Bubsy: Paws on Fire is a combination of elements that range from merely adequate to frustrating beyond belief. In fact, the best part of the game is often being able to break the rules and cheese your way to victory. With almost zero redeeming qualities to speak of, the only way this game could possibly offer anything of benefit is to Trophy hunters, as there are a fair number of easily unlocked gold trinkets. If that's not something you care about, then steer well clear - it's just not worth it. Despite the shockingly long legacy as a series, surely this time must be the last, right?
Horror games can be tricky to get right, but Daylight fails on virtually every front. It's a shame to see such a promising product slump so spectacularly, but despite being a rather short affair, this is still a pain to play through. As a result, there are far better experiences that deserve your attention ahead of this – especially with Outlast recently being offered for free on the PlayStation 4. Don't shine your torch in the direction of this one, as you'll only find bitter disappointment in its beam.
Aspyr has done a serviceable, even admirable job with its porting of Star Wars titles up to this point, but the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection represents a monumental misstep and a much-deserved blemish on its reputation. These are two beloved games representing some of the very best experiences the Star Wars IP has ever offered. To release these remasters in this state is deeply concerning. Our only solace is the fact that, eventually, most of the problems should be fixable.
The end result is a small-scale game with lofty aspirations that miss the mark. Stealing specials is great, but everything surrounding that is unimpressive.
If there’s one bright spot, it’s the new “trails” game mode, a checkpoint-type race that has more varied terrain. It’s quite fun, and very chaotic, serving as the high point amid innumerable lows. And that about sums MX vs. ATV Legends up: at its core, this is a buggy, flawed mess that falls far short of other racers on the market.
Saying that Milestone need to take a step back with its dirt bike games and rework everything is becoming as tired a statement as saying Telltale needs to use a new engine. But it remains true yet again with MXGP Pro. A very slight improvement over MXGP 3, but a noticeable step back from Monster Energy Supercross, MXGP Pro is largely a spectacular disaster. It gets a couple things right, and offers a new slate of tracks to race on, but you'll be too busy slamming your head into a wall to really notice.
Late in the game, one of the characters has a line where he says “I am a miserable, unfortunate man.” We can't think of a more perfect way to describe playing this title. From a team capable of making a game as exceptional as Fated: The Silent Oath, the quality of work, or lack thereof, on display here stings.
Observer is rough. Some neat narrative beats and a beautifully presented cyberpunk world paired with an exceptional performance from Rutger Hauer end up being the only redeeming qualities present in this title. This is a game that, despite being short, feels overlong, due in part to some tedious and obnoxious gameplay segments, and some of the least subtle “horror” we've encountered in recent memory. Throw in a bevy of technical problems and a third act that is complete nonsense, and Observer is, at best, a bit of a mess. To call this game a letdown would be an understatement.
MXGP 3, made in 2017, is almost imperceptibly different from the first entry in the series, released in 2014. Sure there a few differences, but at its deepest, this is a game that has a truckload of issues when it comes to the actual feeling of riding a dirt bike. Add to that a feature list that is seemingly identical to MXGP 2, now with very poorly implemented dynamic weather, and you get very little bang for your buck. Milestone needs to take a step back and reassess where this series is going, because right now the only place it's going is backwards.
Minecraft: Story Mode has, again, failed to impress. A miniscule run-time paired with a plethora of uninteresting events helped to make this one of the weakest episodes we've seen from Telltale in a long, long time. We're now two episodes in, and we're still not finding a whole lot to like. The alarm bells are ringing – maybe this series is one that sounded better in theory than in practice, because it has not delivered thus far.
That describes the game on the whole, really. A give and take where one element of the game is great fun, but another is broken or unpolished. What you're left with is a game with a super fun core that's unfortunately too broken to put any meaningful amount of time into.
Ultimately the game feels like the first draft of a really great idea. Add some polish, and we’d love to see what it could become.
Golem is a game had a shot at being good if it launched alongside the PSVR. Fast-forward a couple years and impressive virtual reality titles are fairly common. This, depressingly, is not one of those. By the time we took the headset off, we were left with not just a feeling of disappointment, but also one of anger. Anger at the promise it once held. Anger that, despite its flaws, it did some things really well. Anger that it simply wasn't good.
Blind is a wildly uneven, generally disappointing trip into virtual reality. Its main sticking point, echolocation, shines when used to its fullest, but more often than not, it doesn't get put to any real use. In between each of the game's good puzzles, you'll encounter large stretches of walking, and probably a smattering of technical problems as well. But hey, at least it won't take too much of your time. The ending impression with Blind that we were left with was largely one of disappointment. We hoped for, and expected, more.
Harmonix Music VR somewhat justifies its existence. Having a drawing app available for PlayStation VR out of the gate is nice, but everything beyond that is kind of pointless. 'The Trip's' kaleidoscope visuals are great for a couple of songs, and it's a wonderful starting point for VR beginners, but the remaining two experiences are redundant and unappealing. This is something that will be nice to have at launch for a few people, and for anyone that wants a drawing app now, but a year or two – maybe even sooner – from now, this will be a long forgotten relic of the peripheral's launch.
Variable State's Virginia is by and large an unsuccessful attempt to make something interesting. An absolutely incredible soundtrack and great environmental art fail to lift the game from a bog of issues. There are some severe technical issues here, but real criticism should be pointed in the direction of the oftentimes incomprehensible narrative, which needed to be much stronger given the general lack of interactivity elsewhere.
The fourth and penultimate episode of Telltale's first season of Minecraft: Story Mode has yet again failed to impress.
The Park is a bit of an oddity. A walking simulator with an incredibly brief runtime – 90 minutes at a leisurely pace – that nonetheless has some fun ideas sprinkled in. Actually riding the amusement park rides is a lot of fun – and effectively creepy in a couple of instances – but the rest of the game has nothing to offer other than walking really. Toss in some less-than-ideal performance hiccups and mediocre voice acting, and the title doesn't feel like it comes anywhere near justifying its price tag.
At the end of the day, we're not entirely sure why R.B.I. Baseball has been revived. A full-on, retro styled game would perhaps be a reasonable alternative to MLB The Show, but this game ventures way too closely to Sony's series without having the budget to compete – and it makes a poor connection as a consequence. Bench this one, and get your baseball fix elsewhere.
Considering that EA Sports took an extra year to craft NHL 15, the wealth of missing features here is inexcusable. The solid, exhilarating gameplay is still present, and feels better than it has in a couple of years, but the astounding absence of features and game modes overshadows everything that the game does right. . . . Put simply, this is not a complete game.