With every release, the same issues that Ubisoft has been rolling over year over year seem to have compounded themselves to a point where the entire package winds up suffering. Sure, this isn't the broken mess that Assassin's Creed Unity was, but in some ways it's more of a blemish than its predecessor. After all, this is a functional game that simply isn't all that fun to play, which is far more damning than any technical glitch could ever be.
This story, these characters and this product are simply too good for only a small segment of the population to enjoy.
Sure, if you still have a ton of things to do in Wild Hunt (and frankly, why wouldn't you?) then you can certainly justify passing on paying for more content, but if you're someone who wants another robust storyline to dive into and some intriguing new mechanics, then Hearts of Stone is for you. Yes, this is more Wild Hunt, but seeing as how masterful it is, how could that be anything but a fantastic thing?
While the mechanics are not as tight as they could be, and there still is a bit of rust hanging around from Early Access, this that shows us that giving an in-development title your hard-earned cash isn't always a bad call. Perhaps with future content updates and tweaking, Free Lives can elevate Broforce from the good game it is to the great game it can be.
[W]hile Extreme Exorcism contains a fair amount of excitement in its opening minutes, that novelty eventually wears off quicker than you'd hope for.
[B]asketball fans will likely have a great time playing NBA 2K16 for hours on end, but there are too many small steps back here that can't be ignored. The good news for fans of sports games is that the first misstep in this great franchise is still a very good game, which speaks to how truly fun its gameplay is.
Super Mario Maker is a special video game, period. You could include all of the lengthy, metaphor-laden nonsense that your little brain can come up with as to what is and isn't perfect about it, but at the end of the day, this is a title that allows you to create and play Super Mario Bros.
We're getting to the point where denying the greatness of the Forza franchise is borderline ridiculous. The saddest part about Forza Motorsport 6 is that it will likely be brushed away by critics and gamers alike as a fantastic racing game rather than a fantastic game in general.
Both hardcore and novice gamers alike have likely found their match in Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. This is controlled chaos in a playable form, complete with all of the visual bliss that expected from a game with the silly title that it sports.
While Mad Max avoids being the disaster that the development hell storylines surrounding it suggest that it could have been, it's an absolute testament to mediocrity. Its characters and the world itself provide a great deal of intrigue, and they will keep some players interested, but there are too many flaws to consider it a solid video game.
Volume isn't without its flaws, but the highs that it's able to hit completely squash the minor gripes players might have. One of the best pure stealth titles in recent years, Mike Bithell and his team have not only captured some of the storytelling magic that made Thomas Was Alone so special, but they also managed to capture the best parts of a genre that sees a great deal of failures.
Maybe the flurry of remastered games this generation has changed what we picture when a game has a subtitle like "Definitive Edition" attached to it. With Rare Replay, Grand Theft Auto V and Mega Man Legacy Collection feeling like works of love rather than profit, it can be disappointing to see such a straight port emerge on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Some will argue that if you're going to buy one video game collection this year, it should be Rare Replay based upon sheer value.
While Vogelsap likely anticipated more interest in their project, something will have to change before this mess of a multiplayer game goes from bad to an outright lie.
The beginning of this review stated that Tales from the Borderlands' fourth episode was its worst episode to date, and while that's technically true, we're basically talking about the difference between great and amazing. Tales from the Borderlands has firmly established itself as a bona fide game of the year contender, meaning that Telltale has earned the right to take an episode to set up what will inevitably be a grand and thrilling final episode.
There might have been a good idea at the heart of Submerged, but its execution is such a catastrophe that it's practically impossible to find it. Any emotional impact outside of pure anger that this short, repetitive title may have had is completely lost due to a number of technical issues and flat-out design flaws.
Rare Replay isn't without its minor hiccups, understandable in such a vast collection, but it's something that should be in every Xbox One owner's collection. Even though Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Blast Corps have their share of technical issues and the ZX Spectrum titles included have aged roughly, it's going to be almost impossible not to enjoy yourself here.
There have been a great deal of fantastic platformers this year, with Ori and the Blind Forest and Axiom Verge being standouts, but N++ might be the best of them all. Its seemingly endless array of content builds upon its fantastic mechanics and physics to create one of the most satisfying titles to come out in 2015.
Hatoful Boyfriend is the food fight of video games. While you can derive a great deal of entertainment from its complete insanity, this doesn't negate the fact that the end result is a total mess.
With the addition of Journey, the PlayStation 4 library has gotten a heck of a lot more special. If October's Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection manages to avoid being a technical disaster, this will mean that Sony's latest console will have five of the most incredible PlayStation 3 titles available for purchase if you include both this and The Last of Us Remastered.