IGN's Reviews
NHL 17 offers such variety that it’s easy to recommend to many players. The continued focus on accessibility and on-ice training fits the series well, and added depth to the EASHL keeps long-time fans like me coming back. The franchise mode finally gives the GM/owner mode a reason to be played, and even Draft Champions, while a bit simplistic, provides a motivation to interact with the Ultimate Team ecosystem. Most importantly, the hockey presented on the ice is dynamic and fluid, and it serves up an excellent version of the fastest game around.
After months of missteps, Legion shows World of Warcraft finding its footing again and asserting its relevance after more than a decade. Many elements make this an expansion worth enjoying, including class halls, gigantic zones filled with memorable stories, better socialization, the actiony new Demon Hunter class, and world quests. The one big question mark is whether Blizzard can maintain that energy after launch, but so far the outlook seems promising.
A compelling management sim with strong systems, but few customization options make for a visually bland experience
There’s enough snappy dialogue and silliness in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice to satisfy long-term series fans, and the conventional courtroom sequences still feel rewarding when you get on a roll and a witness starts to unravel. But the heavy-handed mysticism of its bloated middle act and the general lack of innovation makes for a less than essential entry in the Phoenix Wright saga on the whole.
Despite its amazing driving simulation, Assetto Corsa just doesn't get the racing right. Out on track alone it feels amazing; there's no denying the remarkable realism Kunos Simulazioni has captured here. Unfortunately the team just hasn't been able to wrap a comprehensive or competitive racing experience around it this time.
As someone who loves games like Portal and The Witness, The Turing Test definitely scratched that familiar puzzle itch, even if it fails to scratch more than the surface of most of its ideas. Its mechanics are solid but largely unoriginal, and its themes and world-building are genuinely great. And while it never reaches the originality and heights of its inspirations, it still manages to deliver an interesting world with one heck of a twist.
Fallout 4: Nuka-World has a great setting that’s densely packed with spectacle, surprises, and tough battles (depending on your level), and the ability to conquer settlements back on the main map is a fun novelty, but the lack of meaningful decisions leave it feeling more like an actual theme park ride than a choose-your-own-adventure story. Next to Far Harbor’s intriguing storyline and moral decisions there’s not much nuance here.
Slaying titans is a satisfying, bloody mess thanks to fun and fast combat. The meat of the campaign follows the anime through fun missions and features varied playstyles for each of the characters that matched their personalities well. While the epilogue suffers from serious pacing problems, being able to get through some of its more tedious missions with friends make the extra content a little less of a pain.
Worms WMD is a dependable soldier when it comes to laugh-out-loud competitive warfare. It may not have flashy 3D graphics or big-budget actors reenacting huge battles, but its cartoony 2D conflicts are a fun way to test your combat prowess with some weird and wacky weapons.
There’s not much that’s outright wrong with Master of Orion, but there’s not much memorable or endearing about it either. It’s built on a moderately successful but bland execution of the inside-the-box space 4X formula. The moments when its flair for leader characterization and an enjoyably complex combat engine take center stage are the only times anything about it really stands out. There’s definitely enough game here that I wouldn’t turn anyone away from giving it a spin, but I also can’t say you’d be missing anything special by skipping it.
King of Fighters XIV offers an astonishing amount of content, with nearly double the playable characters of most other games available on day one. The fighters themselves are interesting and well designed, both visually and mechanically, and they push limits with an execution ceiling higher than perhaps any other fighting game. King of Fighters XIV’s netcode and technical shortcomings are itis biggest stumbling blocks, but mastering its characters and leveraging what you’ve learned remains satisfying regardless. There are no shortcuts to becoming the new King of Fighters, but the journey to the top is well worth taking.
In moments of immense speed, Valley’s basic first-person platforming creates some excitement. But those are just moments, and they’re spaced too far apart with empty environments and forgettable combat between them. There are some interesting ideas scattered throughout the world but they’re very hard to care about, since there’s nobody around to be influenced by your actions. A seemingly pointless resource management system presents some interesting aesthetics, but overall, Valley very rarely presents the challenge or consequence it really needs to be addictive.
F1 2016 is definitively the best Formula One game Codemasters has ever crafted. Deep and nuanced, stuffed with fan service, and as demanding as you’d like it to be, this is worthy fare for the motorsport obsessed while remaining accessible for the merely curious, and absolutely worth the upgrade from previous years. If F1 2016 and last year’s Dirt Rally are indicative of the level of quality we’re going to get from Codemasters going forward I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Grow Up doesn't feel terribly different from Grow Home other than its larger world, but its main achievement is to strengthen some of its predecessor's weak points. The drive to climb to the top of everything remains, but here it's improved on with new methods of climbing and flying, and the option to toss down plants that serve as tools for any situation. The camera sometimes complicates this, but not enough to bury the charm of the original.
Hitman Episode 4: Bangkok gets proceedings back on track after the somewhat bland Marrakesh malarkey of Episode 3. The Himmapan resort may lack the size and scope of Sapienza, and it isn’t quite the classic Hitman hotel level I was after, but it still boasts plenty of problem solving and murderous mayhem within its walls.
Madden has finally found its comfort zone between the tackles, and offense and defense have reached a great balance. The community’s gameplay wishes were granted with a new focus on Franchise mode, led by the Play the Moments feature. Outside of its mood-killing commentators, Madden 17 is just about everything we’ve been waiting for since EA Sports took full control of the NFL license. Football is back, and it’s only a yard or two short of becoming an all-time great.
No Man’s Sky has sci-fi spectacle of strange new worlds on its side, but not much else. Its gameplay is underdeveloped and repetitive, and in my dozens of hours played it’s introduced very few new ideas to mix up its crafting, upgrades, combat, or universe. The promise of limitless exploration ended up working against it when I lost faith that it had any more meaningful things to show me no matter how far I traveled. This ambitious game reached for the stars, but its reach exceeded its grasp by light years.
Nova Covert Ops Mission Pack 2 is definitely more enjoyable when it comes to the meat - the actual missions - of the experience. However, the storytelling remains sub-par. Many characters Blizzard has spent years making us care about have up and disappeared, while others are given barely anything to do or only a tenuous reason to even be around. In its final moments, it did hook me with a plot development that would make me go out of my way to play Mission Pack 3, just to see where it’s headed. But it simultaneously fails to fill me with hope that there will be anything but another bucket of lukewarm storytelling waiting for me if I take the bait.