Forbes's Reviews
Cry Wolf may not have been as strong as some of the episodes before it, but it remains an appropriate capstone to an excellent series that once again proves that Telltale is one of the most interesting companies in the video game market today. I can't wait to see what they do with Game of Thrones.
Like Grand Theft Auto V before it, sometimes it's not enough to simply be big and well-made. Watch Dogs feels like a collection of promising concepts with nothing solid holding them together. Aiden Pearce should have been that something, but instead, he's just a character meant to sell cool looking hats in collector's editions. Perhaps that can be rectified in a sequel, but for now, Pearce is pretty big issue, and so is his propensity to kill people in boring, cover-based shooter-y ways.
[W]hile it may be true that The New Order doesn't really bring that much new to the table, and isn't exactly "retro" either, it does take some of the best of both new and old games and blend them together into a really fun mix. This may not be an instant classic, but it's one of the better first-person shooters I've played in a long time.
SuperGiant has created a world brimming with sophistication, mysteries, and tech-heavy sci-fi charm. It's a world with serious staying power should they decide to revisit it. It meets and then promptly blows right past every high watermark you'd expect a digitally downloadable title to reach.
The deeper handling, pop-out arcade style graphics on a scale unseen before in the series, the social network friendly Mario Kart TV and Miiverse features and of course the heavyweight Mario moniker itself are Nintendo's best chance to date of turning round the Wii U's fortunes. Quietly underpinning all this is the best Mario Kart experience I've has since it's revelatory introduction some 22 year ago.
Meanwhile, the attempts at humor and being "gritty" come off as juvenile. And in a market saturated by far more interesting fantasy adventures, we need a far less generic story to work with. There's a good game hiding within Bound by Flame. It's just not this one.
Child of Light isn't a terribly deep RPG and it isn't a particularly stand out platformer, but it's a game that blends everything into a really unique, beautiful, and surprising experience. It's particularly impressive coming from a major publisher like Ubisoft, and I hope they continue to let this type of creativity drive their games.
Some of the scares in Daylight are genuinely chilling, but their shock value fades quickly. And after the opening hour or so, the hospital itself seems to become a character, which adds a needed layer of interactivity and suspense to the mix. But between dull writing, last-gen graphics, and limited game mechanics, Daylight devolves into nothing more than a glorified maze simulator with mood lighting.
Luftrausers is a beautifully balanced exercise in frustration and release – a simple but excellent instance of what can be done with slippery physics, simple graphics and a lot of guns. A lot. Deeper and longer games are on the market for $9.99, but few will match Luftrausers' addictiveness or its knife-sharp balance of frustration and elation.
It's just plain (hopelessly addictive) fun. Obviously, loot based dungeon crawling kind of has to be your thing, as even with all the new changes to gameplay, it may still feel rather repetitive to outsiders. But I have to imagine that barring any unforeseen issues that may not have cropped up yet, both past and present Diablo fans will be very happy with Reaper of Souls, and with how the game has improved a thousandfold since launch.
Infamous is a good game. I don't know about great, but "good" is enough to be the best in the series, and the best exclusive PS4 has to offer right now. With 100% completion and new missions to come there are plenty of worthwhile hours to be spent with the game, and it's definitely worth picking up if you're a fan of the series or the genre. The powers are innovative and a lot of fun, I just wish there was a bit more to do with them, and a more compelling story that perhaps took itself just a little more seriously.
Titanfall is a great game and an incredible amount of fun. Combat is creative, exciting and never, ever static. It lacks depth past its core concept however, and hopefully that's something that can be rectified well ahead of the inevitable Titanfall 2. But right now, this is the game the Xbox One needs, and it's the first true must-have of the new console generation.
A strong story, excellent writing and voice-acting, and the fact that the game really does look and feel like an episode of the show, makes South Park: The Stick of Truth a truly great video game experience. It's the first game I've played in 2014 that's really kept me glued to the screen from start to finish.
There is the idea of what a Thief game should be here, and it's not complicated. Strip it down, get back to the essentials, and this game may have played something more like Arkane's excellent Dishonored. As it stands, however, it's neither itself nor, really, anything else.
This sort of game could have convinced some of the faithful to get on board towards the beginning of the console's lifespan, but it will have a tougher time today. This game will win few new converts, and for all its brightness, does not feel particularly fresh.
As an audio-visual experience, The Banner Saga is hard to beat. Tough choices and an elegant combat system help make the game fun and engaging right up to the end. With a few tweaks to the resource management system and some real soul-searching on enemy variety, Stoic could have a really terrific game on their hands. They're not there yet, but they're on the right track.
While both the story and the multiplayer will likely be divisive—we're a long, long ways from Modern Warfare or the original Black Ops here—I'm glad to see Treyarch taking risks, trying something different, and impressed that even with all the changes, the core game still feels very much like Call of Duty.
While the base game can get a little repetitive at times, there's every reason to expect that World of Warplanes will see the same ongoing upgrades that Wargaming brings to World of Tanks, with new aircraft, battlegrounds, and game modes.
In the end, despite an unmemorable story, I quite liked Shadow Fall's campaign simply from a design perspective alone. By ditching overbearing auto-aim, bending linearity and actually posing a real challenge at times, it's a fun experience and PS4 could do a lot worse for a debut title. I don't know if the series will ever explode in popularity, but for now, it's done its job showcasing the new abilities of the PS4.
All told, even though this is one of the better next-gen exclusives, it's still not a system seller. It's not that kind of game that's simply so good you need to go buy a system to play it. The fact is that right now on both Xbox One and PS4, we have yet to see a true system seller. Dead Rising 3 is lots of fun, but we won't be talking about it in a year. That being said, if you're getting an Xbox One already, this is a title that's definitely worth playing. Open-world mayhem, fun crafting…it's great escapism. That's all it is.