Where Ghostwire: Tokyo loses some love is in the overall imprecision of its movement and mechanics, and a few elements that seem arbitrary or unexplained. Ghostwire: Tokyo’s combat is engaging and its environments are impressive, but that same combat can also frustrate and the environments are balanced against less impressive character models. As a new IP or franchise, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a great, but rough-around-the-edges step in a really interesting new direction.
Thanks to its new weapons, excellent characters and nuanced narrative, Dawn Of Ragnarök comes closer than ever before to breaking free of AC Valhalla’s template. Though it can’t entirely escape some over-familiar mission types, Dawn Of Ragnarök does a great job of pulling together several strands from the main game and prior expansions. Svartalfheim and Odin’s quest give AC Valhalla renewed energy and should please both fans and maybe entice some newcomers to dip into the franchise. Dawn Of Ragnarök is a substantial and overall impressive addition to the series.
Total War: Warhammer 3 is the perfect culmination to a trilogy of generally excellent games. The third installment has both a must-play prologue and story campaign that is fast-paced and takes the gameplay in new directions. Long after the campaign is over, quality of life improvements and the new setting guarantee a long life for single-player skirmishes and multiplayer games. Total War: Warhammer 3 is a winner for both casual and hardcore Warhammer fans or any real-time strategy player looking for a game with depth.
Conan Chop Chop is a combination of challenging combat and rogue-lite mechanics that reward repeated runs and never leave you feeling defeated, even when you die. This is a game with much more depth than its colorful and cartoony style suggests. It’s also much more fun with others. Played solo or with a group, though, Conan Chop Chop’s gameplay loop and enjoyable combat are addictive and compel you to try just one run, over and over again.
When Elex came out in 2017, it filled a niche despite its many issues. Elex 2 is bigger and its world is denser, but Piranha Bytes hasn’t really fixed much of what was wrong about the first game. Janky movement and weak combat top the list. Annoying mechanics and glacial progression are right up there, too. Elex 2 has ambition, I’ll give it that. If it pared that ambition with polish, a more coherent narrative, and better pacing, Elex 2 might be a more viable alternative to those other RPGs that are getting so much deserved attention.
Shadow Warrior 3 is a real study in contrasts. There are times when its environments and cutscenes are triple-A game adjacent. Its combat is fast, furious, and fun. On the other hand, there’s not much story to tell, and that engaging combat gets frustrating and numbingly repetitive. Shadow Warrior 3 embraces much of what we remember about early shooters, with a lot more visual panache and polish. By the end, though, we’re desperate for the kind of variety and sophistication that later shooters brought to the genre.
Elden Ring is an awe-inspiring achievement. Both a summary and bold step forward, it fuses FromSoftware’s best and most effective ideas with an endlessly engaging open world. Its combat is the most refined of the series, challenging yet accessible to new players. Elden Ring includes an incredible amount of quality content. More importantly, it offers a captivating, polished experience fraught with danger and filled with beauty.
Overall, it’s just hard to recall a less ambitious multiplayer shooter than CrossfireX. Its generic single player campaign fares much better than its multiplayer, which is simply lacking in everything we’ve come to expect from the genre. Smilegate’s previous shooters have obviously connected with millions in the Asian market, but it’s hard to imagine CrossfireX igniting anything near that kind of enthusiasm in the very competitive multiplayer scene.
I want games to be good. Hell, I want them to be great. No game is perfect and even the biggest blockbuster has flaws. There are even games we love that are mostly broken, because they went big and couldn’t quite deliver. Claustrophobia doesn’t go big. It takes time-worn ideas and still manages to fall flat. It looks, sounds and plays like a game that wasn’t ready to leave the drawing board, much less be released. Claustrophobia will make you feel trapped, for sure. Maybe just not the way the developer intended.
Dread Hunger has a solid premise, but whether it’s a good time depends almost entirely on the people you play with. The survival elements are fun, but the social deception mechanics are where it’s at. Dread Hunger has some built-in limitations, but its theme and setting help it stand out from other games in the genre. Whether you’re trying to maintain order or create chaos, Dread Hunger will put your ingenuity and acting skills to the test.
Lost Ark is a polished, solid, substantial, and engaging free-to-play MMORPG that is very solo-friendly and offers a vast amount of well-made content for just about everyone. The combat is exciting and fun, the classes are appealing and varied, and the world is colorful and lush, if not necessarily state-of-the-art. The story isn’t going to turn heads, but the number and range of quests and side activities will keep you happily entertained. I’ve only scratched the surface, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the end game has to offer and what kind of community coalesces around Lost Ark.
I’m not sure if more time in the oven is the answer to The Waylanders’ problems, but it couldn’t hurt. I really liked the setting and core story, but I’m afraid that the game’s bland combat and awkward controls are baked in by now. It has character, charm and style to spare but swings and misses in the execution. The Waylanders is a collection of really good ideas, almost none of which are allowed to shine without compromise.
For one, the upgrades are primarily in support of higher resolutions or better framerates, and while the games look stunning in native 4K, you’re not getting a ton more for your ten bones. Given the lack of extras, this should maybe have been a freebie for owners of the PS4 version. On the other hand, if this collection’s reasonable price prompts you into playing these masterpieces again, that’s absolutely a win for you.
There aren’t enough hack-and-slash action games with a sci-fi setting, but Blackwind stumbles pretty hard and makes enjoying it consistently a challenge. The game’s camera is the worst offender, but issues with platforming, balance and combat are also parts of the problem. I didn’t care that the story could find a consistent tone as much as the game’s mechanics made me want to step away in frustration. I enjoy difficult games, but not unfair, busted or buggy ones.
Pupperazzi is a lighthearted, chill little game that anyone can enjoy. If you’re not too worried about realism and don’t need a lot of high-level content, you’ll be happy with what Pupperazzi has to offer. The bad news is that it’s over pretty quickly, and there isn’t much reason to go back. The dogs are cute, and the whole thing is marginally surreal, but a bit of story or maybe some strong canine characters would have added to the experience, especially for older dog lovers.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction is a thoroughly competent shooter. It’s a good companion piece to, but not replacement for, Siege. Though it’s best when played with a three Operator squad, it’s still functional as a single player game, though pretty challenging and not super rewarding as a solo experience. I enjoyed the mechanics of the Incursion missions, and learning the maps. Though the alien designs lacked originality, fighting them was still engaging. It was a nice break from combat with humans. I wish there was more to the package at launch, like a real campaign and characters to care about, not just avatar Operators to level up. Still, alone or with a couple of friends, Rainbow Six Extraction meets or exceeds the expected amount of fun. I wish it tried to do more.
Monster Hunter Rise is probably the best game in the series. It isn’t quite as accessible as World, but long term it offers much more varied combat and a richer experience. Its world and gameplay are insanely engaging and fun. Technically, the port to PC results in solid, smooth gameplay and marginally better visuals. If you have a choice, it’s definitely the way to play, the best and most complete version of one of 2021’s standout games.
Like the previous DLC for Dead Cells, The Queen and the Sea adds a lot of new content. It isn’t free, but the new weapons, outfits, biomes, and bosses are varied and fun. If you’ve bounced off of Dead Cells’ style or combat, Queen and the Sea won’t change your mind. Heck, you might never even see it, though it’s sure worth the effort. But for fans of the game, and especially for those wanting to wrap up some loose story ends, this is a must-have expansion. It’s a great coda to a now-classic game.
Prison Tycoon: Under New Management checks off the basics of a building and sim game. There’s even some low-key, pleasant, mindless fun to be had for a while. Pretty quickly, though, the game’s absence of creativity and simplistic approach start to overshadow the experience. The lack of a real story or more than one mode further restricts the game’s depth and longevity. It’s not that prison games have to be about violence and punishment but in a sim, drama or interesting incident have to come from somewhere. Ideally, it’s from giving the player the tools to create it or emergent systems that allow it. Prison Tycoon: Under New Management locks them up.
The Gunk is a competent product, but it feels very risk-adverse and derivative. You’ve seen and played elements of this game before. It can be fun for a while, but you soon realize that The Gunk has a limited vocabulary and spends too much of its time amicably repeating itself. Instead of being the foundation for something grander, The Gunk is satisfied to make its exploration and simple mechanics the entire game. As a Game Pass product, however, it’s not hard to cautiously recommend The Gunk as a pleasant enough diversion.