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With her powers to rejigger events to save people from accidents and themselves, Max seems like an incarnation of Holden's catcher. Though sadly, her power is not immutable.
In hindsight, many of the game's grueling lessons feel remarkably anti-climactic. Getting to the end feels like a definite achievement though the relative uselessness of its rewards make it hard to feel anything but stunned remorse for having gone to such lengths to achieve something of so little consequence. This kind of ego-centric delusion is essential to the spirit of video games, works that are often as terrifyingly wasteful as they are wondrous and energizing. "Xenoblade Chronicles X" manages both in equal measure.
"Dr. Langeskov," the funniest game that I've played this year, features voice work by Justin Roiland of "Rick and Morty" fame, and it would be a shame to miss the tale about the attack of pencils that provokes a shedding of clothes.
Games like "Siege" flatter these desires by letting them play out in simulation, endlessly repeating on the screen. Stripped of the vanities of many other shooting games "Siege" is both unforgivably callow and inarguably satisfying. Like parades or fireworks, it's a vision that's only fun if you can forget where it comes from and where it points to.
Annoying as I found these technical hitches they hardly deterred me from creating new sequences of pyrotechnics. Perhaps, what that says about me is something that I don't want to think too hard about.
In good moments, it feels like you're heading somewhere promising, halfway to getting a gun you really want. In bad moments, getting what you want is a pleasureless anti-climax, that leaves you even further away from the next upgrade milestone.
"Cibele" is an important game, not a great one. None of its individual parts are exceptional in themselves. To a certain extent that's a virtue when we reflect on the fact that most video games are constructed around heroics. The game's conceptual force, however, is undeniable, presenting a clear blueprint for how video games can be used as a prop to explore everyday life.
"Fallout 4" is best appreciated over time. Play it for ten hours and the game will likely feel underwhelming. Play it for fifty then see if you can stop yourself from playing it for fifty more.
In a way, "Black Ops 3's" landscape of weaponry and corpses and layers of upgrades and economics signal the game's disposability, something meant as kindling in a bonfire of collective obsession and forgetting. Nothing this big and loud is meant to last, but nothing meant to last could bring this many people together.
As tired as space marine tropes are to video games, it would mean-spirited of me to deny that "Halo 5" delivers a solid, blockbuster experience best enjoyed with friends.
There's an echo of this sentiment in the sweetly childish tones of "Minecraft: Story Mode," a game that uses the mimetic architecture of storytelling to produce nodes of contemplation and self-inquiry. It's a subtle and sweet work made with an awareness that the best part of a journey comes when you realize that you are the story.
"Yoshi's Woolly World," won't change how you look at games or lead you to any important insights. It wants nothing more than to perk you up a bit, to lighten your mental load. Life is hard; sometimes a little frivolity is in order.
[O]ne of the most emotionally alive games on the market
Yet Spike Lee's nuanced plotting and oftentimes poetic phrasing yield a promising beginning for sports game narrative, a beginning so affecting that Lee's last scenes left me staggered. It's a cautionary tale that should be refined to become far more interactive in next year's game.
"Tearaway Unfolded" may have the wide-eyed look of something targeted towards the kids demographic but its fantastical levels and novel mechanics – which take full advantage of the PS4 controller's resources – give it a true all-ages appeal. Even its waggishness settles easily on grownup ears. . . . The British developers at Media Molecule have made a game which, again to draw a comparison with Nintendo's creative philosophy, celebrates what is childlike not childish.
"Super Mario Maker" feels like the antithesis of this spirit. "Mario" levels begin to feel like traps that can't be escaped. As with many digital tools that seem to liberate us from the laborious demands of creation, "Super Mario Maker" is primarily an engine for circulating bad ideas and broken gimmicks as if there weren't already an overabundance of them.
Naturally, I hope that "Beyond Eyes" encourages other intrepid game designers to explore less bombastic realities than are found in most games. And although I liked its ending more than I expected, with little else to stand on apart from its atypical video game protagonist and appealing audiovisual presentation, I found myself wishing this already short game were even shorter.
As an intermittent admirer of the series, I found "The Phantom Pain" unexpectedly emotional, not as a story or as an arrangement of digital things to play with, but as a parting gesture to a community of which I have occasionally been a part.
"Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" is an ambitious game that is fundamentally about the acceptance of death. It shows how video games can tap into the ordinary without unwieldy mechanics (I'm looking at you "Heavy Rain"). Though It doesn't offer the intellectual workout of another first-person perspective, story-first game such as "The Old City: Leviathan" it is the best scored, most accessible argument for how video games can prosper as narrative sandboxes.
Basically, you'll either dig the lush tedium of this game or you won't.