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Believe it or not my biggest problem with The Sims 4 Get to Work isn't that my bakery was a bust. It's that pretty much everything it adds to the game is one-sided. As far as I can tell I can't send my sims to the hospital or the police station or the lab to look around. It's interesting enough to work in these locations, but how much more interesting could it be with outward-facing interactions?
Considered on its own, Starships is a little tactical treat. Give it a few hours of your day and you'll be lifted by its modular pieces and its battlefield puzzles. But do not linger: It simply does not have the strength to punch through gravity and carry you to the stars.
Life Is Strange has a few more episodes to prove me wrong—and as always, I sure hope they do. They still have time, but unlike Max's, it's running out.
It is rare that I finish a game, especially one that's more than 6 hours, and immediately want to restart and play through it all again. Bloodborne is a deeply challenging game set in a fantastically realized gothic nightmare, an adventure of the highest quality for those willing to undergo the game's trial by fire and push past the technical hiccups.
Nostalgia is similarly addictive, but Verge's confidence sees it through the challenge of invoking Metroid better than just about anyone who's tried before it. It copies more than aesthetic and ambiguous notions about variety, and the specificity is what matters. It's not a perfect match, and the absence of a powerful lead leaves an indelible mark on the experience.
The heroes in film noir aren't flawless—they stumble through the story, rarely win a fight, and often pay a heavy price in the end. At least they try, though, and the same can be said for White Night.
And Hardline could be better. There are shades of it here, now and then. Games in general can be better. But they never will be until we raise our expectations. When even the best of us feels limited to writing "narrative rosaries strung with beads of pure chaos," how do the least of us stand a chance?
DMC: Definitive Edition puts a decent game back in the limelight with some additional content that launches it up above decent and into great. Also there's a moment where a demon yells "fuck you" and Dante yells "fuck you!" and then the demon yells "FUCK YOUUUU!!!" and now you get to experience that in glorious HD resolution at sixty frames per second in the year of our Lord two thousand and fifteen.
Ultimately, I found myself charmed by the game's premise, and happy to skip the occasional boring "historical" cut-scenes entirely in order to spend more time with my cute clique. The compelling combat mechanics made up for the tedious administrative tasks of setting up spells and weapons for my huge party. I could imagine a younger version of myself with more free time—and a higher proclivity towards digital teen crushes—getting lost in the world of chocobo breeding and conversations with feisty Moogles. In many ways, the game serves as a decent introduction to the tropes and aesthetics of latter-day Final Fantasy games; it's too bad that many of the cut-scenes lay on the lore too thick, or I'd be able to recommend the title to new players with no reservations.
Guilty Gear Xrd – SIGN rules in so many ways. They announced a new Street Fighter, I hear, but I do not care. Guilty Gear is a good time. I love fighting games and I will always hype ones that are good but Guilty Gear is special. Not too many games make me feel like I'm having as much fun as these do. Other games are more popular and other games are easier to learn, but only Guilty Gear is this happy to be here.
It's essentially a glorified DLC pack of new levels, plus a level editor for folks who want to make their own murder rooms. The exact people who Dennaton Games were supposedly condemning in their first title are, apparently, the exact audience of people whose money they would like to take, again and again. I guess they figure those people like rape and torture, too, plus more methodical killing. Maybe they're right—but it's too bad, since it comes at the expense of making a game that has anything whatsoever to offer beyond phoned-in grindhouse schlock.
Despite the off-putting steampunk aesthetic, the weird roster of fictional and non-fictional characters, and the relative shallowness of the strategic elements, Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. doesn't grow tiresome.
Removing "what", limiting "where," and focusing on "when" limits what can really be done in the main stages. The minimal "storytelling" that wraps the main game suggests where the developers wanted the focus to be: in the experimentation and design of the Workshop and in the sharing of the Community. That other stuff? Just a tech demo.
There might be rough patches, but the friction falls away when I'm locked into the core of Ori and the Blind Forest. We here at Paste Games believe that Metroid is pretty much the best game to emulate. Unlike games with concrete missions or levels, a great Metroid-style game never gives the player a reason to stop. They pull us through on a steady current of gradually expansive play that makes us never want to put the controller down. Ori expertly nails that rhythm, timing out its revelations and offering enough unique ways to navigate its world to maximize the player's engagement.
The Deer God is, sadly, a mediocre game suffering from an identity crisis hiding inside of a grandiose shell.
Sunless Sea's contemplative pace and reams of text won't appeal to every player, but if you have a little patience, and an appreciation for atmospheric story telling, then it'll be hard to pass this one up.
In this way, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is the more realistic of the two games released last week. Though one stars a human being walking among recognizable landmarks, employing guns and knives and other things of our world, it is the little pink ball of clay and his merry band of floating spike balls and giant hands with mouths that recreates a more believable, tangible world.
When the credits rolled I was relieved. The final part of Roundabout was agony, a funny game that had overstayed its welcome and told all its jokes four times over.
What is [Apotheon's] song? One of delight and wonder, I would argue, an expression of unabashed love for myth. That it's possible to turn such love into an engrossing adventure that coalesces in a way so few games do reminds me of my own love for games and of their potential as a medium of beautiful expression. Apotheon, then, is the kind of videogame we need more of.
This is a game and a concept that could benefit from a sequel. And if we're lucky, it'd give us an even deeper look at this gorgeous yet squalid Dickensian London.