Kotaku's Reviews
The worst version of Prey is the game its ending thinks it is, an action-y game with stealth elements about humanity and moral choices. The best version of Prey is the game that happens in between, one where you ignore its plot completely, take your time to explore every cranny, and hide in a tree to look at the stars. It fails itself when it tells you what to do, but you have plenty of opportunities not to listen to it and have a great time in the process.
Mario Kart 8 is an excellent game. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is even better.
As an experiment in how far the boundaries of what constitutes an RTS can be pushed, I admire Dawn of War III for what it's tried. It may not have entirely pulled it off, but there aren't many games that play like this (WarCraft 3 fans, this one's for you), and there aren't many trying such interesting things with the way their factions are designed.
Even as I rolled my eyes at the chilchéd final moments, as the credits rolled, I found myself remembering the dark, cluttered halls of the Finch house, and the way the game denied me closure on every mystery they may contain.
Ben's story of highway justice holds up well and provides a suitable adventure game experience. It's not the cream of the crop and players might forget it in time. But in the moment? There's nothing better than the open road.
Mr. Shifty stands victorious. The carnage was anything but cute, but it sure was satisfying.
The parts are significantly greater than the whole. There's fun to be had but it doesn't come easily. And if I never have to collect another shiny again, it'll be far too soon.
This is simultaneously a joke about pixel hunting, a joke about adventure games, and a joke about the dumb things that players will do in video games. Did you ever think you'd want to hunt for pixels again? And did you ever think that the act of hunting pixels might be fun? Thimbleweed Park somehow both subverts pixel-hunting and makes you want to hunt pixels, which is just about all you can ask for in an adventure game.
This game will take many, many hours of your time. In exchange, you'll get a terrific, pulpy story told with style to spare. Persona 5 took nearly 100 hours of my time, and I gave it gladly.
Maybe it was that little touch, or maybe it was the fact that I was a bleary-eyed mess playing the game at 4 AM, but I felt so connected to… everything.
The plot and structure of Mass Effect: Andromeda can be viewed as a metaphor for the game itself, where a population eager for a fresh start makes a leap into a new frontier. The destination isn't the paradise we hoped for.
Wildlands' gameplay is too chaotic to call back to Tom Clancy classics like Rainbow Six or the series' earlier titles. Its politics are too vapid to compete with the Splinter Cell series' pulpy yet prescient narratives. Wildlands wants to be everything. It succeeds at being nothing.
Giving players the option to enjoy the game on their own terms is something Nier: Automata does very well. Challenge-hungry players can ramp the difficulty all the way up, doing away with silly things like targeting and aiming. Folks who just want to enjoy the nice game with the pretty androids can set the difficulty to easy, which allows for the equipping of special chips that auto-heal, auto-fight, auto-dodge—they almost play the game for you.
Triumphant. Groundbreaking. The pinnacle of Zelda.
A worthy successor to Planescape.
The main plot of Night in the Woods didn't move me much, and in fact it disappointed me a little in its shift from relatable 'people stuff' into grander, supernatural machinations. But for me the plot was secondary to the experience of kicking around town, bumping Mae up against everybody's lives, seeing myself, who I could have been, who I'll never be.
If you want to play a Halo game with the simpler story, backs-to-the-wall tone and cinematic flair of Bungie's good ol' days go right ahead and play Halo Wars 2. Just don't expect the quality of the game to match that of the cutscenes.
With Horizon, [developer Guerrilla Games] is finally let loose to show us how much more they're capable of, and what they're capable of is jaw-dropping.
Even the most clumsy and gnarled duel will achieve moments of greatness. And when two experienced players operating on the same wave-length begin stringing together slashes, parries and counter-attacks in an unbroken chain, the resulting exchange feels as much like a choreographed ballet as a fight to the death…if ballets ended with severed heads flying into the orchestra.
Nioh is one of the most memorable and competent action games in a long time. There's a genuine speed to combat, and the mixture of stances, magic, and other options turns any battle into a violent crescendo of action. It rockets players from challenge to challenge, remaining consistently exciting throughout.