GameSpot's Reviews
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.
Madden 27 is the fifth consecutive year in which the on-field experience has been foundationally sound and improves on its predecessor. It’s a heartening trajectory for a series I’ve spent my life playing, through both good and bad eras.
Mortal Shell 2 constantly surprised me, whether it was the mechanics behind a newly discovered Shell, the layered improvements to combat, a bulbous monstrosity of a boss fight that was more mouth than anything else, or the ways you can tinker with a build and make it wholly your own.
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls feels like a homecoming. Marvel heroes and villains are once again beating each other up in tag-based battles, and I am loving the experience of jumping in and figuring out new strategies. Rather than lean on old tropes, Arc System Works elected to put its own spin on the idea, and what they’ve cooked up sets a new bar for future tag fighters.
Big Walk takes fundamental and timeless video game concepts–obstacles and incentives for clearing them–and, through an intensely focused co-op experience, shapes them into something singularly rewarding, supremely mysterious, and totally unforgettable.
Beast of Reincarnation is an ambitious game that often overextends itself.
These issues aside, however, Halo: Campaign Evolved is awesome. And that’s not surprising, simply because Halo: Combat Evolved is a fantastic game.
Splatoon Raiders shows a new degree of flexibility for the franchise, with a single-player campaign that’s much more satisfying than its past attempts to inject a story campaign into the main games.
All said, I regard Resynced with the exact same sentiments as Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Resynced goes beyond the scope of a traditional remaster and adjusts the content of Black Flag to make improvements to the experience (what you’d expect for a remake).
Rhythm Heaven Groove is an infectious blend of unapologetic weirdness and toe-tapping rhythm gameplay, and a heck of a party game to boot.
At the same time, the original still holds up very well, and if you have Switch Online with the Expansion Pass, you can already play it. That makes this hard to recommend, which is a shame. If Nintendo means this to be a new beginning for Star Fox, retreading familiar ground undermines the effort.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a surprisingly strong first attempt at reaching into this genre from a studio not known for it.
Play by Play Studios' arcade basketball game delivers a strong highlight reel when you're playing with friends.
Shovel Knight was a well-deserved successful debut for Yacht Club. Mina the Hollower may be its masterpiece.
007 First Light wisely repurposes what works in both universes but isn’t afraid to reimagine or ditch those parts that don’t.
It's still simple, but not quite as simple, it's bursting with even more secrets, and it's another playful take on a mythology that I love. It's the most fun I've had with a Lego game since 2005, and a template for how Lego games can rebuild into something greater, piece by piece.
How much mileage you get out of those extra stages, and in fact out of the entire game, relies largely on your level of curiosity. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is fundamentally a game about poking and prodding at the world and seeing what happens.
It's these systemic enhancements that most notably separate Zero Parades from Disco Elysium. It struggles in other areas, often feeling like a pale imitation of the studio's predecessor--dangerous territory when the likelihood of reaching the same heights is marginal at best.
Forza Horizon 6 is a gorgeous open-world game that is as much about racing as it is about taking a virtual vacation.
The Dark Pictures, as a broad project, feels like it's at a crossroads with Directive 8020.