PCWorld's Reviews
Endless Space 2 is the rare 4X game where the writing is better than the strategy—though the strategy is still pretty decent.
With Prey, Arkane cements itself heir to the immersive sim. Exploiting Prey's systems in order to explore and discover Talos I is a constant source of joy, even when the combat and story falter.
Everything asks you to contemplate your place in the universe by inhabiting the point-of-view of hundreds of other creatures, plants, and objects.
Outlast 2 has a few solid horror moments, but undermines those scares with tedious gameplay.
Highly experimental, Introversion's Prison Architect follow-up has you mapping out a dark cave with a handheld LIDAR scanner. It's an inspired premise, but doesn't go much of anywhere.
With its unique 1940's monster movie aesthetic and excellent voice casting, Wilson's Heart feels like the first "can't-miss" VR game. Too bad it's a Rift exclusive.
Full Throttle is a relic of the time when games first really crossed the 2D/3D tech boundary, when designers devised a new set of rules for making games—with mixed results.
Playtonic promised a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, and that's what Yooka-Laylee delivers, flaws and all. It's a loving throwback to a bygone era and style of gaming.
It's mediocre, not awful. This review slants negative because I find the writing mostly bad, but my experience with Andromeda is almost worse in some ways: For much of my 55 hours with it, I felt nothing at all. It just exists, content to let you run from fetch quest to fetch quest, chasing the appearance of importance while saying nothing at all. It'd be easier to just condemn the whole endeavor and write it off, but that's not entirely fair. I'm mostly ambivalent, or "I'm not mad, just disappointed," as my parents might've said—and ouch, that always stung much worse.
Thimbleweed Park is excellent, both as tongue-in-cheek homage and in its own right. It's a LucasArts adventure game the way you remember them being, with the same witty humor and, yes, the same sometimes-asinine puzzles. The good and the bad. And really, I don't think fans would want it any other way.
Rock Band VR's not exactly a must-have, but it's up there—at least for people who haven't burned out on the plastic instrument genre. Me? As long as Harmonix keeps supporting it with DLC I'll probably keep checking back in, snagging a few songs, and putting on a show.
Night in the Woods may be a pastiche of influences, but as far as video games go, there's really nothing else like it, and there's a lot to be learned from spending a dozen days in Mae's life—about her and her friends, about yourself, about America and towns forgotten by time.
Ghost Recon: Wildlands is not a fantastic game. Some part of me is fascinated by Wildlands in the same way I was once fascinated by Crysis. Look at what we can do. Look at these amazing virtual worlds people create from thin air. It's just a shame so many of these worlds are about as meaningful as virtual bubble wrap.
Halo Wars 2 is fine, but definitely not the real-time strategy genre's long-sought salvation. Same-old missions, same-old structure, and with a layer of console-style oversimplification on top.
The best thing I can say about the campaign here is it will prepare you for multiplayer, especially if you go through on the higher difficulties.
Sniper Elite 4 doesn't wholly shed its grindhouse, B-game origins, but it's definitely an ambitious step forward for a stealth series that used to rely more on gimmickry.
Quern – Undying Thoughts is an excellent first-person puzzle game that’s likely to be doubly special to anyone who spent hours with Riven in years past. Reminiscent of both that style of storytelling and of puzzle design, it’s an excellent homage in an era suddenly packed full of Myst homages. A few subpar puzzles and some ill-paced backtracking sometimes get in the way of Quern’s ambitions, but my standard adventure game advice applies: Just check a walkthrough if you really feel the need to. It’s worth seeing through to the end.
Like Game of Thrones, Telltale's Batman tries to escape the constraints of its well-established universe but ends up falling into the same patterns and railroading the player through a story devoid of...
Fans of Dead Rising will lament everything this latest Christmas-themed sequel has lost, but it's still a pleasant-enough time for those who want a mindless zombie-killing sandbox.
Watch Dogs 2 finally breaks with the "Ubisoft Formula" to create an open-world game that feels somewhat fresh and interesting. What a relief.