AusGamers's Reviews
Although this might have been (or hoped to have been) the expected outcome by fans, it does bring to light the idea that the horror genre is the ideal candidate for the remake treatment.
At this point you could make it a true Daily Double and just guess your way to the game's eventual kick off point, and you'd probably pull ahead of all the other contestants.
And from here your journey begins.
All of this, for lack of a better term, content, is found in-between video interviews, mini-documentaries, concept art, advertisements, photos, and more.
It’s still a relatively short game, about three hours or so if you’ve got your Portal brain switched on - but still a remarkable experience. The puzzle rooms and pacing toward the big GLaDOS reveal, and iconic end and credits sequence is still spot on. Portal is as finely tuned, deep, and fun as ever.
From the initial prison sequences through to deep underground spaces where you'll be navigating an old, abandoned colony to the surface of Callisto itself, the game serves up a terrifying feast for the eyes.
Marvel's Midnight Suns is huge, not only in terms of the apocalyptic demons and Elder Gods story it tells over the course of several cinematic story missions but in how the relationships between all the superheroes and The Hunter develop over the course of dozens of hours. In Midnight Suns you take on the role of The Hunter, a superhero and partial blank canvas that you can define the look of, choose all of the various outfits they'll wear, and even decide how best to decorate their room at The Abbey.
Tassing, however, has other plans for our young penman.
Ultimately it's the setting, art direction, and non-verbal cinematic storytelling where Somerville excels. But even here there are long lulls and a few sections that begin to feel bland. Like when you’re in a cave system trying to avoid attention in a way that feels like a homage to Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. And outside of the emotional notes touched upon when it comes to trying to reach your family in an oppressive situation, the ending and final act are too obtuse and abstract to make any sort of lasting impact. Somerville is a visually impressive, relatively short cinematic adventure held back by its ambition.
Another average, but ambitious, outing for the blue hedgehog.
We wanted to experience a different saga, and God of War Ragnarök feels like the expansion of one we’ve already heard around the hearth, seen in a beautiful tapestry and heard on the high seas venturing towards more loot. Though it’s still a very, very good saga. One worthy of the Edda.
Hellena turned down the role in the end, and that public dispute is still bubbling along in the background in Twitter's cauldron, and while it hasn't affected the product before you today, the spat has certainly soured the behind-the-scenes of it all.
Even if you've never played a Call of Duty, or dipped in and out of the franchise every so often, you'll probably be okay with not knowing who Task Force 141 and Soap MacTavish, Ghost, and Captain Price are before jumping into the campaign.
Take your pick of the four aforementioned proteges listed above, team up with another player, and take-down syndicates and streetcorner thugs using combat inspired by the popular Batman Arkham series of games.
This is the best the franchise has looked from a purely cinematic level. In the end, New Tales From The Borderlands succeeds because it lives up to its namesake and presents the best Borderlands storytelling since the original Tales.
If themes exist across these games -- the first being Mushroom Kingdom focused, and the second Donkey Kong, then Sparks of Hope is a riff on the Super Mario Galaxy games as it features the Lumas of those games, only they're now Rabbidified and called Sparks, as well as some planet-hopping for differential fun and a broad spectrum of environments to play within.
Unfortunately not much has changed where that sentiment is concerned. And if we’re looking solely at the studio’s technical and artistic strengths, it doesn’t need to prove this aspect of its game anymore, but looking at things purely from a gameplay perspective, Asobo might need to come out of the Dark Ages.
I think the best thing they've done this year is they've made the stickiness of players feel less oppressive.
It's fantastical, cartoonish, and realistic in equal measure, with a sense of fun and even dread, expressed through impressive art direction and a moody synth-driven soundtrack.
It was perhaps around the time I found myself feeding mulberry leaves to my silkworms so they could produce the silk I need to run through my loom in order to make the fabric required to produce the parachutes the island's meteorologist had requested for her research balloons… somewhere in that long chain of intertwined chores, anyway… that I realised Wylde Flowers was indeed a very good chore game. And by this point my wife was very much in agreement.