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In a monopoly, you are the default choice. That's great for FIFA 23, but football fans are paying the price.
I was really hoping to enjoy the life of crime in Saints Row and the few moments where everything clicked were exhilarating. But, overall, it is not an enjoyable experience — not even if you decide to get it on sale. I would recommend that you sit this one out, and save both your time and money.
All these improvements — permadeath, DualSense, and most of all, the graphical upgrades — come at a significant cost.
Spider-Man Remastered on PC warrants a second playthrough, especially for PS4 owners who still haven't been able to get hold of a PS5. New players on PC are in for a treat, as they can expect a compelling narrative, bound by smooth, free-flowing gameplay that rivals the Batman: Arkham games. (I'm counting out Batman: Arkham Knight here, which had a terrible launch on PC.)
While animals have served as human companions, attack assists, and Easter egg distractions throughout the history of video games, Stray — in what's a rare thing — asks you to play as one. It's nowhere near purr-fect, but it's a delight nonetheless.
The addition of a co-op mode and the “Explore Story” feature greatly increase its replayability as well. Despite the original six to seven-hour playtime, As Dusk Falls would be a great addition to your gaming library, as you can always come back to uncover a new story path that you didn't take before.
Given all that, F1 22 feels more like a pit stop than a podium finish. “F1 Life” is simply uninspiring and supercars feel out of place. Codemasters is seemingly laying the groundwork for future titles with this game. But in itself, the game needed more content.
The map is relatively huge for an expansion — I have yet to discover the whole of it with my 20 hours of gameplay — and there are so many side quests that it feels it can be its own game. I rarely felt that I should have played Assassin's Creed Valhalla as it kept me engrossed in the story. Yes, I agree that players starting their Valhalla journey may need some training to get a hang of the controls, and for that particular reason I feel Dawn of Ragnarök deserved its own title.
For those looking for a dedicated simulation racer where you can spend hours tuning and practising to get the best out of the car and yourself, Gran Turismo 7 will no doubt appeal. But I don't think it's for racing game enthusiasts, it's for racing enthusiasts.
Just like Ubisoft's mega-hit franchise, Horizon Forbidden West has a lot of the right ingredients but it's let down by the pitfalls of AAA game design.
The Dying Light 2 storyline is fairly average. The game introduces choice-based dialogues that add a little more flair to the story but unfortunately, not enough. Aiden is made to run back and forth in the city doing the dirty work for the factions, who do not seem to give away information even after gaining trust. Seems like a way to stretch the game out. Thankfully, the characters in Dying Light 2 Stay Human are quite good and you get to meet a ton of them during quests. Some characters stay for a while, and some are just there for a single section of the story.
Rather than a new Uncharted game then, what's more likely (unfortunately) is a PS5 version of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, the PS4 remaster of the first three Uncharted PS3 titles. A studio like Naughty Dog shouldn't be ground down into churning remasters of its old games — it should be looking ahead to new entries or new IP. But this is just the world we live in.
Rainbow Six Extraction is clearly not for most casual gamers. In fact, I would go so far to say that it feels like it's built for hardcore players only. Unless Ubisoft plans to massively tweak difficulty settings and play styles in the near future, Rainbow Six Extraction could end up being one of those titles that get lost between the couch cushions.
Overall, Thunder Tier One is a fun game to spend some time with your friends and not rage quit, while also having some brainstorming sessions over your next plan of attack.
All of this is precisely why Call of Duty: Vanguard is a missed opportunity for Sledgehammer Games, Treyarch, and Activision. The game suffers from an uncomfortable contradiction: the campaign and its visual cues favour newbies, while its multiplayer and its cranked-up pace is a veteran extravaganza. The single-player campaign is also unsatisfyingly short, while Zombies barely qualifies as a full game mode.
By ditching the campaign mode in Battlefield 2042, EA Dice has made the game a tiny bit more confusing and difficult for new players trying to get into the franchise. Veterans and die-hard (pun-intended) lovers of Battlefield will love it for the way it stays true to the gameplay of the older titles. The chaos of the 128-strong lobby isn't something I look forward to whenever I start the game, and I feel that may be true for most players.
Playground Games can offer up an iterative experience and rake in the money, because Forza Horizon 5 is in a world of its own. It's wonderful, but it's also sad.
[Far Cry 6] is happy in its groove, delivering a fun and immersive Latin American experience, an open world sandbox you can mess around in, and giving you the tools to do what you want. Better yet, it lets you enjoy all of that with a friend.
But even if EA does get its head out of the pile of gold, it's got troubles on the pitch too. FIFA doesn't feel like football anymore to me. To be fair, it never really was — thanks to pitch size, pace dominance, and all that — but now it just seems to be going away from the sport it claims to represent each year. Maybe a new challenger can shake things up. We badly need it.
Ultimately, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a by-the-numbers 3D action-adventure game. It might look like a modern Zelda game but doesn't play like one. It's largely just a series of arena-based combat routines, stitched together by long stretches of traversal, and cutscenes that are well-designed but feel like a forgotten Hollywood B-movie. Too often, Kena: Bridge of Spirits reminds you of better games you've played and that it's borrowing from — which is not a good sign. There's no harm in learning from others, it's certainly well made, but it's lacking in originality. There's little personality to Kena: Bridge of Spirits, for it's adopting the sheen of others. For a debut title, this is undoubtedly a good effort — but I fear Ember Labs have played it too safe.