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There's a lot of balancing to be done in the long term, then, and the big hurdle for new players will be getting up to speed without losing interest in those stodgy early hours. The mid-point, where everything coalesces, is so liberating, so brilliant in its scope and possibility, that it's hard to be too upset about these wrinkles. For all its frustrations, you'll spend much longer in the sweet spot than you spend getting there. Elite: Dangerous demands much, but repays your devotion many times over.
This is an excellent expansion, then, one that complements the main game while gracefully underlining what exactly it was that made that Forza Horizon 2 so enticing in the first place. The price-tag may seem as steep as one of Storm Island's vertiginous jumps, but if you had any fun with Horizon 2 whatsoever, go with it - it'll send you soaring into another worthwhile playground stuffed with little delights.
Elegy for a Dead World makes good on its title: it offers us dead worlds, filled with the debris of imagined and vanished civilizations. Through the game's scenes you walk alone, under the dread emptiness of outer space, all that harrowing solitude. And yet, as you write and send that writing out into the ether in search of a reader, you may well find contact and connection. If others read your work, your observations, your story, your sense and if they find truth or solace in your words, here is a framework designed to let you know, in turn, that you are not alone. In this sense, it is truly a game about humans' desire to write.
The Dark Below feels like an early misstep for Destiny
Lumino City is an interesting design sketch, then, but the real building work is yet to be done.
It's a game that requires and occasionally enforces patience, but like all great road trips it's about the journey, not the destination.
The Temple of Osiris is a welcome throwback, and for the five or six hours it took me to barrel through the campaign, the rest of the world blinked away as the sands swept in and the ancient machinery started to turn. As with Osiris, I'm not sure Lara's reassemblage has gone entirely to plan, but the spirit remains intact - and the spirit is still strangely powerful.
The Talos Principle is a game of challenges and conundrums and philosophical wonderings, filled with logic puzzles and cerebral mysteries. Its chunky mechanical processes are underpinned by a compelling breadcrumb-trail narrative that tackles the intangible notion of humanity and consciousness. Consequently, despite playing a robot that interacts with computer terminals and takes instruction from a disembodied voice in the sky, it exudes personality and charm; its mechanical precision complementing its aesthetic qualities. For an experience bereft of human contact it boasts a very big heart indeed.
Thankfully the issues with Armageddon are eminently fixable and since Slitherine has stated that the game will expand in a similar vein to Panzer Corps, with the addition of new campaigns, units and races to be released as DLC over the next couple of years, it's not beyond the bounds of reason to expect core feature to evolve too. For now though, unless you're desperately aching to play a new turn-based 40k wargame - which is entirely understandable given how long it's been since the last one - we'd advise waiting on the outcome of one or two necessary patches before joining the fray.
It's principally aimed at the series' fans, but the mesh of interlocking systems ensures that its appeal runs deeper than fan service.
For a game I've complained about a lot, I was pretty engaged with it at three in the morning yesterday, of course, shoot-'em-up headache setting in and an annulus of empty teacups starting to form. The problem, ultimately, is a philosophical one. I'm not sure if Lucid really gets the mentality behind this series, and that makes for a perfectly serviceable shooter when the lineage requires something more.
The result is almost certainly the definitive version of Smash. Not all of it works, but plenty does, leaving us with a fine solo game and a wonderfully, wilfully chaotic multiplayer brawler. Smash is still too unrefined to be the choice of the Nintendo connoisseur, perhaps, but as long as you don't take it too seriously, it is riotously good fun.
As tired as the series can often seem, these games still shine.
WWE 2K15 is a kick in the teeth, then. Graphically assured as it is, almost every other element of the 15-year-old series has been cut back, tampered with pointlessly or outright ruined. The series hasn't been good for a long time now, but this year is the first it's been actively bad. The wait for a great new WWE game continues .
Perhaps the problem is my own, and maybe I'm too content to morbidly tinker with my survivors to push them towards another miserable day. This War of Mine is a game whose simple message - that war is hell, and that we're all capable of being sucked into its moral depths - might be slightly compromised by its strengths as a game, but at least it's a message carried with a great deal more conviction than other, more bombastic portrayals of conflict. That, for certain, is something to be thankful for.
This lack of direction is an especially ironic failing for a character who was once defined by his single-minded forward momentum. The time is clearly long overdue for Sonic to take a well-earned rest, get his breath back and only return once Sega has worked out where he's supposed to be going. It pains me to say it, but Sonic Boom needs to be the last noise we hear from the blue hedgehog for a very long time.
Never Alone carries the sensibilities of its inspirations, and it feels and looks just as it should.
Without these problems, I'd have no hesitation in saying this is the best LittleBigPlanet game to date. The deeper integration of creative elements into the story is a big plus, as is the superior level design, and the new characters are very welcome, even if they're ultimately underused. But in its current state, it's hard to recommend without some serious caveats. Held together by Sellotape rather than superglue, LittleBigPlanet 3 is in constant danger of falling apart.
And yet beneath the mis-steps and the schmaltz, and beneath the dictatorial heft of the soundtrack - gorgeous and emotive, but laid on a little too heavily throughout - there's still that fascinating glimpse of a boy making the best of a lonely childhood. A boy in search of escape - escape from the empty world he's been granted and, perhaps, from the predictable narrative that's been imposed on it.
There's no question that Ardennes Assault is a worthwhile addition to the Company of Heroes war chest and one that rewards investment and exploration with a tactically satisfying campaign. That said, such is the obtuse nature of its presentation of key concepts and even basic controls that new recruits should deduct a whole mark from that number below.