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Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume 1 is an unpleasant, deeply depressing experience throughout its short running time. Its narrative is incomprehensible melodrama told through sloppy cutscenes and obnoxious monologues. The levels largely feel unfinished, offering only sporadic opportunities for player interaction. And aside from a few decent tunes courtesy of RZA, the audio and visual presentation is appalling in its lack of quality, featuring hideous textures and even uglier models.
Combine the puzzles with top-notch graphics and plentiful entertaining dialogue, and you have something worth playing. The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is a vast and well-executed game that will satisfy many players and leave them a bit better off than they were before.
NHL 16 is a huge step towards restoring faith in EA Canada and EA Sports. The game saw huge improvements across the board, with Be a Pro, Be a GM, and EASHL all being better entries than in previous years. It's not without its issue, as menu and online play lag is somewhat frequent and the added practice mode could use so much more attention, but the product is as crisp as they come. NHL is back with a vengeance and NHL 16 is one hockey game that you can't afford to pass up.
Knock-Knock is a game with great sound work, a nice, unsettling art style, but several flaws. Its mechanics are never explained. You can expect to replay the entire thing over again to see its "best" and "good" endings. With no real way to see if you've made decent progress other than to play until the end. Since there is no traditional save system, this can turn into quite the gamble, and if you make it through the game a second or third time only to find out that you didn't "earn" the best ending, you may kind of feel like you wasted your time.
I never had a particularly fun time while playing the several-hour journey, but by the end, I had grown attached to Rae. Beyond Eyes, in all of its beauty and darkness, had managed to fill my eyes with tears by being one of the most emotionally gripping games I have ever played.
If you have friends to play with then Zombie Vikings will be a fun way to spend a couple days with them. Otherwise, it's a brawler with a lot of heart, but not enough variety. Zoink Games may have not struck gold with their initial outing into the brawler genre, but there is a lot of potential waiting to be fulfilled.
It's definitely a shame the animation is so awkward and stiff; it pales in comparison to the visual splendor of the hand-drawn backgrounds, and it's nowhere near as impressive as the graphics of The Shadow of the Templars were in 1996. Still, it'd be an even bigger shame if that put anyone off from experiencing this classically-inspired adventure. This is worth looking into for any fan of the point-and-click genre, and you're not likely to get many more like it on PS4.
Hyper Void is not without its fair share of fun, producing some eccentric and vibrant experiences with its procedural environments. Unfortunately, it's still very light on additional content and offers next to no incentive to continue the fight once you've exhausted the short run of levels.
Being digitized has been the enabling factor for Armello. In reality this would be a boring stat-checking and constant dice rolling experience, but the PS4 takes all the slack, doing the math and dice-rolling for you, allowing you to just enjoy the show. This makes the heavy rule book seem more palatable while you enjoy the rich and engaging lore. It's a well-balanced and good-looking experience that shows originality is still possible in a format that's centuries old.
The graphics aren't exactly pretty, battles can be cumbersome, and even the tutorial is brutally unforgiving. But underneath the rough edges lies an undeniably competent game, one that will challenge you first and foremost, but also a game that will reward you for putting in the hours that it requires.
It has fun melee and vehicle combat mechanics, and it has an engaging upgrade and customization system in place. While things did begin to feel old after a while, players can still get many, many hours out of the game before that happens.
These small issues can easily be ignored when it comes to appreciating just how impressive of a project Tearaway Unfolded is. What could have been a simple cash-in HD port of the handheld title was instead lovingly (paper)crafted by the developers into a vastly improved, dedicated PS4 platformer.
I am Bread is initially a very frustrating game to play, but it makes up for it by being full of charm and character. While the controls may never become second nature, there is a lot of fun to be had in Bossa Studios' second PS4 game. While it's still a patch or two away from being an easy recommendation (fix that camera!), I am Bread is still worth a purchase if you are looking for a fun title in the vein of Surgeon Simulator.
Incredibly, unbelievably, what we have here is a nearly perfect finale to the Metal Gear franchise. I truly believe that The Phantom Pain is where Kojima always envisioned he would take the franchise. This is personalized, open-world infiltration at its finest.
Obviously, if you really like testing yourself with puzzles such as those found in this game, you might not even mind the length of the levels. I did, but that didn't stop me from appreciating the premise, which can be summarized as a witty sci-fi puzzle game that combines real-time with turn-based strategies. It achieves that blend well with a huge amount of mechanics and with the very entertaining commentary of Dr. Science accompanying you on your whole adventure.
[D]espite the occasional frame-rate drops and the repetitiveness, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 is a fairly fun game. Between the fast-paced combat, large number of playable characters, and up to par visuals, it is a must-play for Dynasty Warrior or One Piece fans. It might not be perfect, but it is probably the best game that follows the Dynasty Warriors formula currently out on the PS4.
As a fan of art and games, I enjoyed my stint with Back to Bed. The conversion from mobile to console is perhaps only noticeable in its length, but the surreal art style wowed me, especially on a big screen. It is a tiny game with a unique, yet brief and understated impact.
Zombi would be a tough sell at anything higher than its current asking price of $20. With a playtime of 6-8 hours including modest exploration, and three barely disparate endings that don't feel like much of an emotional payoff, I can only recommend Zombi to hardcore zombie game fans.
If you've never played Dishonored then this game should already be in your basket. It's a pristine release that's being saved from fading into history with this re-release and delivers all the content as a thank you. For the double dippers considering this, a stern word of caution. Very little has changed since you left Dunwall but if you really get a kick out of your controller talking to you then by all means, go in for the kill.
Madden NFL 16 truly is more than just a roster update as EA added enough new features to kick the game up a notch to another level. The question now is: what can they do for Madden 17?