The detective returns to his childhood island home to solve an elegant series of cases in this lively open-world story
With its ability to constantly pull the rug out from under you, As Dusk Falls doesn’t fade into a forgettable narrative experience we’ve seen a thousand times. Instead, it leaves its mark, with a long shadow cast by its sad but understandable characters’ hardships drawn across threads seemingly made of jagged wire. What will haunt you is whether the thread you chose really was the best one at the time. As in life, the answer will likely be: probably not.
What makes Miles an important hero for the world of 2020 is not his successes, his abilities, his fighting moves, or even his moral compass to do good: It’s his belief in himself and others that we can rise above this. That’s also his mother’s central focus for her political campaign. Miles has a relentless, if sometimes naïve, belief in others’ goodness. He wants to help the city and neighborhood he loves. And watching him try, watching his small victories, and playing through it with such beautiful animations — with nods to Into the Spider-Verse — became one of my few joys in this dark-as-shit year.
Deathloop is a strange but wondrous beast. It's a time-management game where I built a precision murder machine to effect a carefully plotted rampage. It's also a story about a man finding out who he is and why he's being hunted by a young woman who knows everything about him. Time is Colt's prison, yet also the source of his power.
I want to review this game. But I also want to be cognizant of the alleged awfulness done by men in power to Activision Blizzard workers who merely wanted to do their job. Tasked with remastering a classic, originally created by this same beleaguered corporation, Vicarious Visions does not deserve this taint. The question is whether Vicarious Visions succeeded in its task.
I kept hoping and waiting for some similar Remedy subversion in this mediocre military shooter - waiting for some Remedy splinter that would pop out of the skin of this boring carcass of a game. Yet nothing emerged. Remedy's brand is merely a thin film into which this limp mess was stuffed.