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FIFA and PES seem to have swapped shirts, with neither catering to the original audience they once set out to attract. Based on this year's offerings, though, it's PES that has the clearer direction of where it's headed. Perhaps most tellingly of all, PES 2015 is more satisfying in defeat than FIFA 15 is in victory.
Advanced Warfare isn't the game to answer those questions. Much like the soldiers that populate its fiction, what strengths it has come from the technology bolted to the surface while what's inside looks more fragile and vulnerable than ever.
Whatever else might be in included in the Master Chief Collection, that feeling is at the heart of the game: it is a remembrance of things past, and those things are not as they were. The Collection is an instantaneous embrace of past and present that combines gaming's powerful sense of nostalgia with its perpetual arms race of processing and graphical power. It is part of a growing appreciation of the past in a medium which until recently was resolutely forward-looking. Proust would bloody love it.
So, we're left with a game whose main improvements are all disappointments. And yet I'd still I'd put money on me pouring hundreds of hours into it. That's Football Manager. I'm sure that once a few patches have been released and a few things have been tweaked I'll discover that magic again. I just expect it might be a little bit harder to find than last year.
Some will no doubt relish these barbs as further encouragement to beat the system; others will see its steep challenge as a mountain that must be conquered, whatever the cost to their sanity. But for my money Stealth Inc. 2 falls short of the games I'd consider its peers, never quite capturing the simple ingenuity of Toki Tori 2, the nervy thrills of Mark of the Ninja, nor the physical comedic energy of 'Splosion Man. It's just too demanding and too laborious too often. It may no longer be Bastard by name, but by nature it's a bit of a git.
I just wish it wasn't so happy to sit in another game's shadow, and made more of the few fresh mechanisms that might distinguish it and move the genre forwards. Instead, it hews so closely to a proven template that it's basically a pretty good action-adventure by default. Yet as the game clock ticked towards 20 hours and beyond, I could never quite shake the feeling that I'd still rather be failing in Dark Souls than succeeding in Lords of the Fallen.
For those burnt out on WOW's content, WildStar is easy to endorse. Immediately familiar to anyone who's visited Azeroth and with enough new twists on the tried-and-tested theme park formula, Carbine's game is so overflowing with stuff to do that it's certainly justified in asking for a subscription - even if less people seem prepared to sign up to one. It's more difficult to recommend WildStar to those who've tired of the MMORPG treadmill and its incessant need to put characters through the same old process of grinding quests and raids to reach a level cap and acquire the best gear. As much as WildStar seems to effortlessly hit all the right notes, essentially the song remains the same.
There is some value in The Legend of Korra, both as a game and as a tribute to the cartoon on which it's based, but it falls far short of its potential on both counts. Perhaps the third-person combat theatrics for which the studio is known are not replicable on a small budget. You can't blame the IP, which offers a rich vein of material. Regardless, this is the first major blemish on the studio's reputation; a misfire that means Platinum's name no longer guarantees quality.
If you wanted to be uncharitable, you could voice the suspicion that a great many baseball caps were turned backwards in the echoing board room where this project was greenlit, but with the campaign done and the city freshly filled with challenges, I don't really feel like being uncharitable. Beneath the glorious tech, and once the writing relaxes a little, Sunset Overdrive's wonderfully lurid and heartfelt - a bit like playing an old 4AD album sleeve. If you get that reference, you'll probably get this, too.
As a smarter-than-it-looks nostalgia trip, then, Shadow Warrior delivers, and as long as you keep that in mind - and consume it in moderation - it's an easy recommendation.
Civilization has always had something to say about this stuff (and civilisation has always had something to say about this stuff) but Beyond Earth goes further than ever, suggesting that even if we do eventually live on Pluto, the distractions will have joined us there, and will probably have multiplied. When we get into space, the real danger - and the real wonder - will be the fact that we have brought ourselves along.
As someone that simply waits and arranges the location of towers, I felt as if I was incidental. Any other character in the game could just as easily have replaced me, and the plot would remain largely the same. Still, there's something special about waiting. About that patience. As I saw wave after wave of alien soldiers ground to shreds by my turrets, I was sad. I wasn't out for blood. I wasn't revelling in the destruction of my enemies. I was defending myself. I was waiting.
We're so conditioned to expect sequels to cram in more features in an attempt to be noticeably different, but there's a quiet confidence to Grimrock 2 that is utterly beguiling. Bigger, bolder and utterly sure of itself and its intended audience, Almost Human may be looking to the past for inspiration, but it's created one of the best pure role-playing games of the year.
Shinji Mikami has yet to make a poor game, and The Evil Within does not blemish his record. But neither does the game enchant and disrupt in the way that Vanquish and the others managed. This is Mikami revisiting his past glories and, as such, it's both a delight and a disappointment.
Costume Quest 2 isn't a long game - it took me around six hours to complete, including almost all the side quests - but even a short game can outstay its welcome, and while there is still a great concept at the core of Double Fine's Halloween series, if anything this sequel is even further away from nailing it than its predecessor. Shallow and repetitive, Costume Quest 2's winsome appearance and occasional wit never quite obscure the busywork at its core.
F1 2014's a strange game, then, and one I can't even accuse of being just a casual reskin. It's a quantifiable step back for the series, saved only by the fact that what's there remains a satisfactory companion piece to this year's season if you're fortunate enough to have a decent steering wheel. There is at least one other new layer of authenticity for this year's game, though; charging full whack for what amounts to a slight downgrade is the kind of one-sided deal that would do even Bernie proud.
The rhythm of combat remains the same, though it's hard to complain when it's riffing off such a heady beat, where chimed enemy attacks are lithely dodged into slo-mo pugilism, where impossible combos culminate with a 20-foot boot weaved from hair crashing from the heavens and where spinning amidst the avalanche of colour and cartoon violence is Bayonetta herself, stopping only briefly to wink at a player exhausted by the unrelenting joy of it all. Bayonetta 2's biggest disappointment may be that it's an iterative sequel, but it's not such a problem when it's iterating on genius.
What we're left with is a flimsy framework - a sort of clothes horse for content - rather than a truly great racing game. DriveClub is patently intended to attract a global, interconnected audience of fiercely competitive racers but, to quote the increasingly obscure 1989 Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams: if you build it, they will come. And, unfortunately, Evolution hasn't quite built it.
Kuru Kuru Kuruin meets gleefully silly FMV in this wonderfully tactile arcade game.
A shorter, sharper campaign would condense the high points more potently, and some better characterisation would make the plot twists hit harder. But if you're looking for a game that really sinks its teeth into what makes this iconic movie monster endure, look no further.