Washington Post
HomepageWashington Post's Reviews
"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.
With its handsomely-crafted labyrinths and rigorously paced combat, "Dark Souls 3" hits all the notes that aficionados have come to expect. Still, I hope Miyazaki's next creation finds a new way to cut against the grain.
"The Last Guardian" is all about a collection of small and large gestures that expand, enrich, and end a relationship. Although I experienced some camera-angle issues during my playthrough — it was easily lost in Trico's plumage — I'd like nothing more than to experience the game again. I'm left wondering, as I often do after encountering a great work of art, how it all came together.
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.
"The Division" rewards tactical thinking. One memory I retain from my week with the game involved running up and crouching behind a concrete abutment, while on the other side an enemy was shooting. I tossed a health station behind me to regenerate my health then tossed a turret behind the armored gunner. As he staggered from the turret, I popped up from behind cover and eliminated him.
"Persona 5" is an absurdly imaginative game.
When the missions come together, they can be thrillingly indulgent. More often than not, though, they stick to a basic pattern: infiltrate a building, carefully pick off the guys with the sentry signs above their heads to prevent calls for reinforcements, and kill your way to your goal.
"A Thief's End" is less a conclusion to Nathan Drake's story than an affirmation of the inconclusive wreck it has always been.
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.
A flawed but effective take on parkour
What Nintendo has created is an all-encompassing mind-body possession in which you find yourself inside something unusually, hauntingly engrossing.
"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.
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.
A daunting, confounding, maddening, and beautiful game
"Battleborn" is an okay shooter but it's certainly not a memorable one.
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.
What "Doom" gets noticeably right is its pacing. The ebb and flow of combat is as balanced as a keystone.
A rare combination of accessible but strange and intuitive but mind-bending
A nice swim through a virtual world