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248 games reviewed

The A.V. Club's Reviews

Unscored - FRACT OSC
Apr 22, 2014

[I]t's not just about exploring a lost civilization but also about giving back in some way to ensure that ours is not left to the same fate.

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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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Nov 23, 2014

The emails you can rifle through at Abstergo Entertainment tease a potentially exciting future for the series—Russia, Brazil, China, Japan—but unless it can get over its current identity crisis, the best we can hope for from the future of Assassin's Creed is more near-hits.

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Unscored - Grow Home
Feb 19, 2015

[Y]ou'll probably never kick the stumbling habit entirely, which is fine, because you're always liable to stumble into something beautiful.

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Mar 3, 2014

The game is as confused as its protagonist, and it's hard not to wish that the studio could have conquered its inner conflict and found its wings.

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Episode 2 presents a potential pitfall for The Wolf Among Us to avoid as it goes forward. When the choices are too easy, it's hard for Bigby's story to pack an emotional wallop. Instead, it descends into choosing for choosing's sake.

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Unscored - Bayonetta 2
Oct 13, 2014

Between that and the sublime feel of its combat, it's difficult to see even a passing interest in one of Bayonetta 2's passions not turning into a memorable experience.

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Unscored - N++
Aug 6, 2015

Looking at the progress page after a session, that silly 3,000 percent completion number feels less like a friendly joke and more like a snarky challenge: "How much can you handle?" N++ seems to be asking. It might not be a challenge you want to meet.

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Unscored - Submerged
Aug 13, 2015

Submerged doesn't want to see you fail, but it doesn't trust you to succeed without its help, either. It bears repeating: Children aren't morons. Submerged knows this, but it still treats its players like they're just kids.

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Apr 16, 2014

Yes, plenty of compromises were made to create this hybrid of a traditional Elder Scrolls game and a traditional MMO. Those compromises will leave purists on both sides disappointed, but this is an ambitious and exciting epic that promises to only grow with time. It's a sandbox worth sharing, provided everyone is willing to play nicely with others and Bethesda keeps it clean.

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As we said up top, there is a good mystery story at the core here, even if its complications aren’t quite as compelling as those of the first game’s. (And if you have a taste for the meta, Uchikoshi has you covered, as always.) And those Somnium sequences really are a major step up from the original. But if Uchikoshi’s work has always involved digging through the less savory or interesting elements to get to the treasure buried underneath, then Nirvana Initiative may be the biggest such pile of his career.

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Oct 21, 2015

That's part of the beauty of Woolly World, though. It's only as difficult as you want it to be. If you can't figure out how to get that bundle of magenta yarn tucked away behind a towering water monster, you can just forget about it and move on.

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Oct 13, 2015

At some point, it dawns on me that my new friends-in-loot and I have become the sad souls playing the dollar slots in Vegas at 2 a.m.—sitting alone with watered-down drinks in hand, blank faces peering into a screen, moving only to insert another token and pull the lever. But so what. They can't stop, and I can't stop, and none of us can stop and oh god, will I hit it big tonight?

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Unscored - Fallout 4
Nov 9, 2015

In large doses, all that fighting can be tiresome, but the best thing about Fallout 4 is that it wants you to have something to fight for—more than just a vendetta, or some life-saving MacGuffin, or the player's own bloodthirsty whims. Grizzled, score-settling lone wanderers will feel at home in The Commonwealth, but this world offers something more: a chance to rebuild, to belong to something bigger than yourself and defend it from all comers. The most you can usually hope for is "This place isn't so bad, for a shithole," but at least it's your shithole.

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Nov 19, 2015

But these concerns are pushed far to the margins of Black Ops III in favor of explosion porn and the crushing pressure of a forward momentum that propels you toward more things to see and do and shoot. You can almost feel the writers butting their heads against the constraints of a big-budget first-person shooter when it feels like they desperately want to write the next Philip K. Dick story. It's hard to be smart when you're mandated to deliver a violent thrill-ride that doesn't stop to throw on the brakes.

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Nov 5, 2015

Does it even really matter that the single-player campaign is disappointing? Maybe not. Developer 343 Industries is still faithful to Bungie's original vision, and the game has remained remarkably intact since Halo: Combat Evolved was released nearly 15 years ago. This continuity is admirable. That said, Guardians feels like a huge missed opportunity to evolve Halo beyond simple combat.

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Nov 24, 2015

At this point, with less than a month to go before The Force Awakens hits theaters, Battlefront is a necessary balm for Star Wars fans to get their fix. But it's difficult to say whether it's anything more than a temporary pick-me-up that will be forgotten the minute the movie is released. Despite the myriad modes, the scope of the game feels small. Channeling Emperor Palpatine, EA has foreseen this and promised additional content in the coming weeks and months—for a price, of course. Hopefully, the company's powers of prophecy are better than his.

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Unscored - Mad Max
Sep 29, 2015

More than the carefully constructed language or the fidelity to a story that doesn't need to be told, Mad Max is at its best when it offers some of that silence its hero swears to seek. It's when Chumbucket shuts up, when no deals need to be bartered, when you can just drive—just you belching out fire and black smoke across the highways, shiny and chrome.

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Nov 9, 2015

Rise Of The Tomb Raider understands what's fun about being Lara Croft. It's not blowing away an army of underlings with an assortment of guns, something that straight-up shooters do better and with more commitment to variety. It's also not some bold new innovation in how to make a character run and jump, or unexpected deviation from a storyline. No, what's always been the key to Tomb Raider is the thrill of discovery. It's about uncovering surprising ways to use your environment, to solve puzzles and mysteries in order to access temples and tombs. It's the thrill of a smart and resourceful woman using every tool at her disposal to succeed where everyone else fails. There's nothing new about this—the template of the intrepid explorer has remained incredibly consistent, from the novels of Jules Verne to radio serials to Indiana Jones—there's merely the simple pleasures of a fast-paced adventure yarn, and Rise Of The Tomb Raider makes a strong case for why the fundamentals of a good game, well made, are their own reward.

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Unscored - LEGO Dimensions
Oct 15, 2015

Lego Dimensions is more satisfying for being a game my daughter and I can play together than anything the game itself does. She neither knows nor cares about half of the featured worlds, and that's just fine. You don't need to know the mythology behind Scooby-Doo to enjoy running through a level designed after the series.

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