in the game, well almost all.
Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below is a huge step forward for Omega Force. This is the right formula for making future Dynasty Warrior-like games, as story, leveling structure and beautiful presentation form a perfect wrapper around typical/repetitive button mashing gameplay experience.
While Yoshi's Woolley World sometimes becomes stagnant from level to level, and the lack of chances the game takes helps push that along a bit, it does have some great things going for it to make the entertainment prominent. The challenges, the motivation to explore and the overall theme of the 'Woolley World' help to alleviate the shortcomings the game contains. Yoshi's Woolley World is fun, especially in terms of visuals and Yoshi's added personality, but it's not perfect.
Guitar Hero Live is quite fun.
The initial adventure in Rise of the Tomb Raider is around 6-8 hours, but every minute of it is fun, especially with retooled gameplay controls and unlockables for incentive. Adding to that time frame is a large amount of worthwhile exploring and wonderful backtracking once the campaign is completed. If you're into that, then this game is going to make you happy.
At the end of the day Star Wars: Battlefront has some great positives, but also some clear negatives about it. The game takes current generation consoles to a new level with visuals, even setting some graphical benchmarks for online play, but it drags it down in sustainable substance that is required to keep a game going beyond a two month mark of the release. It needs a bit more to make it worth the price of admission, but there is enough there to keep a gamer entertained during the holidays, or at least until the free DLC arrives in December.
Spelunker World relies a lot on gaming nostalgia to pull it through, while trying to mask the world of microtransactions. It works to an extent, but not completely. There is still too much simple, not enough modern and far too much room for frustration from failure. It's not a horrible game by any means, but it is limited in its capacity for fun in long stints.
I like what Square Enix has done with Final Fantasy Explorers. It has some real potential to be great, but as it stands, it might fall short slightly with a more seasoned Final Fantasy adventurer.
As a whole, LEGO Marvel's Avengers will entertain the young gamers in the household, while providing short spurts of entertainment to seasoned ones. Avengers may not be the best in the LEGO series, but it does fit firmly within the LEGO gaming family.
Awakening is worth the price of admission. Treyarch has always done well with creating a solid multiplayer experience through creative MP maps and Awakening just reaffirms that notion.
Unravel is a unique piece of art in a gaming world filled with first-person shooters and epic AAA titles. It's not perfect, but it does a great job challenging one's brain, while delivering some visually stunning scenery to make you forget you're working hard to progress and push through. Certainly a must-have for 2016.