IGN's Reviews
The fact that it pulls very few emotional punches left me feeling a bit worn out, but also with a glowing sense of anticipation for the sprint to the finish and tying it all together.
Similar to the way Batman: Arkham City built on the foundation of Arkham Asylum, Middle-earth: Shadow of War is bigger and more ambitious in scope than Shadow of Mordor, with great results. The way it expands the Nemesis system with far greater variety and fortress sieges makes even better use of the stand-out generated characters, and its battles with memorable uruk captains remain challenging all the way through the campaign and into the clever asynchronous multiplayer beyond.
Microsoft pitched Forza Motorsport 7 as the ultimate automotive playset, and it's hard to argue otherwise. With enough cars to fill a dozen museums and the most generous selection of tracks to date in the series, the amount of driving, experimenting, and racing here is absolutely mammoth. Accessible as always for beginners but crammed with content targeted at lifelong car junkies, Forza Motorsport 7 is Turn 10's finest love letter to speed and style this generation, no matter what language you speak.
I still love Telltale's take on the Bat-verse, but the remaining episodes of The Enemy Within have an uphill climb to get this season back on track.
Road Redemption's combat is a good but short-lived bit of manic fun, but it didn't offer enough to keep me engaged through the majority of the 13 hours I put into it, and I'm honestly not sure if that would change even with the addition of more to do.
Battle Chasers: Nightwars' combat and activity-dense world scratch the JRPG itch, even if the storytelling and character development leave a fair bit to be desired. Its attractive dungeons and outdoor regions are fun to get lost in, and there are just enough hidden treasures to claim to make exploration rewarding in a more than visual capacity. I'd be very pleased to see more turn-based indie RPGs along the same lines as Nightwar in the future - and the ending heavily suggests this won't be the last we see of this universe in RPG form.
Golf Story's clever writing and sound golf fundamentals keep it entertaining, even through some stale moments. Despite its light-hearted RPG structure, there's a challenging and very real golf game here that's worth coming back to even after the story is over. But it left me wishing that more of the campaign focused on the golf itself, and less on the often repetitive side tasks.
Cuphead made me feel more good and more bad than any other game I've played in the last several years. I swore, laughed, and hollered with delight. I hated it (and my own fingers) for long stretches but, having finished, I realise that's more or less the point – I emerged from all that pain smiling. Rather than simply offering the player what they want, Cuphead makes them earn that right – the rewards, if you can hack the tests, are absolutely worth it. Cuphead is incredible for more than just its looks. But before you dive in, make sure you actually want a game that plays like this, and not just a game that looks like this.
Hob is a beautiful Zelda-like puzzler with fun combat elements that takes place on an enchanting world where nature and machinery alter the landscape as easily as a twist of a Rubik's cube. The wordless approach to the story creates some confusion and the fix camera sometimes results in unnecessary deaths, but never does the time spent with Hob feel wasted.
Ultimately, FIFA 18 introduces enough new ideas to suggest it's not sitting on the laurels of its success. However, it's a simplified experience, one that fails to embrace the complexity of football at the highest level.
Fighting my way through Ruiner felt like work, and if I weren't obligated to finish it for the review I probably wouldn't have bothered. It's too bad it focuses on being difficult over being fun, because the combat totally works when you're given access to the full range of weaponry and gadgets and can finally stand up to the nearly endless waves of varied enemies thrown at you. This one is definitely better the second time around. Games should be fun right from when you hit the start button – that's kind of the whole point – but Ruiner puts you through too much of a hazing ritual to get there.
I feel like a broken record saying this is the best Total War game so far, since I've felt that way about each major release since Attila. But it really is true: Creative Assembly's designers are honing their campaign and faction design consistently from game to game, and that progression is clearly on display in Total War Warhammer 2.
Ultimately, Danganronpa V3 doesn't add too much new to the series. But that's okay – it doesn't need to reinvent the wheel when the wheel we already have still rolls out eclectic characters and shocking moments so reliably. It's a great rollercoaster of hope and despair with a climax that made me sit back and think about everything that just happened. The road to the end of Danganronpa V3 is long and twisted, but the ride is well worth it.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 will be remembered as one of the greats.
Pokkén Tournament DX serves as a definitive edition of Nintendo's fighting game, and it fits well on the Switch aside from choppy split-screen multiplayer. Five new characters and a new three-on-three mode are noteworthy additions, though the new challenge mode doesn't live up to its name.
SteamWorld Dig 2 retains the original's addictive resource-gathering gameplay, but supplements it with a gorgeously detailed, handcrafted world. Its heady mix of exploration, combat, platforming, and puzzle solving, alongside an expansive set of abilities and mods gives it plenty of variety and a great gameplay rhythm. I wish there was more to do once the campaign ends, but that's a testament to the fact that what is here is just about pitch perfect.
With a set of thieving and assassination tools that beg to be used creatively, Heat Signature's puzzle-like missions are great for jumping into for a few goes at a time to try something just crazy enough to work. That's when the fun stuff happens.
There are already so many different ways to play Minecraft, and the 3DS version fails to live up to the standards set by the other versions. It's not a bad slice of pizza, but there are so many better choices.
NBA 2K18 is another step forward on the court, improving on the series' already great gameplay. You're rewarded for smart, controlled basketball when dribbling, driving, and playing defense in ways that make sense for the players you're controlling. In the side modes, results are mixed: the new fusion of Career mode elements into The Neighborhood gives it some new life, but the same can't be said for the meaningless story elements within MyGM, and microtransactions now have too much of an impact on gameplay. There's far more good than bad, though, and NBA 2K18 deserves credit for taking chances.
NBA Live 18's simplistic and fluid mechanics make for an approachable game of NBA, or WNBA, basketball. But for all that it does well on the court, elsewhere it fails to live up to its potential. There are plenty of side modes, but few have the depth or interesting new ideas to be worth getting invested in.