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As a system of addiction and obsession, “AdVenture Capitalist” works as advertised.
It's a game that keeps promising new beginnings but delivers only dysfunction repackaged as progress.
The game's co-op mode, which accommodates up to three players, brilliantly divvies up the ship's responsibilities.
Though there were plenty of puzzles with outlandish solutions that left me unimpressed by their logic, my grousing never caused me to lose sight of the fact that "Broken Age's" esprit is charming enough that I could imagine returning to it again.
"Kerbal" is best appreciated as a space for lingering contemplation spread across three radically different dimensions of experience — the theoretical, cinematic, and subjective. Like space travel itself, the deeper one goes, the greater the sense of smallness, creating a burgeoning humility for how much is still undiscovered.
What gives the MachineGames' Wolfenstein titles their own mojo is the casual way they pair generic gameplay with silver-tongued characters who reflect on their faults, speculate on their fates, and enjoy mundane occurrences like going to a pub and cadging free drinks. In this way the game's B-movie vibe is evocative of the work of those skilled filmmakers who embrace the silly or even the self-consciously stupid.
"Sunset" feels like a beautiful culmination of their vision, a loving attempt to turn the idea of private interiors into shareable spaces.
Although it may sound like an oxymoron, "Splatoon" is a family shooter done right.
What sets "The Witcher 3" apart from most of the competition is its keen sense of humanity, which is calculated to be every bit as gripping as an HBO drama. At their best, the characters with whom you chat don't seem like they live in a vacuum only to impart useful information.
Though the game is only a few hours long and its soundtrack occasionally relies too heavily on saccharine piano melodies, "Her Story" is a remarkable achievement in creating something which is personal, cinematic and playful. It's a work that's impossible to imagine as anything other than a video game, and one of the best I have played so far this year.
As an open-world game,"Arkham Knight," on consoles at least, makes fabulous use of the Unreal 3 graphics engine, rendering Gotham in romantically grungy detail. This is the first Batman game that I've played that feels adequate to the comic book's legacy.
In "Red Goddess," blue and red enemies frequently overlap each other so the mechanic feels muddled. Button mashing is almost unavoidable. There is nothing elegant about this game and no reason for anyone to play it.
"The Magic Circle" wants to confront you with its imperfections and make you consider why you play games in the first place. It may be the wiliest reflection on the medium to come out of a small studio since "The Stanley Parable" or "Fez." It's the rare sort of game that wants to amuse you, not pacify you.
"N++" is a testament to that transfixion. It is a meditative and surprisingly intimate game, something that seems to never stop unfolding even as it appears to remain rigorously spare and constant. "N++" is the best in the series and a reminder of why so many have committed themselves to playing in its simple spaces for so long.
Basically, you'll either dig the lush tedium of this game or you won't.
"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.
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.
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.
"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.
"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.