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Dontnod is capturing the mood of a powerful country in the midst of a crisis of identity. If they can stick the landing, Life is Strange 2 has the potential to be a masterpiece.
Fishing Sim World clearly has a number of issues, the most glaring being the developers at Dovetail forgot to make it fun.
Transference's subtlety is meant to create additional depth, but keeping the player at arm's length only works if you eventually let them in. Unfortunately, Transference never fully shows its narrative hand and that's the game's biggest detriment. Gameplay-wise, the game is easy but satisfying to navigate. The surrealist, horror aspects of the shifting environments create a steady stream of tension and intrigue. While its brevity might be a turn off to players who enjoy a heartier game experience, Ubisoft Montreal and SpectreVision succeeded in combining games and movies into one entertaining and eerie walking sim.
Forsaken won't change your mind if you don't like Destiny. It wasn't made to. It was designed with the people who love Destiny in mind, giving them more of exactly what they want.
All those years of effort paid off in the creation of an excellent entry in the metroidvania canon, and I hope it pays off in the form of a successful game as well. Timespinner exudes an aura of, "so much effort went into this, dang!" And making my way through it was a joy, both in terms of the look and feel of the world, the inherent appeal of filling in that map, and of course the smoothness and responsiveness of the combat.
Super Street: The Game is a disappointment in all aspects. Clunky driving, a blurry presentation, generic sound design, boring upgrade options, and mind-bogglingly terrible physics all mash together into one “arcade” racer you're better off avoiding, especially at its launch price of $49.99 USD. Its two saving graces are possessing a decent selection of cosmetic options and split-screen support, but those features do nothing to make this game worthy of a purchase. The game has already been out for over a week, and its online population is nonexistent. The developer has also not issued any sort of patch to fix some of the more glaring issues. If that's a sign of what to expect when it comes to post-launch support, racing fans should look elsewhere to get their tuning fix.
At the end of the day, FIFA 19 is yet another crisp, clean, and innovative offering from EA.
Without question, The Golf Club 2019 has received a large credibility injection thanks to the involvement of the PGA Tour. Sadly, this feels like a half-implemented crossover that doesn't utilize the license to anywhere near its full potential. Hitting the course is as gratifying as it's ever been, but the end product feels like it needed another trip to the driving range before its tee time. Like a 320-yard drive on a par 5, it's a fantastic starting point, but still well short of the flag.
Beyond those couple of snags, and really, those snags just remind us designing puzzles is a human effort, The Gardens Between stands out among its physics/puzzle/metaphor-driven peers. It's beautiful to look at and listen to, gratifying to solve (most of the time), and in the the end tells a simple story that's just bittersweet enough to sting your brain into thinking about your life a little.
That's about it, really! If you're looking for storytelling chops you won't find them here. Metal Max Xeno is all about angry and confused survivors screaming about dying, starving, or being horny, and how dope their tanks are, and how more bad guys need to die. It's refreshing in its earnest nature, and is actually more hopeful than nihilistic. But it is still on the simple and tropey side. Ultimately, this is a game about having a billion options dumped in front of you, and the joy of diving into that pile and making cool stuff out of it. There's lots of menu-fiddling, number-crunching, and ingredient-gathering, but at the end of that grind is comeuppance for evil, jerk murder-bots as your painstakingly-curated ordnance tears them to shreds, and it's hard to get more satisfying than that. Metal Max Xeno is a strange, janky, ugly mess of a game, but one I was glued to every minute of.
Downward Spiral: Horus Station isn't without issues, but this is an experience worth having for PSVR owners. The Zero-G gameplay remains fun throughout, and a wide assortment of weapons and tools helps to allow players some freedom in the way they dispatch enemies. With death being meaningless, and a story told without any real clues to go off, some players may not feel rewarded enough by simply progressing to the next room. The inclusion of multiplayer does give more reason to head back to floating in a lonely space station, provided that an online population shows up at launch. Sci-fi and VR fans should give the $19.99 Downward Spiral: Horus Station a try.
With environmental puzzle mysteries like Blind, one of the biggest hurdles is motivation. Sure, arbitrary puzzles rooms can be inherently fun, but if you're fighting an uphill battle, such as wrestling with not being able to see, there's a bit more needed to keep you going. Blind attempts this with a mystery narrative, along with giving you the stick to lean on, but the latter makes it all seem arbitrary, and the former isn't strong enough to make uncovering answers the true motivator. Blind banks a lot on, well, the blindness being the big draw, but I don't think using it as simply an extra hurdle on top of familiar puzzle-solving elements does much to elevate the experience as a whole.
Stepping into this classic arcade, I didn't have high hopes. Operation Warcade is the kind of game that's easy to quickly glance at and readily dismiss on visuals alone. I'll by the first to admit that it failed to grab me initially. It was only once I got playing that I realized the kind of potential it held, in spite of its relatively cheap look overall. Operation Warcade isn't looking to compete with top-tier AAA games, but it manages to settle into a spot of being an addictive experience to play on repeat. The brief levels offer a perfect bite-sized morsels, and you may even end up biting off more than just a nibble each time you play, slamming just one more coin into the slot to start another round.
Boundless has a lot going for it. Seamless cross-platform multiplayer ensures there's almost always other players to interact with. Yet planets are also large enough to eke out a solitary existence if one so chooses. Much like Minecraft, there is a large time commitment required to have any real sense of progression, or to make a lasting mark on the world. In this case, however, any marks players do leave behind will stick around for others to see for quite a while. A constant drip-feed of mini-quests helps to move players along in their progression, as well. Whether with friends, strangers, or by yourself, Boundless ensures there's always something new to do in a connected universe, one which rewards those who put in the time.
Between a few novel minigames in Neighborhood and some simple esports integration, 2K19 sometimes feels like a title update as opposed to a full-blown sequel. But what really matters, the basketball, is better than it's ever been. While I may have gripes with the design of the game outside of the court, NBA 2K19‘s mechanics are almost perfect in every imaginable way, and that is no small feat! Having played all manner of sports games this generation, it seems as though different developers are interpreting what it means to release a yearly title in different ways. While I understand the core 2K audience enjoying what they're given, there has to be a sense of quality control before the series turns into a games-as-a-service nightmare instead of a proper, AAA release with all the bells and whistles that fans expect ready at release and polished to a T.
Virtually everything about NHL 19 is a genuine step forward in quality. While some modes received the lion's share of the attention, it feels like damn near everything received SOME love. If you have been on the fence, now is the time to lace up and hit the ice. We'll see you between the pipes.
Failbetter Games have brought upon themselves a trademark capable of enduring over time, born with Fallen London back in the day and now present in both Sunless Sea and the upcoming Sunless Skies. This is by far the best way to experience the studio's vision and their unique take in narrative driven games.
Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner M∀RS is a solid remaster that fans of the original shouldn't hesitate to pick up. Having said that, the game hasn't aged all that well. Combat can quickly get repetitive, and new abilities are hardly used before another new one comes along. Top it all off with a campaign that only takes 6-10 hours to complete, new players may wonder what all the fuss was about when the original released (especially with the script's hilariously bad translation). Still, this release is the most complete version of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner to date.
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is definitely not a fairy tale, but if you're okay with playing something with a darker, more mature tone then it's worth giving this a go. Exploring every inch of the labyrinth is addictive, and its unique battle system and an in-depth character creation system will keep you busy for quite a while.
While it has some good ideas that are well-intentioned and will surely provide some entertainment to die-hards, NASCAR Heat 3 is missing all those things and, in the wider scheme of racing games, is still several laps behind.