Kotaku's Reviews
And like I’ve hopefully got across, it has been a success! This is still a Civilization game, and it’s still a very good strategy game. It just also happens to be the weakest entry in that series, the one least equipped to endure this long of a wait between games.
Through its skillful environmental design and indulgent combat, Dead Island 2 is one of the best, most disgusting playgrounds I’ve ever played in.
That it’s not a very good game, and one that desperately needed a lot more development before this seemingly premature release, will matter almost not at all. It’s stunningly pretty, it lets you make friends with the Creepers, and the cutscenes are brilliant. And it matches those new pyjamas. Should they ever finish Minecraft Legends, allowing you to instantly gather your spawned troops from anywhere, fixing the atrocious UI, giving your units some vestiges of pathfinding, and hugely increasing the mission variation, I think it could be a great place.
I didn’t think we needed a Resident Evil 4 remake. I guessed that Resident Evil 4’s remake would look nice and play well, just as the other recent remakes. But what I didn’t expect was a game that not only recreates the original but also builds on it in smart and interesting ways to create something different and better than the classic.
As someone prone to bouts of climate doom every time I read anything about carbon levels and ice sheets, Terra Nil was the ultimate form of video game escapism. A little diversion, no matter how unrealistic it is, that rather than asking us to live through the planet’s destruction let us try and recover from one instead.
The future is still bright for Destiny 2. We just have to get there.
That’s what I hope developers in the genre and players of these games take away, as well. Sometimes, you need help to take down an army, especially one with demons and evildoers high on performance-enhancing drugs. Doing it yourself is possible, as shown in something like Bloodborne. But as 1986's The Legend of Zelda put it, “It’s dangerous to go alone.” So, why not take some reinforcements with you? You’ll be grateful you did.
You know what happens as a direct result of the Meiji Restoration and Japan’s rise to international power? The colonization of Taiwan and Korea. The horrific genocide against Chinese civilians. Empires demand resources, and modern Japanese history is inextricably tied to wider Asian suffering and bloodshed. It was the reason why I had hoped that Hajime would leave the Shinsengumi before the end of the story. Being part of violent institutions has never suited Kazuma Kiryu. It doesn’t suit Saito Hajime either.
It may have taken 17 years and one disappointing sequel along the way, but Relic are to be commended here for somehow managing to take tactical perfection and redefining it not just for old veterans, but for a whole new generation of armchair generals as well.
And I’m thankful for that. I’m old enough now to witness girls partake in the video game industry outside of “girl games,” and to experience its full breadth for myself. Metroid Prime Remastered isn’t as perfect of a game as it seemed to be over 20 years ago. Too much time has passed for that to have ever been the case. But it will always know how to let a woman live.
In fact, the whole game is a tremendously satisfying experience. From the wonderful alien design, to the slow-burning storyline and its blank-faced staring astronaut, to the satisfying array of weapons, and perhaps most importantly, to the way the statues crumble when you hit them, this is something utterly solid, and eternally compelling. And unless my rig proves a fluke, finally a console-to-PC port to celebrate on day one.
I disliked Season’s belief in its own profundity. Its mysticism felt like cod-Buddhist leftovers, while its nonchalant efficacy of prayer undermined its attempts at agnostic universalism, all crushed under the weight of the sheer banality of all your actions being delivered as if creating a vital tome of historical significance.
I’ve always believed that mobile games are an approachable gateway for new fans to enjoy an otherwise esoteric IP, and Engage streamlines the gameplay in all the right ways. Unfortunately, though, the story falls short of what I’ve come to expect from any Fire Emblem game, and I’m still struggling to understand why. With Fates, the poor writing could be attributed to its sheer character bloat, but Engage has a reasonably normal-sized cast. The watered-down stories felt like an intentional appeal to capture new audiences. But at some point, I want to move on from the appetizer to the main course. With its disposable conversations, shallow handling of themes, and incohesive visual design, Engage is the chicken wing, rather than a full chicken dinner.
Forspoken deserves better than what shipped on January 24. The strength of its story and protagonist do outpace its many problems, but much like Frey’s early struggles in seeing her own greatness, it’s clouded by unfortunate circumstances.
Assuming you don’t collect or do everything in every world, Cosmic Shake is about 10 hours long, which is similar to 2020’s remake. And while it crams a lot of good jokes and pretty levels into that runtime, it leaves a lot out, too, with the lack of multiple playable characters the most disappointing excision. I also found Cosmic Shake to be a bit less stable than Battle, though its technical issues never made it unplayable. Still, even if it isn’t quite the sequel I wanted to 2020’s amazing remake, I’m still very happy to get another colorful, fun, and light-hearted Spongebob action platformer in 2023.
15 years later, we have more compelling protagonists to choose from, and even more interesting space zombies, like those in Dead Space creator Glen Schofield’s The Callisto Protocol, which is also mired by repetitive bosses, but at least looks and sounds incredible. The Dead Space remake accomplishes what it set out to do, it makes an old game compatible for modern consoles. But that’s all it does. 2008’s lightning stays in its bottle.
Despite its room for growth, I can’t recall the last time I was genuinely this excited to sit down for multiple rounds of a first-person shooter. As an endless story generator that spins up scenarios of randomized action and survival, few multiplayer games have come close to capturing my time and attention as thoroughly as Warzone 2.0’s DMZ has.
HoYoverse usually releases a major nation every year, and our next destination is the France-based region of Fontaine. This is where the god of justice resides, but I find this a little ironic. It says in the lore that she’s not willing to challenge the divine—the rulers in Celestia who have colonized this world and caused multiple genocides against its inhabitants. How could she be just if she won’t challenge the rulers who demand the world’s fealty by force? By now, I know that HoYoverse has a good answer planned. We just need to wait an entire year to find out what it is.
High On Life, like Rick and Morty, walks up the precipice of revelation, opens its fly, and pisses into the chasm. It’s fucking funny to almost do something different in form and function just to pull away at the last second, isn’t it? You thought we really gave a fuck, didn’t you? Fucking idiot. Here’s a fart.
Sadly, the end result of Crisis Core is an overcomplication of the story established in Final Fantasy VII, filled with various details that just amount to more history lessons and homework to be able to make sense of everything. Its undying antagonists and plot points that refuse to be resolved (Genesis’ fate is uncertain in the end) weaken the role of death. When we consider that so much of what made Final Fantasy VII impactful was the irreversible death of an important character, it’s hard to walk away from Crisis Core with the impression that anything is meaningful or at risk of loss in this world.