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If you haven't kept up with your metaphysical thinkers, you might need to play through "The Old City" more than once to master its storyline. Personally, I find it exciting to think that video games have evolved to a point where they can sustain that level of scrutiny.
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.
Although it may sound like an oxymoron, "Splatoon" is a family shooter done right.
"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.
The game's co-op mode, which accommodates up to three players, brilliantly divvies up the ship's responsibilities.
While playing the game, I thought of my father, who is a far better sketch artist than I am. He is one of those people who is interested in video games but professes to be allergic to dual analog stick controllers. If the game's stylus-driven mechanics can win him over, I might owe Nintendo a heartfelt tweet.
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U holds these two opposite impulses — the creative and destructive — together for a few moments. While it's impossible for that union to endure, there is some magic in seeing the worlds overlap for a few moments, swollen to the point of bursting, with the kind of make-believe that one forgets about in adult life but never really outgrows.
"Ori and the Blind Forest" will tax the dexterity of just about anyone who doesn't eat games like "Super Meat Boy" or "I Wanna Be the Guy" for breakfast. If that disclaimer doesn't give you pause, know that this is a game that made me want to hug the developers.
Though I certainly believe that video games are an art form, there are precious few games that I would hold up as works of art, which for me – in its narrative varieties at least – has something to do with extending one's capacity for empathy or adding depth to one's sense of the human condition. On both counts "This War of Mine" succeeds.
"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.
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.
As obvious as the game's criticisms are about the encroachment of the police state or the ease of character assassination in the digital age, they're worth reiterating until we, in the real world, find a way out of our predicament. That doesn't make me fault the game less for its heavy-handedness, but I give it credit for having arguments to make.
As a friend and fellow writer advised me when he heard that I would be reviewing this game, we should take the creators of Bayonetta at their word when they tout the game's "Climax Action." This game is all about smothering players in a cloud of lust. If such a gambit falls outside of your tastes, "Bayonetta 2" will irk 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.
"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.
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.
"Final Fantasy XV" is at its best when treated as an act of tourism. It's gratingly intrusive when it tries to keep you busy, and transcendentally comforting when it settles for just keeping you company.
An interesting science fiction game let down by its live-action series tie-in