IGN's Reviews
While Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite's tag-team fights are like a bolt of lightning from Mjolnir, its story is dreadful and its characters look like they were deliberately designed to spawn a million derpy memes. It manages to be easily one of the worst and also one of the best fighting games in recent memory all at once. Like its heroes and villains, it's stuck between two worlds.
Project CARS 2 plays like a pumped-up version of the classic TOCA Race Driver 3 from 2006, redressing many of the complaints levelled at the original. The handling has been tuned to a T, the content is excellently curated, and the amount of variety and racing available in it is delightfully daunting.
It was wonderfully satisfying to have more Dishonored to play, even if Death of the Outsider doesn't quite meet the high bar Dishonored 2 set in story or mission design.
Destiny 2 is a blast out of the gate thanks to its excellent co-op shooter gameplay and strong storytelling in the campaign.
Whether playing online or off, there's a huge amount to do here and a huge amount to love about it. Put the effort in and you're repaid with a genuine sense of satisfaction and a feeling of real accomplishment. Once again, PES has set an incredibly high level of quality for other sports games to try and match.
I'm glad that, in NHL 18, EA continues to seek out new players for the NHL series with smart upgrades to the training system and the exciting and accessible NHL Threes mode. Those are positive strides, but the rest of the modes and features are starting to feel too familiar.
While it's been marketed as a remake of Metroid II: The Return of Samus for Game Boy, Metroid: Samus Returns is more of a much-needed reboot of the 2D Metroid games we know and love. It's a safe, modern take on Super Metroid, one of the greatest games of all time. Aside from some repetitive boss fights and hand-cramping controls, it's nearly everything I could ask for as a fan of old-school Metroids.
I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed my more than 50 hours with Monster Hunter Stories so far. It effectively eliminates the oh-so-common boring RPG grind, implements a novel turn-based battle system, and sincerely surprises me with seemingly limitless customizability. Though wrapped in a pleasant, sugary coating, Monster Hunter Stories did all of this while retaining the spirit of the Monster Hunter world with some small yet enjoyable nods to fans. I can't wait to dive back into the endgame and hatch myself a Kirin.
Knack 2 is lacking in a number of areas, but its strengths outweigh its weaknesses. The pacing is spot-on, the combat satisfying and the gameplay varied. Co-op is genuinely good fun too, and most definitely the best way for younger gamers to get into the action. Knack 2 is definitely a step up from the original, then, but until the writing and characterisation improve drastically, it's not going to be a true first party titan.
Life is Strange: Before the Storm shows a lot of promise in its first few hours despite the same weaknesses in its script as the original Life is Strange series.
The outstanding classic-style RPG Pillars of Eternity makes a surprisingly virtuosic transition to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 with the Complete Edition, bringing both systems all of the content that's been released on the PC version so far. For an RPG of its complexity, it's surprising how pleasingly intuitive its gamepad control scheme is, and its easily legible text makes it feel just as good to play from the couch as from a desk. It's a memorable experience that suffers from only a few technical hiccups, most significantly its long and frequent loading times.
When I'm having a good time in ARK, I'm having a really good time. The problem is that those moments are usually one part to every nine parts menial grinding and crafting - especially at the later tech tiers. Having to repeat so much work after failing an attempt at a boss feels far too punishing, and some really dumb dinosaurs can take a lot of the challenge and sense of danger out of the many primal locations. Even with all of those quirks, however, I'm still hungry to play more after the 60 hours I've spent so far. There aren't a lot of survival games that have legitimately held my attention that long.
Gigantic is off to a good start, but it'll need a little variety in the future if it wants me to stick around.
Absolver is a beautiful martial-arts fighting game that allows for an impressive degree of personalized play with its innovative combat deck system, which lets you learn skills from combat with other players and NPCs. Unfortunately, it only comes with a single PvP arena mode at launch, and its fascinatingly nebulous campaign breaks off early and abruptly. It feels like an early access game with a ton of potential, but it's not quite there yet.
Based on its colorful world, beautiful animation, and source material you might expect Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle to be “My first turn-based tactics game.” But you're in for a surprise: even for XCOM vets some of its battles are challenging puzzles. Some of its tougher levels do devolve into a trial-and-error slog, but a good mix of enemies, objectives, and character abilities keep things interesting.
F1 2017 isn't light years ahead of the already very good F1 2016 but the new cars, retro content, and the juiced-up career mode make a very strong case for the upgrade, and I really appreciated the enhanced force feedback on a wheel. Rich with details and faithful to just about everything that makes contemporary F1 tick, F1 2017 is about as good a simulation of a single, modern motorsport as you can get.
War of the Chosen is a wide and deep expansion for XCOM 2 that improves variety in mission objectives, tactical options, threats, and strategic map activities. The Chosen are worthy adversaries who advance along with you to put up great fights without feeling cheap, and the new elite soldier classes add opportunities for interesting gameplay earlier in the campaign. Some significant balance issues show up, but especially for the first two-thirds of a campaign War of the Chosen restores the fear of the unknown to a game I know well.
The shift to the Frostbite Engine definitely lets Madden NFL 18 look fantastic, and Longshot makes great use of that to tell a short but powerful against-all-odds story. MUT Squads also opens up a new way to play with more than two players. But beyond that, the underwhelming feel of gameplay improvements and lack of much of anything new within Franchise, Madden NFL 18 sails wide-right in the final seconds. That said, being a much better-looking version of a solid football game with a great new story mode makes it at least a significant improvement, even if it's more incremental than we'd hoped from a new game engine.
While it's the weakest episode so far, More Than A Feeling still has some moments of payoff for leadership successes (and failures) earlier in the series. Integrating Nebula and Mantis into the team more firmly also enhances the dynamic ensemble without making the Milano feel crowded without reason. None of this could salvage the poor pacing, but the combination of new plot revelations, the consistently entertaining characters, and the overall attitude of this series has me looking forward to seeing it out.
Yakuza Kiwami makes great strides in updating the classic original Yakuza game to modern standards. But while it adds better combat, bizarrely charming side quests, and a gorgeous graphical revamp, it also ignores some of the original's biggest problems in pacing and storytelling. And because of its relatively short length, Yakuza Kiwami's fun trip through the tangled web of Japan's criminal underground feels like a prelude to something bigger and better to come.