Kotaku's Reviews
Its best parts feel basic in all the best ways, both classic and modern at the same time. It never made good on the dream of seeing another more tragic, more complicated side of Master Chief, but years later, through endless updates and balance patches, it's made good on the promise of its multiplayer. Even if that were all that Halo 5 was, at this point that would still make it a very good game.
When a game is as finely tuned as Dead Cells, that tuning is all it needs. I've found its punishing, live-die-repeat rhythm plenty engrossing without a narrative wrapper, to the point that more of a story might just be a distraction.
The story I ended up with, with its highs and lows, felt like my story, forged by the calls I made in the stress of battle, and I own them. For better or worse.
I'm happy there's another Metroidvania game for me to dig into, especially one that feels as taut and classically inspired as Chasm. It's just that after such a long wait those things no longer feel like enough.
Octopath Traveler is a beautiful game with one of the best soundtracks I've heard. The combat system rocks and will hopefully be used in more Square Enix games to come. There are plenty of good ideas in here. But the game is too grindy, too repetitive, too full of structural problems to be viewed as much more than another botched JRPG experiment.
It does not reinvent; it refines. It does not rebuild; it polishes. It contains few ideas that I haven't seen in other games, yet it feels fresh all the same due to how much care has been put into every character, every battle, every frame of animation, and every square inch of its massively minuscule subterranean civilization.
Dark Souls Remastered is a close replication of the source material, allowing new players to see what the big deal was and veterans to test their mettle once more. There's already been a generation of undead warriors who completed their journey and rang the Bells of Awakening. Now it's time for another.
Pillars of Eternity II could've been brilliant were it more focused. It has a lot of good ingredients—scraps of interesting narrative, clever characterizations, a complex faction system, and pirate-themed spins on the RPG tropes of yore. The game's got so much unfulfilled promise that, even though I think it's a plenty enjoyable game on the whole, I can't help but feel disappointed by it.
Detroit tells a story of robots who look and act relatively human, making their way through a nonsense world where everyone, even the humans, doesn't actually look or act human at all. It's a fragmented radio broadcast from a valley within the uncanny valley, so many layers deep in unreality that it could never hope to make it out intact.
For as much fun as I had with the game, I expected a bit more polish.
Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition is a Smash where Zelda is all of the Bros. It is bursting with the ghost of Nintendo's sweetest past.
Given the technological advances made here, and its breezier outlook on life with a cast freed from the confines of Yakuza's dense lore, I'd prefer to look at this as the first of a new breed of Yakuza game.
Even in its current seemingly incomplete state, Sea of Thieves is still rewarding.
Far Cry 5 is a flashier iteration of the past games whose newfound relationship to reality is really just another sideshow.
It is a game full of smart moments, perfect for bringing together dedicated gamers and curious onlookers alike.
Ni no Kuni II is a very good role-playing game, one full of satisfying mechanics and fun battles
I'm not angry at Kingdom Come, I'm just… disappointed. It was touted as this grand historical representation, an abandonment of fantasy for a true medieval setting, a game that would let us live the middle ages. But the game we got is just this busted, inconsistently ambitious RPG that shines in points, but falls apart in most others.
Even when completion of the game unlocks more challenging modes, Star Allies mostly serves as a reminder that Kirby games seem to function as reflex for Nintendo as natural as breathing is for you or me. This one just checks the box.
If someone expressed an interest in playing Secret of Mana, I'd first encourage them to buy a SNES Classic.
Metal Gear Survive's team managed to make a game both bad to play and fascinating to examine. Survive finds itself in small moments but is lost to grinding, mindless gameplay.