Forbes's Reviews
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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.
It may not shake up the series like the initial console port did, but the game has been refined and distilled into something pretty great all the same. I have an unsubstantiated hunch that there may yet be one more expansion coming, given that D3 has sold 20M copies across all platforms, so we may see more variants of this game yet. For now, enjoy Ultimate Evil as either your 4th go-round in the D3 universe, or your first.
If you have already been bitten, hopefully metaphorically, this season is unlikely to disappoint. Although the rushed, relentlessly downbeat ending of "No Going Back" may feel like a somewhat necessary clearing of the board for a new cast and new dilemmas in the third season.
It's not until you see it in action in the hands of fans and players that it starts to make better sense. Testing the game out with my own children was a light-bulb moment for me, as I watch them moved seamlessly from playing with the toys on the carpet to placing them on the Infinity Base and continue those adventures on the screen.
On balance this is another good outing for Skylanders, although not delivering as much ambition and creativity in the video-game as in the toys. Provided families can enjoy both physical and virtual elements of the game there is still much to celebrate here, and plenty of value.
Destiny may have seemed like a total letdown a week after launch. but I think what it does bring to the table is enough to have attracted a large, passionate playerbase, and the game is going to have legs well into the future. We're living in an age where for better or worse, many games eventually evolve into what we hoped they'd be at launch. If current trends hold, that's going to be Destiny too, but two months from its debut, it hasn't had a half-bad sprint out of the starting gate either.
[I]t's been a long time since I've had a game feel relatively off-putting at the start, and then slowly reel me in until I couldn't help but love it by the end. I went to the party, got hammered, made out with a lampshade and went home, full of warm, fuzzy memories. It was an absolutely ridiculous experience that I would heartily recommend to anyone.
All told, this is a reasonably good first effort and a worthy attempt to imitate and iterate on one of the finest games of the last generation. Lords of the Fallen will hopefully be commercially successful enough to lead to a sequel or, better still, a more ambitious and more unique project from Deck 13/CI Games that builds off this game rather than simply tacks on to it.
If you're a fan of the series, I'd say this is worth picking up. If you're new to the series, this is a good place to start. On the other hand, if you're not into the competitive multiplayer and are coming for the single-player campaign, I'd say wait for a price-drop. If you prefer open-world shooters rather than action-movie, linear campaigns I'd say hold off entirely. Call of Duty is not for you.
I give this game a Hold. It's not a bad game, but the inexplicable game design decisions that bog it down, and the relatively short amount of time you actually spend playing, make it a tough sell at $60. It's one of those games I find myself liking, but even more so wishing were something more—more the game it could have been, and less the game it is.
All told, There Came An Echo is a journey worth taking. The story takes some unexpected — if sometimes uneven — turns, the voice acting is on point, and the advanced speech recognition Iridium Studios has developed is beyond promising. I fully expect them to have a secondary revenue stream licensing out this technology. Go buy it, go play it, go support indie developers who take risks in the name of unique gaming experiences.
There are criticisms to be made: whether or not a player will enjoy Gravity Ghost depends to a significant extent on how much they enjoy the core loop – which in this case often means actual loops. It can be finished in a single sitting – the game's 90-odd levels can be completed in three hours at a canter, or four with a more leisurely pace. And $15 for such a short game may be a sticking point for some, although I felt it passed the popcorn test – whether it provided as much value as a movie ticket and popcorn – handily.
All told, an excellent follow-up to Hotline Miami. Level design isn't as tight as the first game, and certainly some of the novelty has worn off. But nevertheless, it's a thought-provoking, challenging, and well-crafted experience that any fan of the first game should check out.
The game looks great, of course, with an aesthetic right in line with Super Mario World 3D. And everything is polished enough, functional. It just isn't quite enough game to justify the sticker-price, and certainly isn't for anyone hoping to play solo. I don't say this as someone who yearns longingly for the days of Mario Party yore, but rather as someon who comes to the series pretty fresh, and is still left wanting more.
Overall, this is a worthy remaster and a nice addition to the slim-pickings on new-gen hardware. If you already own the game on PC I see no reason to get it on console, but if you played it and enjoyed it on last-gen and are looking for a reason to dust off the PS4 or Xbox One, I think it's worth your time. If you missed the game entirely, go pick it up. It's absolutely worth playing for anyone fond of action games.