Toronto Sun
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At its heart, this Mario game was made for video game fans of all ages. The new open worlds and fancy graphics are there to appeal to younger gamers, while older Mario fans get these fantastic throwback moments where the game switches to 8-bit mayhem, allowing them to showcase decades old skills. Cappy’s powers make for some fresh puzzle solving and a new line up of supporting bad guys have been added. Toss in a storyline that is totally bonkers, really all that matters is that Bowser has once again kidnapped Princess Peach, and you end up with an Odyssey for the ages.
Amsterdam-based studio Guerilla Games, best known for PlayStation's grim but visually impressive Killzone franchise, spent more than six years on Horizon Zero Dawn, and it shows: in the beauty of the game's visuals, the depth of its backstory and the tightness of its design. Hopefully this isn't the last we'll see of this high-tech savage land. (Horizon Forbidden West, maybe? Please?)
Despite its problems, The Last Guardian is an incredible piece of imaginative world-building. As a game, it mostly succeeds. As something we've been anticipating for nine years… well, that might be too tall an obstacle for even a giant flying dog to get over.
In any other year, we’d probably be more in awe of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. But in 2016’s heavily contested battleground, its just one powerful combatant among many.
Twitter: @stevetilley
Genre-defining? Not quite. Maybe that will come with Gears 5. Or Gears 6. That’s the thing about a Fenix – they always rise again.
While I'm not sure any game will replace my nostalgic, rose-coloured memories of the original Deus Ex, Mankind Divided is a small but satisfying step forward for the franchise, offering tons of player freedom in a dark, dangerous and intricately detailed future.
Dark puzzler one of the best games of the year
My only hope is that the developers at Silicon Studios haven't reached their own end layer with this series. They've essentially perfected the Bravely formula, and I look forward to how they might change things up in the future.
To be able to read the emotions of computer-generated characters, rather than having them spell out their feelings through dialogue, is a rare achievement in games.
Quantum Break is an innovative new direction for interactive storytelling, and with the ending leaving things wide open for more, I hope Remedy does a sequel to this innovative hybrid of a show and a game. I just hope the next one offers more to do with the time we're given.
A lot of what's in Birthright may force a certain sense of deja vu, but if you're going to borrow from a game, you could do a lot worse than borrowing from Awakening. I may have done a lot of nitpicking, but Birthright is still undeniably a solid Fire Emblem entry. Let's just hope that when the next game in the series is released, there isn't a reality show star with terrible hair living in the White House.
But these are relatively small nitpicks for a game that's otherwise fun, fresh and full of flair. It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years.
I suspect the next major Far Cry instalment will return to the modern day, but I'd love to see Ubisoft continue experimenting with the franchise from time to time. Primal doesn't quite discover the secret to fire, but it's an entertaining blast to the very distant past.
If you were on the fence about Dying Light when it first came out – and even if you're still suffering from undead overdose – now's the time to jump in. This is a zombie game that truly deserves its following.
While it's far from the typical video game adventure, That Dragon, Cancer is a reminder that games can be so much more than just wish-fulfillment power fantasies. It's an important and unforgettable experience, full of pain, love and grace.
The meal hasn't been perfect, but it's been very memorable. The waiter keeps coming by with the dessert cart, and I keep waving him away.
The game is a slow burn, and you have to work hard for virtually everything you earn, but the payoff is almost always worth it. This is one of the most uncompromising games to come out in years, but it's reason alone for "hardcore" RPG fans to consider getting a Wii U if they haven't already. If you've mastered everything involving plumbers, apes and pointy-eared Hylians, there's a planet called Mira that has a heck of challenge waiting for you.
Just Cause 3 doesn't hold too many surprises, particularly if you're familiar with the previous titles in the series. But it offers an almost unlimited number of ways to create your own flavour of mayhem, and is a source of constant "did you just SEE that?" moments. If the next Michael Bay movie features a dude hanging upside from a helicopter while blowing up a bridge with a missile launcher, you'll know where it came from.
Make no mistake, Star Wars Battlefront is the best-looking Star Wars game ever made, full of fanboy-pleasing attention to detail in its sights, sounds and action. But its charms fade quickly, and in a month's time – when we finally see Luke, Leia and Han on the big screen again – it could be mostly forgotten.