VG247's Reviews
After the now customary delays, Gran Turismo 7 is here, in time to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the series and a celebration is a fair way of looking at it – it feels like a real ‘best of’ all things Gran Turismo
What ultimately matters, however, is that Elden Ring succeeds at almost every goal it sets out to achieve. It’s the culmination of years of refinement of FromSoftware’s formula. Mechanically, and thematically, this is a game making a statement: that you can buck industry tendencies even as you adopt their trends.
Horizon: Forbidden West does a great job of building on the foundation that Zero Dawn laid out
Warhammer 3 is, frankly, an incredible package. It somehow manages to deliver multiple unique and satisfying campaigns, mostly without sacrificing their quality and depth in the process.
Playing KoF 15, I recall one of my favorite memories – one where I spent multiple hours playing fighting games at an arcade during a trip to Japan. By staying true to that identity as an arcade fighter and focusing on what it is are good at, rather than making sweeping changes in the hope of appealing to crowds other than the communities that have risen around these games for decades, SNK has created a game that reminded me of the quality that can be found in a simple, honest fighting game without too many bells and whistles.
Dying Light 2 is messy and uneven. It’s also unique, exhilarating, and just plain fun to play, with one of the best settings in recent memory – despite the nagging feeling that the game could, and should, be more than what it is.
Technical shortcomings and minor frustrations can’t take away what this game achieves elsewhere; it’s the best main-series Pokemon game in a long, long time.
For my tastes, it doesn’t quite go far enough in some places, and it has lost a bit of that identity that makes Rainbow Six games special, but if you’ve got a few friends who are curious about it then you’ll have a blast jumping into it.
Halo Infinite isn’t perfect. It has foibles and struggles here and there. But it’s also a slam dunk of a release; it’s exactly what Halo needs to be now. As Halo’s relevance has felt to wane over recent years, this is a bold statement that, no, Halo isn’t ‘over’. It was never close. It matters, and it’s still brilliant. I don’t mind waiting to see where updates take it, because what’s here at launch is already largely brilliant. I’m excited for the future of Halo again.
It's not far from being a bit special, the kind of indie gem that everyone has to play, but it's unfortunately just not quite there.
I am hopeful that 2042 will be a more interesting Battlefield game at some point next year, but having been through varying degrees of rough launches with this series - from BF 2142 through BF 5 - I can’t say I have the stamina to perform the dance of chastising DICE for technical problems and missing features, only to turn around and celebrate when the game is inevitably ‘good now, actually’ a year into it.
Let’s be clear for a moment: Forza Horizon has always been good. From the moment it burst onto the scene in 2012 as a spin-off to the core, more po-faced Forza Motorsport series, it established itself as a fun, thrilling, and subversively moreish alternative thread for racing on Xbox. It was in many ways the spiritual, open-world successor to Project Gotham Racing, and in turn traced its roots back to arcade racing royalty like OutRun. This is a tough lineage to stand up to, but Horizon 5 takes all that history and experience and runs with it, incrementally upgrading this series into must-play brilliance. It’s an achievement of a game.
Judged on its own terms, Call of Duty: Vanguard offers a solid, albeit predictable campaign, an engaging multiplayer with deep progression systems and satisfying gunplay, and a Zombies mode that will only serve as a minor distraction in its current state.
It's certain to make you smile and burst out with laughter with how silly it can get at times, make you feel a sense of achievement and satisfaction when completing objectives, and also make you want to throw your controller out the window when you just can't seem to win a race no matter how hard you try. Just don't expect too much from the Mass races.
Shin Megami Tensei 5’s combat is great, punishing and rewarding in equal measure without ever tipping the scales too far in one direction. Mixing and matching your deck of demons makes for great fun as well, and spurs you to look to all corners of the ruined world for allies of all shapes and sizes. It’s everything outside of the battling and grungy soundtrack where Shin Megami Tensei 5 badly misses the mark, with one-note characters that you’re never given the chance to better know, and a paper-thin plot that feels dragged out over dozens of hours. Shin Megami Tensei 5 is a good RPG battler, but it’s not good at much else.
There’s no need to change what works already, though a few additional gameplay flourishes could have helped AoE 4 feel more fresh and exciting. The campaigns are robust, but the missing content stands out in its absence. That’s especially true considering Age of Empires 4 is a full-priced release, though being on Game Pass makes it a more appealing prospect. What’s here is still more than enough to be getting on with, but lIke any good strategist, World’s Edge is planning ahead for the long game.
You'll enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy if you go into it with the right expectations.
There's a lot to like in House of Ashes. It can look great (but also a bit ropey at points), the acting is largely excellent, and your actions (or lack of) can really impact the story. Yet, the game element is lacking, which in turn makes the gameplay sequences where you're in proper control end up lacking in scares. This is a fun time, especially if played in a group or online with a friend, but I was more afraid of button prompts than the monsters.
Back 4 Blood takes an old-school approach where it makes sense, and modernises where it doesn’t. It’s heartening to be engaged by a game purely for its gameplay and variety, and not to pad out a progress bar somewhere.
I might be easily pleased these days, but I think Crysis Remastered Trilogy is an easy recommendation for anyone who loves a bit of first-person gunplay. All three campaigns are good to great, visually they look the part, and it can already be bought at a smashing price. Not the definitive package, at least on consoles, but it's very good all the same.