IGN's Reviews
Superhypercube is simple, but thankfully the comprehensible premise doesn't confuse simplicity with shallowness. As your skill improves and the challenge increases, rotating and dropping the ever-changing three-dimensional shapes gets ever more engaging. When I eventually, inevitably crashed, I was always hammering restart the moment the prompt appeared. That’s the mark of an amazing puzzle game.
Battlezone looks good and controls well, but offline there’s nothing to think about besides shoot, shoot, shoot, which in this case just doesn’t provide enough of a good time to be enjoyable for long.
Wayward Sky is a good example of how well suited VR is for point-and-click style adventures. It uses perspective and gesture-based gameplay to immerse you in a world that is, on its own, a well made and inviting one. Though I’ll most likely forget forget much of its gameplay sooner than later, Wayward Sky’s setting and ambiance will stay with me long after.
Yo-kai Watch 2 isn’t lacking in soul or spirit, and certainly not in expansions to its well-built world. But what can be said about the original still holds for its sequel: the world can be fun to dive into, but actually playing Yo-kai Watch can shift from tedious to outright boring. For every new story idea or impressive blend of humor and pathos in its writing, Yo-kai Watch 2 fails to breathe life into the act of actually playing it, and until something’s done about all the issues with combat, no amount of delicious doughnuts can cover up its problems.
Rise of Iron has just enough new content to keep me coming back for a while, but it feels like the bare minimum. When I wasn’t absentmindedly grinding against reskinned enemies until I couldn’t do it anymore, I was falling down the rabbit hole of side quests and trying out new weapons while patrolling the Plaguelands. The satisfying but still not groundbreaking raid is a decent reward at the end. I wish this expansion had focused more on fixing Destiny’s repetition problems, because it has a few good ideas — but with all its pitfalls, this is just Destiny going through the motions.
While Fire and Ice’s art direction and music are woefully generic, the well-constructed level layouts create a solid arcade-style experience that accomplishes a sense of extraordinary speed while accommodating a reasonable degree of control. Sonic Boom successfully draws from much of what makes the best of classic Sonic game play satisfying, sprinkles in a better-conceived exploratory structure, and remixes it into an intelligent, cohesive, and rewarding package.
System Rift does an admirable job of tying Breach mode into the main story while starting to fill in the gaps between Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, but it doesn't feel complete unto itself. You’ll get two to four hours more of excellent Deus Ex gameplay, and a glimpse of what the future may hold, but not much more, which is just a bit of a tease.
Virginia shows instead of tells, with a raw, understated power and a calculated nuance that make even the smallest, most mundane details brim with narrative and emotional significance. While I never found a way to impact or change significant story events, the tale of family, friendship, career, and identity that Virginia tells (without uttering a single word) was enough of a reward for my limited input. The mysteries that remain by the end especially justified a second and third visit, and even now I can feel the secrets of Kingdom, Virginia and the two women whose lives changed there luring me back for another.
Mount & Blade: Warband may not have a carefully guided plot or even reasonably attractive graphics, but it recreates the sensation of living in a medieval world like few other games by allowing freedom to decide your own approach to carving out your destiny in a dynamic world of rapidly changing alliances. Controls are awkward at best, making it tough to appreciate how good the combat is, but there's a lot of fun here, especially in the eight multiplayer modes for up to 32 players. As a veteran of the PC version, which I love, I feel bad not being able to recommend the console version more highly, but this port doesn’t fully allow Mount & Blade’s charm to shine through.
For all that FIFA promises something for every football fan, from the casual observer to the full-kit fanatic, I still find myself wishing that EA Sports would spend a little more time focusing on the basics. You could probably create the perfect football game by letting Konami handle everything on the pitch, with EA Sports responsible for everything off it. But FIFA plays well enough that the gains elsewhere – in terms of licensing, authenticity, and big-match atmosphere – more than compensate for those shortcomings. For my money, PES is still ahead where it counts most, but The Journey gives FIFA something unique and rewarding. If you can afford it, this year it might just be worth getting both.
NBA 2K17 is another rock-solid game in the franchise. It features worthwhile updates to the dribbling and shooting mechanics, and backs up those improvements off the court in ways that make me care about managing my team. All in all, I know NBA 2K17 will be in my gaming rotation for many months to come.
Forza Horizon 3 is a masterclass in open-world racing and bigger and better than its excellent predecessor across the board. It looks fantastic, the car selection and customisation is second to none, and the size and variety of the sprawling Australian outback is magnificent. Above all, Horizon 3 never loses sight of the fact that tearing through postcard-perfect locations should be fun, and it puts the tools in our hands to keep it that way, always. This is the racing game I’ve been waiting for, and it's officially my favourite thing on four wheels. A fair dinkum triumph, mates.
The effort that went into creating Rive is apparent, from the art to the music to the precise controls, but it manages to be extremely punishing without enough sense of reward and the depth of options in combat are substandard. The story is an afterthought and the characters’ seeming self-awareness of that doesn’t connect with enough of a comedic punch to save it. It’s a side-scrolling shooter with stock parts that I don’t foresee leaving a mark on the genre, but is at least worth a spin if you’ve got the patience for it and a thirst for a major challenge.
I had a good time with Pac-Man Championship Edition 2, even if it meant I had to wade through a lot of white noise to find it. For every excellent addition like being able to jump back to the start of a map, there are a few that aren’t as well thought out and feel more like limitations than tools for expanding your options. Figuring out the fast-paced puzzles based around all the new tweaks is still a good retro-arcade challenge, but it doesn’t come close to recapturing the magic of the first Championship Edition.
The second installment of Telltale's Batman takes all of the solid foundations established by Episode 1, trims most of the fat, and continues to build an engaging Dark Knight story in a unique and uncharted version of the D.C. legend’s universe. Old Bat-fans will get much more out of the unexpected twists and turns than a newcomer, but the relationships Bruce Wayne forms and develops with the people around him appeal equally.
With smarter AI opposition and an altogether smoother online experience, PES 2017 is close to the complete package. FIFA’s new story mode might be the most headline-grabbing feature of either game this year, but it’s clear Konami is in no mood to relinquish its title as king of the virtual pitch.
As a veteran returning to play through the three games of BioShock: The Collection is a pleasure, but it’s a bit disappointing to watch the updates and behind-the-scenes content to each entry gradually decline. The original BioShock receives the greatest overhaul and flourishes with new textures and lighting that bring it almost up to modern standards, and a Ken Levine retrospective, while BioShock Infinite is essentially the PC version Of course the ideas and gameplay presented and executed in all three are as memorable as they were when first released, and anyone who missed them a decade ago should definitely consider rectifying that. If you intend to play one of these fascinating and fun adventures for the first time or the tenth, the BioShock Collection is the best way to go about it.
The bottom line is if you haven’t played any three of these games, this is the best looking console version to date, and these enduring zombie-smashing games are still worth a playthrough. Outside of that, there’s nothing new in this Triple Pack to draw old Frank West fans back to experience the chaos again before he returns in Dead Rising 4 this December.
I didn't expect ReCore to be quite as big as it is, and from the looks of things it's possible its developers didn't either. Its world, while interesting to explore for a good while, is ultimately too big with too little happening in it to be a totally serviceable housing for the strong combat and platforming gameplay within. It feels like a great, arcadey action platformer spread across too big a canvas, and it asks you to draw back over the same lines a few too many times
Despite the much-needed visual overhaul, if you spent 100+ hours with the PlayStation original there’s maybe not quite enough in this 3DS update to tempt you back. But if Dragon Quest VII doesn’t always justify the significant length of its journey, anyone looking for some good story content to last them well into the winter months will find a portable RPG that dwarfs most of its console counterparts.