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The A.V. Club

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271 games reviewed
81.1 average score
85 median score
59.1% of games recommended

The A.V. Club's Reviews

Unscored - Godzilla
Jul 22, 2015

This game feels like something that would interest the two New Zealanders who watch Grown Ups 2 every week and talk about it on their podcast, Worst Idea Of All Time. Because unabashed masochism is the only discernible justification for putting any time into Godzilla.

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Unscored - Her Story
Jul 14, 2015

You can't ever really know other people, after all. But the empathy and intimacy that Her Story evokes is a reminder that the strides we can make—incomplete and uncertain as they are—can be reward enough.

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Jul 1, 2015

Batman: Arkham Knight works as a piece of summer blockbuster entertainment, even if it's not always pulling its weight as a game about being Batman.

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Unscored - Massive Chalice
Jun 9, 2015

There's bound to be some disconnect with the mortal world when you live forever, but I could have used a reminder why this war is worth spending 300 years to win.

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Jun 4, 2015

A dedication to hostility keeps The Witcher 3 cohesive despite its sprawl

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Unscored - Splatoon
May 28, 2015

[F]or now, it's clear that Nintendo has succeeded in crafting a new, idiosyncratic take on the modern shooter. The bright colors, peppy music, and short bursts of action make it fun and easy to keep coming back. It's the sort of no-brainer we should have been playing for a long time now, and just like getting those hard and soft taco shells in the same box, it's sure to be a crowd pleaser.

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May 20, 2015

Wolfenstein has always embraced gratuitous violence, but The Old Blood just feels a little gratuitous.

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Unscored - Not a Hero
May 19, 2015

This is Not A Hero in a moment: a dark parody where every problem can be solved with bullets, and even Aunt Ruby is eager to get in on the action. Get to it, you sexy murder machines. Re-election time is just around the corner, and we've still got to deal with that scrotobiker gang BunnyLord keeps talking about.

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May 7, 2015

That's the ultimate result of NecroDancer's genre experimentation: an invitation. An invitation to strap on your dancin' shoes, let the beat seep into the hole where your heart used to be, and follow the siren sound deeper and deeper into the dark.

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So far, Climax Studios seems to remember what Ubisoft has long since forgotten: Assassin's Creed isn't about captaining a ship or poaching animals or curating an art gallery. It's about wearing a hood and assassinating people.

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Apr 28, 2015

Let us try to imagine a world where crowdfunding somehow still exists 20 years from now. Perhaps then, we will all be invited to pay for a return to the halcyon days of Broken Age. We would probably do it. There would certainly be precedent.

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Unscored - Mortal Kombat X
Apr 23, 2015

The upsells are just a thin layer of corporate monetization atop a mountain of sincerity, love, and dismemberment.

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Apr 21, 2015

Still, it's in the smallest moments where Pillars is most fascinating. Stories of dead gods resurrected, of divine plagues and magical obelisks jutting from the earth like broken bones, are the easy stories for fantasy games to tell. It's in the simple stories where they often falter. Pillars Of Eternity deserves credit not just for telling those stories but telling them well.

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Unscored - Titan Souls
Apr 14, 2015

You kill many gods in Titan Souls, including a weird brain thing that lives in an ice cube, but the game's greatest victory is over the god of bloat. Long may he stay dead in the ground.

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Unscored - Bloodborne
Apr 2, 2015

Yharnam is not some obstacle course waiting to be exploited for a cheap thrill. It's alive and well aware of its allure. That cure we all seek is in there somewhere, but this city isn't going to give it up without a fight.

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Apr 1, 2015

Battlefield Hardline doesn't want to be a hero. It wants to be a toy. And despite what Harry Zimm might think, that's okay.

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Unscored - Axiom Verge
Mar 31, 2015

Put another way, it's a game that needs to be left unattended, so that you can return to it with fresh eyes and discover the surprises that seem to sprout while you're away.

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Unscored - White Night
Mar 26, 2015

White Night never reaches the possibility of there being a middle ground, in any respect. That's the issue with chiaroscuro, and it's why accusing someone of seeing in black and white is rarely a compliment.

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Mar 24, 2015

But each cleansing of the palimpsest leaves the material beneath pulpy and weak, and Resident Evil was weak in the first place. The soap opera pleasures of this installment can be replicated in the next, but there are only so many times the series can get away with having action that's only serviceable set in a place that's entirely forgettable.

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Mar 19, 2015

The first game, like a precocious child, asked a simple question: "Why do we like killing?" Wrong Number, like a disillusioned teen reading Vonnegut and lighting up a spliff, asks back: "Why do we, like, kill?"

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