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545 games reviewed
75.4 average score
80 median score
51.0% of games recommended

Paste Magazine's Reviews

Oct 26, 2015

But at the end of the day, there just isn't that much here for me, even as a casual-sometimes-hardcore Halo fan. If you think Destiny could scratch the itch you have for Halo, pick it up over this game. If not, buckle in for an underwhelming mechanical retread with a so-so story framing the whole experience.

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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.

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Nov 8, 2013

[T]he Marvel license goes a long way toward absolving Lego Marvel Super Heroes of its technical sins. And while none of the puzzles will tax your brain overmuch, you will feel that familiar satisfaction bumping up that completion percentage with every gold brick collected and character unlocked. Maybe it's too much to hope for a Lego game to take any big risks. You could probably say the same about Marvel.

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Jan 23, 2015

For a time, revisiting Resident Evil was good. And just as quickly as I was hooked in, I played P.T.

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6 / 10.0 - Dying Light
Feb 2, 2015

The end result is something that feels like little more than the finished product of a well-oiled entertainment machine—a safe appeal to a mass audience. This is unfortunate since there is genuine joy to be had in simply navigating Techland's fictional city. If the same attention was paid to narrative development and visual design as has obviously gone into the player character's movement, Dying Light's world would be much more inviting.

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Mar 23, 2015

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?

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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.

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6.3 / 10.0 - Zenless Zone Zero
Jul 3, 2024

In the end, Zenless Zone Zero gives you a chance to bring down your foes in the most stylish ways imaginable, all thanks to a dynamic and exhilarating combat system. Regrettably, this is the lone highlight in a game that’s marred by questionable design choices and limited exploration. As someone who’s put in countless hours into F2P games, including Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, this youngest child in the family is unlikely to step out of the shadows of its older and more successful siblings. Indeed, if you still enjoy other F2P or live-service games out there, it’s hard to recommend investing your time into Zenless Zone Zero at this current stage.

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6.3 / 10.0 - The Knight Witch
Dec 2, 2022

The world only has life when parts of it are dying, when Rayne sets them afire with her spells. The Knight Witch wants you to be invested in its world, in the possibility of its death, in the ability of a community to live freely without exploitation. However, its only poetry is in virtual violence, in the simple thrill of outwitting a computer and watching its shrapnel fade from view.

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6.3 / 10.0 - State of Decay 2
Jun 29, 2018

Overall, I have some mixed feelings about State of Decay 2. It is a game that feels less focused than its predecessor despite making strong moves to deepen the experience in every realm. Focusing in on the details somehow made the game lose something; the steps the game took forward cost something fundamental and core to the experience.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Dead Space (Remake)
Feb 6, 2023

It's hard to argue with its frantic fighting that also requires exactness and its meticulous, if overbearing, sense of place. However, all of this remake's craft, and some of its mistakes, come out of a solid foundation. It's a pity, then, that it thinks better of some of the original's most beguiling decisions and devotedly recreates its simple failures.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Fire Emblem Engage
Jan 31, 2023

Often, the game feels more like an advertisement for its characters, which occasionally feel more like idols or gacha units than soldiers (which is only reinforced by an actual, though disconnected, gacha system within the game). It feels disrespectful to deploy some of Fire Emblem's shining protagonists from weightier games in an entry this light and confused, one whose main character is an empty vessel. While Engage is perfectly serviceable and even an improvement on Three Houses in some ways, I want more for a series with such a storied history-and, I imagine, so will most of its fans.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Somerville
Nov 28, 2022

Though getting through it was occasionally bumpy, I only wish I'd been able to get more of it once it really got going. And had Somerville maintained its human element front and center, I think I would've loved the way the story ended more than I ultimately did. As it stands though, Somerville is a notable debut by Patti's new studio, it just has some of the wrinkles of one too.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Eastward
Sep 30, 2021

She has an immediate chemistry with Eastward's cavalcade of supporting characters, which are numerous and varied in their importance. I wish the game paid more mind to letting her character breathe, and allowing her to engage with the plot on her own terms. Instead, I'm left feeling like Eastward is a bunch of beautiful puzzle pieces that fail to come together.

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6.5 / 10.0 - F1 2021
Jul 23, 2021

While it is exciting to see an attempt at a more robust story mode in a Formula 1 game, EA and Codemasters need to match the graphics and plots featured in other AAA games in order for it to be worth playing. Hopefully Formula 1 games will take this into account and offer a better looking and more detailed story mode in the future.

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Mar 26, 2020

An experience that reduces the bulk of files and audio logs that personify the narrative delivery of the base game, in favor of vertical platforming and fight sequences with the Hiss.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Borderlands 3
Sep 30, 2019

It's a shame that Borderlands and I are no longer a good fit. What I miss most of all is its personality. The aesthetic and surface changes to the series don't make it a stranger; the change in temperament does. We just don't have as many laughs as we used to. Better to cut things off now, and remember the relationship for what it once was, because it doesn't get any better from here.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Anthem
Feb 25, 2019

Anthem is not “for me”, yet Anthem is trying desperately to be “for everyone.” It is a slow, sometimes terribly frustrating game with nonetheless incredible flying mechanics and adequate shooting. It is the future of videogames, built to be played forever and yet somehow forgettable—the sustenance meal of the online shooter-looter genre, inexplicably buoyed by a company known for legendarily good writing forced to hide its own characters behind mission talk-overs and loot notifications.

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6.5 / 10.0 - The Sims 4: Seasons
Jun 25, 2018

In the case of Seasons, it may be too little, too late.

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Sep 14, 2018

Give me a female lead who wakes up, pisses out her diaphragm and does a shot of Jager while she's still on the toilet. Give me someone who is messy, who makes mistakes not out of a misguided and entitled sense of right and wrong, but because human beings are flawed and have complicated motivations. It's a tall order in an atmosphere where AAA games are designed just as much by their investors as they are their writers, but in the case of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I still wish they'd actually get their hands dirty.

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