The A.V. Club's Reviews
Persona Q combines fan service and brutal dungeons for a delightful crossover
By piling complexity on atop the simplicity of a tried-and-true formula, Square Enix has produced a worthy successor to Bravely Default. I'm sure the developers are already thinking about what it would mean to "Bravely Third" in battle.
Fire Emblem Fates has all the plot elements you'd expect from an entry in Nintendo's fantasy warfare series. There's a chosen one, a war between two kingdoms that represent the light and dark, magic swords, prophecies, and dragons. But at the core is the profound dilemma of nature versus nurture: Will you define yourself by your biological family or the one that raised you?
Frustrating fights spoil the wacky premise of Nintendo's Code Name S.T.E.A.M.
Given Animal Crossing's sickeningly cutesy look and feel, it's tempting to play tricks on it, to fool its adorably simple-minded denizens into living in squalor and liking it. But the game is just too sincere to prank, the way that toys can't feel embarrassed of how they're played with.
Fire Emblem Fates has all the plot elements you'd expect from an entry in Nintendo's fantasy warfare series. There's a chosen one, a war between two kingdoms that represent the light and dark, magic swords, prophecies, and dragons. But at the core is the profound dilemma of nature versus nurture: Will you define yourself by your biological family or the one that raised you?
Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash tries to clean up the series but just makes a mess
Those clever, dialogue-driven interludes are all the downtime Paper Jam needs. Yet it pads itself out with mindless chores that waste time and momentum.
Superhot emulates Hollywood fight scenes by letting you make your own
Layers Of Fear aims for arty horror, but its strength is simple scares
Oxenfree tells a great horror story by taking its teenage heroes seriously
Firewatch sees relationships rise from the ashes of loss
Make no mistake: The game is a bruising experience. It fully commits to sharing a hard, unsentimental exploration of what it means to watch your child suffer, and ultimately succumb to illness. That Dragon, Cancer is smart about presenting that tragedy through a series of stylistically disparate interactions to prevent itself from becoming dull or numbing.
The Shadow Of The Beast remake is too attached to an overrated original
If Unravel gains strength from its single-mindedness, it also never succeeds at becoming more than what it seems: a modest, melancholic but ultimately heartwarming effort.
The original Amplitude broke this ground over 10 years ago, but the world just wasn't ready. Maybe in 2016 people will be more open to the idea of finding the music inside themselves.
Beasts are the beauty of the frantic, overstuffed Far Cry Primal
Controlling Big Boss is so precise and supple, and the number of play choices so enormous, that failure can almost always be attributed to the player and the player alone. As a result, The Phantom Pain is a game where loss is often as empowering as victory is satisfying.
As a result, A Knight To Remember has little identity of its own. If the goal of this first chapter is to act as a bridge between old and new, and the later chapters offer more original themes, storytelling, and puzzles, then we might be looking at a lesser piece of a greater whole. There's reason to believe this might be the case, as the most interesting part of the story, the development of Gwendolyn, takes center stage by the end of the chapter. But right now, this new take on King's Quest is hoping that a fondness for the fairy tales of yesterday will hide that it has nothing new to offer. It doesn't, but at least it has time to find its purpose.
Volume makes full use of its updated setting and, in doing so, tells one of the freshest Robin Hood tales in decades—maybe even centuries.