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Gone are the days of dashing in for a quick pummel, retreating, defending, counterattacking, and cycling said routine ad nauseam.
All the energy that should've gone into giving players a good reason to want to survive in Harran went toward an uninvolving multiplayer.
The class-based rewards, compendium of achievements, and the adrenaline of capturing and killing a trophy monster makes for a compelling game.
A love letter to where it came from and an advancement of its best ideas into something bigger, more cohesive, and infinitely more fun.
There's only two questions that matter: "Do you love Nintendo?" and "Do you enjoy hitting things 'til they go flying off into the stratosphere?"
Treature Tracker is a powerful gesture of confidence by Nintendo: a spinoff game with more original ideas than most companies' new IPs.
Temple of Osiris is best when it remains focused on the action-oriented gameplay, shining brightest in boss battles that combine puzzles and gunplay.
A game world that feels like a real place isn't necessarily the end all be all, but in this game's case, it helps you feel welcome.
There's a good game buried here, and when they finally plant the headstone, the cause of death will be chiseled as "trying too hard."
For those desiring a more focused approach to gameplay, Far Cry 4 offers a lengthy campaign with over 40 missions.
The game's progression, while unhurried in nature, stays true to the orthodox route of the conventional JRPG, keeping things engaging primarily by way of its kinetic, multi-faceted battle system.
If there's a single downside, it's that with a cast of over 16 characters, only five of whom can physically be in your party, there's very little reason to play around with your party's composition.
There's no avatar here; it's your hands causing the violence now, your eyes staring directly at victims, and you facing down being shot dead, run over, blown up, or falling from insane heights.
It's more interested in showing off just how beautiful (and deep) the multilayered design runs than it is in really elaborating on it
The process of earning respect is a key aspect of the game; establishing your team with only the most loyal companions is a tricky task among many other demanding objectives.
The glue holding it all together as more than just a stale repurpose of the previous games is the story.
The consequences of brash actions are glossed over, and the last three sequences of the game feel redundant, with back-to-back assassinations occurring first at public guillotines and then private dinner parties.
In a year that the Wii U gifted us with Mario Kart 8 and Bayonetta 2, games that displayed what the system could do graphically, Rise of Lyric's graphics are simply unacceptable in 2014.
The sorry "story" segments largely amount to random combinations of the four main characters trading bad jokes, such as running the difference between "who" and "whom" into the ground.
Some of the best features are frustratingly kept out of the player's hands for hours, by which time many will have lost interest.