If Starfield is to grow into something beyond an impressively sized canvas just waiting for you to roll your own space game by way of mods, it needs to have these foundational issues addressed.
Still Wakes the Deep isn’t the most riveting interactive journey. The monsters are easy to hide from (though plenty scary), and the puzzles and platforming quickly come to feel tired. But Still Wakes does deal with compelling emotional material that rewards you for your time spent with it. It’s the kind of game I’d like to play again and see what new things I get out of it. But it’s also a testament to why I like this genre, the poorly-named “walking simulator,” so much. When I’m not focused on the reactive challenges of a more fast-paced game that demands constant input response, I’m instead offered the challenge of navigating the puzzles of my own thoughts. You know, where the real horror and dread lies.
A spellbinding meditation on anguish and compassion, Hellblade II delivers one of the most gripping interactive and sensory experiences of 2024
VR Missions may lack the narrative heart of what many love about Metal Gear, but in its sheer volume and insistence on segmenting and delivering a near endless supply of challenges, it proves to be a fascinating and worthwhile pursuit that helps you develop remarkable levels of mastery over its systems and pushes the series’ stealth gameplay to places it doesn’t go anywhere else.
Rebirth is sure to be a more divisive and debated game than Remake was. But in this deep sea of an RPG, I was thrilled by the action and the tactics, brought to emotional highs and lows through its characters, and found myself with an even greater love of FF7, the original and this return, than I thought was possible.
In Starfield, many might see a time-tested, signature charm. Others might see a time-worn, laborious monotony. These are fair perspectives. A game this large is hard to distill into one set of strengths or one set of weaknesses. As in other Bethesda games before it, you’ll likely have to make your own fun here, but in giving us not just a swath of post-apocalyptic terrain or a fantasy realm but an entire galaxy to explore this time, Starfield makes all the flaws and shortcomings of its patchwork world all the more glaring.
Forspoken deserves better than what shipped on January 24. The strength of its story and protagonist do outpace its many problems, but much like Frey’s early struggles in seeing her own greatness, it’s clouded by unfortunate circumstances.
Despite its room for growth, I can’t recall the last time I was genuinely this excited to sit down for multiple rounds of a first-person shooter. As an endless story generator that spins up scenarios of randomized action and survival, few multiplayer games have come close to capturing my time and attention as thoroughly as Warzone 2.0’s DMZ has.
Sadly, the end result of Crisis Core is an overcomplication of the story established in Final Fantasy VII, filled with various details that just amount to more history lessons and homework to be able to make sense of everything. Its undying antagonists and plot points that refuse to be resolved (Genesis’ fate is uncertain in the end) weaken the role of death. When we consider that so much of what made Final Fantasy VII impactful was the irreversible death of an important character, it’s hard to walk away from Crisis Core with the impression that anything is meaningful or at risk of loss in this world.