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Like all of Quantic's games, Detroit is a big, stupid swing for the fences, yet another attempt to get Cage's dream of "playable movies" off the ground. Skeptics of the studio's previous games won't be convinced, but there are plenty of small improvements that make it Quantic's best offering to date
Montana features some of the most beautiful country in all of America, and Ubisoft has done an amazing job of capturing its rural glory. And the freedom to get credit for just f***** around in this gorgeous world, doing whatever feels most fun, is legitimately intoxicating.
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a worthwhile but weightless spin-off
The '90s are alive and better than ever in Sonic Mania
Hellblade's battle with mental illness is an agonizing story only games could tell
In Tacoma, the creators of Gone Home tell intimate stories at a galactic scale
Splatoon 2 is in a love-hate relationship with the internet
Pyre spins a powerful tale of redemption, religion, and monster dunks
When you get down to it, this is a game with a cast of 35 characters, including two bears, three robots, a vampire, history's buffest grandpa, a dude from another game series who's now been inexplicably written into Tekken lore, a lady who throws tigers, and whatever the hell Yoshimitsu is. It's a flashy, delirious mess whose love for all that messiness is tangibly honest and infectious.
It's as fundamental as fighting-game fundamentals get, and it's not afraid to be a punishing teacher.
The Wind Waker-inspired island world of Rime is a beautiful puzzle worth solving
Injustice 2 is a fantastic tour of DC Comics' ridiculous multiverse
Be careful what you wish for, lest it become Yooka-Laylee
Exploring ruins has gotten no less satisfying. Risking it all to secure a glowing item or a stash of souls still provokes baseline thrills. The basic back-and-forth of combat maintains its addictive rhythm. And the whole world is incredibly beautiful, especially the lush panoramas of the Ringed City itself.
NieR: Automata is a great, teetering game tilting from possible profundity to surreal spectacle on a delightful lurch.
Nioh's brutal swordplay is exhilarating, when it isn't stabbing itself in the foot
The Last Guardian demands patience, but even it seems tired of waiting
There is little doubt that Civilization VI comes closer than any of its predecessors to that famous Sid Meier quote, one intended as a definition of games in general but is arguably better understood as a rumination on their ideal form: It is a series of truly interesting decisions.
Mafia III's biggest problem, then, is that the stuff you actually do as Lincoln is mind-numbingly repetitive. He and his associates have put together a rigid strategy for taking down their enemies. You drive from point to point killing mooks and destroying property, then go back to a place you've already been to kill a more powerful mook, and when you do that enough, you're rewarded with a mission to kill an even more powerful mook in a unique environment, like a dilapidated racist theme park. These set pieces are a merciful break in the monotony, but they're rare and all devolve into the same run-and-gun festivities.
Gears Of War 4 doesn’t reinvent the chainsaw, and it doesn’t need to