PCWorld's Reviews
Two weeks ago I went to a doctor and they told me it might be cancer. Not a thing anyone wants to hear. I came home, told my editor I'd probably take a few days off work, and then launched Unravel. Why? Because I wanted to think about literally nothing at all.
Suspense is an important tool, in horror. Suspense is what makes scares work. Five, ten, fifteen minutes of excruciating emptiness makes the eventual jump scare effective because we're lulled into complacency. The pacing in Layers of Fear is numbing, with "scares" coming at you so often they quickly lose their potency.
[SPOILER WARNING] The White March has its issues—pacing problems in the first half, an over-reliance on huge groups of enemies in the second, and three companions who aren't given enough time to breathe before their quests are over—but it's a solid expansion with some incredible moments sprinkled throughout.
The fetch quests need to go. Or they need to be dressed up better. Either way. I thought Dying Light was over-reliant on them in its first incarnation, and that was in a pre-Witcher 3 world. Playing The Following, I often found myself pulling open the map, looking at how far I needed to go to reach any objectives, and simply quitting for the night. Not a great feeling.
Firewatch is beautiful. Firewatch is intriguing. But ultimately I don't think Firewatch is very good. At its best, this is a quiet game about two characters struggling with real-life insecurities. But when that's sidelined to make room for a main plot, Firewatch suffers. It's a game perfect for trailers, a game full of excellent dialogue and breathtaking moments and stunning vistas that ultimately amounts to nothing much at all.
I enjoyed myself, though. The ABC Murders makes for lighthearted detective fare, clean and colorful like a Saturday morning cartoon. And make no mistake—when I say it cribs from Frogware's Sherlock Holmes games, I don't say it with any malice. I'd love to see more classic mysteries turned into adventure games, and Frogware just happens to be the current studio to beat.
Inkle is fast becoming one of my favorite studios. 80 Days was excellent. Sorcery is much the same, forsaking the off-kilter Victorian Age for a more cliched land of swords and spells and knavery—and yet, by some combination of Inkle's own talents and Steve Jackson's original source, managing to wring some truly compelling ideas from the game's thin sword-and-board pretenses.
I do not recommend you play this game.
The Witness has taken hold of my brain, both waking and sleeping. If I'm awake, I'm playing. If I'm not playing (for whatever reason) I'm inking possible solutions into a pad of graph paper. Writing this review I've solved two more puzzles and I think have a lead on a third. It's compulsive. When I'm done and this is all filed away, I'll go right back to playing.
Add in more than a few grammatical errors, some spelling mistakes, and a few bugs (the ending crawl described how one of my staffers both stayed at and simultaneously left the newspaper), and it's hard to recommend The Westport Independent. Which is a shame because I think it has at least one extremely important learn-by-example thing to say about media bias, and how it can manifest in something as simple as a lie of omission. That's a powerful message, and one it would be useful for more people to understand. To ask questions of the media, people need to understand how the media operates.
I imagine the day Gearbox gave Blackbird Interactive permission to use the Homeworld name was triumphant, but also terrifying. Triumphant because the project involved a lot of the original team members and they got to resurrect their mothballed series. Terrifying because doing so meant making a successor to—seriously—one of the best strategy games ever made, and doing so after twelve years of rose-colored glasses.
Rainbow Six Siege is, to me, an indicator that maybe we don't always need new genres of games as much as we need to reexamine our approach to old ones. It's not that anything Siege does is particularly new—tactical play (Counter-Strike, Arma, et cetera) mixed with a bit of destruction physics (Battlefield, Red Faction). But by taking these two aspects and expanding them to a scope supported by current hardware, Ubisoft has created a compelling game that feels unique.
Just Cause 3 embraces the series' dumb thrills to create a ridiculous sandbox orgy of wingsuits, tethers, and explosions.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a "return to form," but maybe a change would do the series some good.
It's not Battlefront III enough for the Battlefront diehards. It's not Battlefield enough for the Battlefield crowd. And it's not deep enough ... for me to believe the game has staying power - though it's noob-friendly enough that it may (temporarily) appeal to the masses of Star Wars fans that have never touched its predecessor or a modern shooter, but want to pick up a fun video game after seeing The Force Awakens.
Fallout 4's setting and conceit are strong as ever, but it feels quite a bit less daring and honed than its predecessor.
I've been addicted to 2205 all week, but remain disappointed Blue Byte doesn't push its ideas further with each new entry. The future's impressive. Just not quite as different as you might think.
Yeah, you should get Hearts of Stone. It's pretty good.
Playing as Batman? Awesome. Playing as Batman through repetitive, empty missions? Less awesome. Playing as the Batmobile? Awful.
Transformers: Devastation is a B-tier game that succeeds only by expertly capitalizing on its source material and your nostalgia.