GameSpot's Reviews
Every element in Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse works so well both independently and as part of the whole: flexible combat, beautifully acrobatic traversal, fine-tuned environmental puzzles, wide cast of interesting characters, and eye-catching visual panache–all wrapped within a smart tarot system that lets these ideas complement each other.
There are the bones of a great game here–one that would benefit from a tighter focus on its engaging first-person combat and a trimming of the superfluous mechanics that detract from the ones that work. Instead, it’s an uneven experience that delights as much as it disappoints.
I might like this softened version of the game a little less than I did before, but even if some of its prickly nature has been smoothed over, Dark Arisen still offers a whole bunch more of what I loved about Dragon’s Dogma 2 in the first place.
Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival feels like a statement piece in both sex and violence.
Order of the Sinking Star might work better had it been a bit more curated in deploying its massive pile of puzzles, but the occasional frustration and overcomplication is an affordable price of admission to play around with so many fun ideas.
Galactic Racer is those absolutely perfect 10 minutes expanded into a full game.
For better or worse, E-Day is distinctly Gears, and I had a good time with it, even if the story is disappointing and the open areas are fairly dull.
Ultimately, my 13 hours with End of Abyss were inconsistent, with long stretches of excitement broken up by regular beats of annoyance.
Where Minecraft Dungeons was a charming introduction to the dungeon-crawler genre, Dungeons 2 builds a deeper action-RPG within the same familiar, blocky framework.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve picks up where Ace Combat 7 left off, underlining that the series is well and truly back to its best
Townfall, like Silent Hill f before it, expresses what I love most about the comeback.
Control Resonant is Remedy’s take on a semi-open-world character-action game, and that might sound like an experience you’ve had before, but at the transdimensional intersection of its impeccable combat design and the studio’s signature strangeness stands something unforgettably unique.
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is a sprawling masterpiece of a strategy RPG, building upon the successes of past Fire Emblem games with new interconnected elements, expertly designed combat puzzles, and an emphasis on flexibility and choice.
At best, it’s a fun but forgettable experience that’ll entertain you for a few hours. At worst, it shows that just because you can make really good superhero games with one character, that doesn’t mean you can make really good superhero games with any character.
I have enough fun with NBA 2K each year that I tend to delete it from my console after the new year; otherwise, I risk never playing anything else.
The uninspired semi-open-world is a misstep that doesn’t justify its existence, yet Way of the Sword is still a fantastic and welcome return for the series, led by outstanding combat that firmly places it in the upper echelon of modern action games. Fighting is everything, after all, and there’s nothing else quite like Musashi’s brand of calculated violence.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is an incredibly ambitious, deeply interesting first game from Rebel Wolves. Not every good idea lands and not every envelope is pushed as far as it could be, but the potential of the game is vast, and there’s a huge amount to lean into and love.
Overall, I liked Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. I think it adds a valuable chapter to the overall mythos of the series, and manages to carve out its own identity in several places without continuing to rely on fan-favorite Amicia or the terror of contending with waves of rats.
Star Wars is a rich playground for games, with loads of differentiated hero and enemy types and powers baked in, and Zero Company takes full advantage of that to make an excellent tactics game in its own right. In doing so, it has made the next great evolution of the genre.
Though No More Room in Hell 2 clearly leans into decades of zombie history, it feels, most of all, like a great mash-up of two of my favorite zombie games: It has the dread-inducing, life-or-death stakes of State of Decay wrapped in a tight co-op experience reminiscent of Left 4 Dead.