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All that's cool about flying a mech has been executed in the most leaden, user-unfriendly, nonsensical manner possible.
Gears 5 is the first time the series has made the brutality of its combat feel captivating and disturbingly intimate.
Without a sense of feedback or progress, the rambling, leisurely narrative of Telling Lies comes across as unfocused.
Our ancestors didn't have it easy, and that's the for-better-and-worse message reverberating through every interaction in the game.
If you ask if something is possible for you or your Legion to do in Astral Chain, most of the time, the answer is yes.
Not only does the game cheapen the idea that a dog is man's best friend, it also falls apart like a cheap chew toy.
One hopes Man of Medan will function similarly to a mediocre TV pilot for a series that only later finds its footing.
With its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink imagination, Control is as much a thrilling paean to human curiosity as it is a warning of its numerous casualties.
Even when the game isn't actively shooting itself in the foot, it never entirely succeeds.
The more often you get stuck with the same items and abilities, the more redundant and shallow the game feels.
Fire Emblem attains an especially epic, moral grandeur with this game's focus on the interplay between education and religion.
The game isn't really supposed to be about anything, yet in that ambiguity it captures the specific madness of our present.
As the game never really switches up its formula, it's not long before fatigue sets in.
It experiments with all the weakest parts of the series and ties them together with a new, tedious progression system.
The game's first-person-shooter sequences aren't just dull and familiar, but also clunky, given the touchy VR controls.
Its repetitive tasks are like the usual arbitrary gates to reach a cutscene in a mediocre video game.
From the second you power on the game, its entire toy chest is open to you, no strings attached.
The similarities between SolSeraph and ActRaiser are unmistakable, but it's a joyless facsimile that lacks a single spark of innovation.
Where the game goes in-depth, and where it clearly feels most comfortable, is in its omnipresent brawls.
Worse than the sheer tedium of shooting is the effect it has on the game's atmosphere.