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However you choose to experience the game, Little Hope restores players' faith in Supermassive Games to continue making decent narrative horror titles. The story ties together well regardless of player decisions, and there's a great mix of character personalities. Friendlier QTEs and better character movement make the title an improvement over Man of Medan, and there are barely any technical issues. The Dark Pictures Anthology has a bright future ahead.
FUSER is all about player creativity and freedom. It's less focused on technical recitation of precise button presses and more on how in the groove you can get yourself. For decades, Harmonix has been harnessing the power of music and delivering a feeling of super stardom to players. FUSER puts that directly into the players' hands more than any game before it. Even with a PS5 and next-gen games in hand, I can't turn the music off. If you yearn for the days of the plastic instrument revolution, just without all that junk taking up space, FUSER will put you as close to the stage as any music game possibly can.
Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales is the perfect showcase of the PS5, espousing multiple enhancements to its last-gen predecessor while also feeling familiar. Even apart from its standing as a flagship PS5 launch title, Miles Morales is Insomniac perfecting the formula from the original game and offering an experience that is more concise, focused, and full of heart than the first.
Astro's Playroom is the epitome of the PlayStation 5. It's the foundational software kicking off the next generation of PlayStation gaming. ASOBI Team from Japan Studio could have just phoned it in with a handful of gimmicky levels to distract players while they wait for Miles Morales or Demon's Souls to download, but they didn't. They developed a full fun platforming experience that not only demonstrates the PS5, but celebrates 25 years of PlayStation history in some pretty special ways. It's a powerful showcase that honors everything that led to the "5" in PS5, while also providing a pretty clear picture of what makes this new generation so special.
Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars is a strategy game that has the perfect atmosphere for the season we currently find ourselves in, and we're not strictly talking about Halloween here! Some cumbersome menu navigation and mostly unchallenging AI means that without even local hot-seat multiplayer, players looking for more challenging opponents will unfortunately need to look elsewhere. Still, console gamers who are desperate for more strategy games should look to Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars to get their fix, and at a wallet-friendly price point of $49.99 to boot.
Much of the fun in Carto is that you never know what new things you'll discover next. It's a real joy to find new map pieces and see what new areas you can explore, as well as the new characters that you'll get to meet next. This is a super chilled out puzzle game and quite possibly one of the most relaxed and wholesome adventures that you'll have this year.
As I came away from Ghostrunner and started writing about it, I realized that I genuinely wished there was more game to play. That's not a comment on the game's length, which is very well paced, filled with bonus collectibles and perfect for speedrunners, but more a comment on how much potential there is here. Give me more levels, more platforming gauntlets, more cybernetic abilities to use, just give me more Ghostrunner.
Even when taking the game's minor foibles into account, Cloudpunk provides a brief journey into a deceptively fascinating city in the clouds. Rushing through the story means avoiding the game's best bits, because Nicalis' real stars are its residents. Now that a patch has addressed the major bug that blocked progression, there's little reason not to recommend a foray into the dark world of this futuristic dystopia.
Everything comes to a head in the final chapter. "The Last Session" does a serviceable job rolling my previous experiences into a cohesive yet predictable end. It may not have been a stunning revelation, however it was a satisfying one. All in all not a bad way to spend about three hours on a Saturday afternoon. Stories Untold is a great journey to take part in and one I'm glad to have taken.
DIRT 5 is the fun one in the DiRT family now – this is the racing game you boot up when you want to have a great time without really thinking about much else. It's funny, coming from the seriousness of DiRT 4, to see just how much has changed in three years. An irreverent style that features a campaign consisting of over 130 events, a promising arena creator that should provide countless hours of user-generated content, and four-player split screen all add up to a fun racing game that doesn't take itself too seriously and is more about simply having fun sliding your way to the finish line. A free PS5 upgrade down the line will ensure DIRT 5 stays on racers' minds for a while to come, as well. For those who want absolute realism and a focus on rally racing, DiRT Rally 2.0 is still your jam. For everyone else, there's DIRT 5.
If you're a fan of rhythm games then it's definitely worth checking out Mad Rat Dead. The vibrant punk aesthetic and catchy soundtrack alone makes it worth a gander. But for those of you that are rhythmically challenged then this is a harder sell. The repetitive levels and dull story aren't going to do much for those gamers that are just looking for a fun platformer.
I appreciate that The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV is here. I'm glad this is finally over and having this sense of resolution. It's a sense of finality, and it does an admirable job of bringing everything together and to a close. But it also very much is more of the same, only on a much grander scale and with an overwhelming amount of characters and exposition. This is a game for those who have been following along for the last five years and understand it is more about concluding a story than offering major innovations. While it can be exhausting and overwhelming, I would say it is worth it.
In a year that likely not see any more hockey at the NHL level, it's nice to see that NHL 21 is allowing us to indulge our inner superstar. There may not be a ton of other huge innovations, but the enhanced take on Be A Pro alone makes this installment worth investing in. If you're looking to only dive into the season mode, this may be more of an off-year, but for everybody else, it's high-time to return to the ice with vengeance!
More than seven years after its initial announcement, Ray's the Dead just doesn't feel like a finished game. Clunky gameplay and numerous bugs don't do the imbalanced and overly difficult encounters any favors, while certain other concepts in the game feel underexplored and go unutilized. It's potential to delve into unique puzzle mechanics is overshadowed by obnoxious and frustrating combat segments and bugs impacting critical elements of the gameplay. Ray's the Dead might have a lot of heart, but that heart is contained within a cumbersome rotting corpse crawling with bugs that make coming back from the dead more chore than triumph.
It's frustrating to not be able to talk about the bits of Rebirth that I liked the most due to a fear of spoiling things, but just know that there's a lot to uncover that makes the bits that I liked less worth going through. Although the pacing and second half of the game let things down a bit, an awesome story and a campaign full of tension make Amnesia: Rebirth worth playing through for both the horror fans and the horror fearful.
RIDE 4 is the motorcycle racer for motorcycle fans. This is a double-edged sword, of course, because outside of this core audience there won't be much pickup from non-fans. The demanding physics helps to achieve great immersion in first-person view, custom liveries can easily be crafted, and the career mode gives a nice sense of progression, even if it is very low-profile. This all adds up to a neat package that fans are sure to enjoy.
It's hard to shake the sinking feeling that FIFA 21 has almost been frozen in stasis since last season. While there are the expected seasonal enhancements, nothing stands on its own to make this a "must buy" installment. If you picked up the game in 2019, you'd probably be forgiven for taking a pass this time around. Hopefully they have more innovation in store for next year, because it definitely feels like EA is trying to run out the clock on this generation.
Deep down, Torchlight III could be a great game. If the developers revamp the map and UI issues I pointed out I'd be over the moon. But in its current state I can't in good conscious tell you to pay full asking price. Hold off until this is either patched or on sale.
Star Wars Squadrons is nothing if not an authentic experience. It's goal is to put you in the cockpit of a starfighter in the Star Wars universe, and to that end it succeeds admirably. An uninspired story serves as training for Fleet Battles, an epic multiplayer experience that recreates the best of Star Wars space combat in ways that no other games have. EA and Motive's firm stance on Squadrons as a standalone one-time-purchase experience is both commendable and the very thing that limits the viability of what it could grow into.
I'm going to level with you, reader: I went into Mafia Definitive Edition expecting to be underwhelmed. What I ended up playing was far-and-away, infinitely better than I was expecting, featuring fantastic storytelling, compelling, yet immensely flawed characters (in a good way), and a world that is teeming with life. You don't have to be a fan of the original game in order to feel like a member of the family. Don't worry! There's more than enough hot lead to go around.