VG247's Reviews
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is everything I hoped it would be, and it’s yet another stellar release that showcases a confident Nintendo at its best. It is excellent, and is easily another must-own Switch title – at least, if you can understand and embrace Animal Crossing’s uniquely lazy pace.
Listen: Warzone is, like its skull-masked, kevlar-tucking “operators”, entirely solid. It bloody well should be, given its pedigree. But there is remarkably little interesting here – aside from flourishes like the sinister gulag section – to command our attention.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of Hunt is that it has taken the unknowable, unexpected possibility space of something like Day-Z, and boiled it down to something you can, and must, play in under an hour.
Street Fighter 5 is easily one of the best fighting games of this generation
Zombie Army 4 is the reanimated corpse of gaming’s past, stitched together from the best bits of Sniper Elite. It’s a B-movie pastiche stuffed with classic movie references and thousands of heads (and bollocks) to pop. But most importantly, it’s a new game. A new, fairly-enjoyable video game in 2020 – what a concept.
There’s a reason why it’s a classic.
As any Trekkie will tell you, discovery is addictive, and Journey to the Savage Planet is almost all discovery.
But whether you’ve grown up with Goku and friends, or you’re a first timer who’s never fancied sitting through 300 episodes without getting to play a part in the action, this is still a great way to experience the classic story.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 is a masterpiece. No joke. If automation was to take my job right now, at least I’d have something to lose myself in during these long summer months.
Like XCOM, then, Phoenix Point is a gripping tactical strategy game.
It’s worth experiencing by Star Wars fans hungry for an original story that doesn’t settle for trite, and action game players looking for a decent – albeit flawed – combat.
Despite these annoyances, despite the fact that it’s a game designed with decades-old sensibilities, I enjoyed my time with it. It doesn’t have the conclusion we’ve been waiting two decades for and it barely drives the story forward at all, but the climactic battle is as satisfying as that 70-man tussle in the first game’s harbour.
That’s the problem with Terminator Resistance. It’s weak. It’s unambitious. It takes a license and slaps it on a distinctly average game.
Pokemon Sword & Shield is all too often a bit disappointing, and in some places actually feels a little unfinished, but it also fully provides that warm, fuzzy feeling that one expects from the series. Crucially, even through frustration, never once did I think about putting it down, which is to its credit. It comes recommended almost for the Galar setting and new Pokemon alone, but with a long list of caveats indeed.
For the first time in years, Need For Speed has remembered why people used to play it so religiously, and recognised the more recent elements that put them off.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is a brave prequel that isn’t afraid of taking risks. It is innovative, surprising, stunning, dramatic, and generous – a highlight of this generation and a benchmark for other open world games to aspire to.
If you do manage to hold out, you will be rewarded with flashes of brilliance, it’s just that those flashes are buried as deep as the core story is buried in the endless dialogue.
Another Call of Duty that doesn’t really change anyone’s mind about Call of Duty. Whatever’s there that I thought might actually be making a leap was seemingly just good marketing. In that sense, I suppose, it’s been pretty successful. [OpenCritic note: Jeremy Peel and Sherif Saad separately reviewed the campaign (4/5) and multiplayer (3/5). The scores have been averaged.]
This has quietly arrived as one of the most original games of the year – and better yet, is one of my favorites.
For those that were disappointed with Fallout 76 going online multiplayer, this is the single-player RPG you’ve been looking for. If you’re hankering for somewhere you can while away the hours talking shit, chuckling and prodding at the locals, you won’t be disappointed.