IGN's Reviews
As an upgrade to the excellent Sonic Mania, Sonic Mania Plus/Encore offers a pair of good new characters but underwhelms with new modes and content.
Pokemon Quest can be a cute little distraction when taken in bite-sized pieces, but it's best served with a lot of patience. It's cute, and its systems are much deeper than they seem, but trying to build my perfect team definitely drove me a little crazy.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus for Nintendo Switch is a respectable port of one of the best games released last year, and greatest shooters of this generation. Its brilliantly written cast of characters and excellent gunplay come through well enough even viewed through muddy textures and minor frame rate drops. It's not the prettiest or smoothest way to experience Wolfenstein 2, but it gets the job done.
Donkey Kong Adventure feels almost big enough to be a sequel to Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle rather than just an expansion, and it packs in a lot of tactical fun. Donkey Kong is literally a game-changing character with abilities that are fun to learn and use, and Cranky Kong's alright, too. The main downside is that you're locked into one team composition, which limits your ability to change up your playstyle or replay battles differently.
Call of Duty: WW2 - United Front is a bit all over the place. The three new multiplayer maps do very little to deliver anything fresh or new, and the new War mission is also mostly more of the same. But the changes to the Zombies formula in The Tortured Path really shake up the experience and deliver something that feels more nuanced and original from what we've seen out of that mode in years. As a package, it's mostly just okay, with only a couple of true high points.
The Crew 2 is big, confident, and stuffed with arcade racing action but it's an uneven and unfinished package.
Inside is a 2D puzzle platformer that builds upon what made Limbo great, and in fact builds something greater.
Strong characters and environmental storytelling make The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit enjoyable overall. Despite the main objectives being underwhelming and the decisions seeming weightless, I became invested in the outcome of the story thanks to Chris' lovable sense of wonder against a well-painted dreary backdrop. Captain Spirit makes me optimistic about what's to come in Life is Strange 2.
Hollow Knight’s rich world and incredible depth of content will make you want to explore its caves for dozens of hours.
Octo Expansion throws plenty of both fun and serious challenges at you, between its expansive amount of levels and a multi-tiered finale that doesn't disappoint. These trials provide worthy so many challenges for those who wish to hone their mechanical skills for upcoming multiplayer matches, that I wish this had been Splatoon 2's base campaign all along.
Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr gets a lot of things right, but drops the ball where it matters most for an action RPG. We're left with a repetitive, not very tactically exciting combat system and itemization that arbitrarily forces you to gear for item level rather than better stats. Everything else is just a nice house built on a shaky foundation at that point. Even the Emperor can't protect this clumsy shoot-em-up from its own sins.
While its core story might not have the emotional punch of the original, Unravel Two improves upon the original in every other respect. The platforming is more responsive and demanding, while the puzzles are far more inventive and satisfying to solve, which is largely due to the excellent implementation of a second character and co-op.
Besides the fact that there's absolutely no evolution involved in it, Jurassic World: Evolution is a bad game because it's just a bore of a park sim. Sure, the dinosaurs look nice enough, but the process of unlocking new species is beyond tedious and actually running the business is shallow and quickly gets stale. It beats getting mauled by raptors, but after careful consideration, I've decided not to endorse this park.
The generically beautiful Summerset is on the smaller side in terms of overall new additions to The Elder Scrolls Online, but even after completing the majority of the side quests and all of the main storyline I feel compelled to go back. The storytelling continues to improve on last year's excellent Morrowind expansion, with Zenimax Online not shying away from some of the darkest sides of Tamriel. While the Psijic Order quest line has its boring bits, the down-to-earth, human story makes putting up with the repetitive quests worth the hassle. The new jewelry crafting profession, on the other hand, is far too time-consuming to be practical without spending money at the Crown Shop.
Onrush is one of the most original driving games I've played in years, giving it a unique flavor. By forgetting about simply going faster than everyone else and mixing traditional racing mechanics with modes and subtle nuances typically found in other genres, Onrush managed to change the way I think about racing games. Its unorthodox online car-brawls and varied objectives go out of their way to feel different, and even when the maps become repetitive after a short while, its appeal remains for the simple fact that there's no other arcade driving game quite like this.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is like a jigsaw puzzle made of pieces from four entirely different sets, that by some miracle still manage to fit together to make a unique and mesmerizing tag fighting game. Aside from its unsatisfying single-player mode and aggravating paywalled characters, it's just the right blend of accessibility and depth, and one of the best entry points into fighting games you'll find.
Hours of Darkness is a clever and fun but brief twist on the Far Cry formula. Its new approach to Guns for Hire AI companions gives you something other than yourself to worry about during battles, and its use of perks as a reward for stealth kills encourages my favorite style of play in an interesting way, but can bring your momentum to a screeching halt when you slip up. Just like the Far Cry series' previous jaunts to new locations, this trip to Vietnam is a good time.
Vampyr is a slow burn of an RPG, taking its time to ramp up its intriguing blend of science and the supernatural in an elaborately gloomy version of London. When it gets going you can see the potential of the way it offers you more power if you consume its interesting citizens. But Vampyr never commits to this idea to the point where I felt I needed to make that sacrifice to succeed in its relatively simple combat, which leaves it feeling toothless and vulnerable to having a lot of its fun sucked away by technical issues, despite its genuinely engaging story.
A modern retro collection should have a good batch of games and some extra niceties like save states and emulator settings. SEGA Genesis Classics checks those boxes, providing the best way to do what Nintendon't today. But considering it doesn't even have all the first-party hits that it should, much less the most memorable third-party ones, it's hardly a definitive package.
Agony proves that, like beauty, horror can be only skin deep. With gratuitous amounts of violence and masochistic overtones, this blood-soaked adventure is not for the faint of heart. But while its bold and detailed environments depict Hell in the most nightmarish ways possible, even the fantastically obscene sights and creepy sounds become mundane and dull by the end of its series of repetitious mazes, unimaginative item hunts, and weak stealth gameplay.