IGN's Reviews
In many ways, GT Sport is the most polished Gran Turismo game in over a decade. It looks great, feels great, and what's here has been carefully and well executed. However, while I can forgive the sprinkling of eccentric nonsense, the lack of car and track content really hurts, and the online-only nature of the vast majority of it is worrying. Overall it just isn't as complete as its key competitors.
The best-case scenario for ELEX is that it'll be worth picking up on sale a year or two from now after it's been heavily patched to fix its rampant bugs and infuriating balance problems. It has enough good ideas that one day it might be talked about as one of those hidden RPG gems that people play and wonder why it wasn't successful at launch. But the frothy mix of joy and frustration that ELEX presents today skews too heavily toward the latter. I wish it well, but I don't think I'll be calling it up for a second date.
Overall, I really like the theme and setting of RAID: WWII, especially considering its irreverent tone that evokes memories of Inglorious Basterds. But even though I'm a sucker for all things WWII, the bullet-spongy enemies, lackluster unlocks and customization, and poor mission variety don't excite me enough to want to play beyond a few rounds. And while it's putting the cart before the horse, without a strong community of users to drop into a raid with, there's even less reason to stick it to Nazi Germany in this particular instance. Very little in RAID: WWII is absurdly broken or flawed, but its mediocrity makes it a missed opportunity to create a highly replayable co-op game within the WWII shooter genre.
Under the better-than-ever graphics and great-as-ever core wrestling gameplay, WWE 2K18 is a largely disappointing iteration. It wastes too much of its ambition on the poorly written and dull MyCareer RPG mode, leaving its other promising modes to languish for another year. What few enhancements we get to the carry mechanics and eight-person matches are welcome, but not as much of a year-over-year refresh as would be needed to keep the excitement level as high as it's been in past years.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole is another epic-length episode of the humor that's kept fans of the show laughing for 20 years. The Marvel vs DC parody delivers regular laugh-out-loud moments with only a few faltering gags, and the combat soon evolves into something much more complex and interesting than The Stick of Truth's simple system.
Aside from its creative hats and hat-based abilities, A Hat in Time never exactly feels like an inventive platformer. But it does its job well, even while suffering from the occasionally awkward camera issues that 3D platformers are often known for. It stands out, though, for its infectious and endearingly goofy personality, its creative and widely different levels, and its enjoyable platforming. And, of course, all those hats.
The Evil Within 2 gives you more options to play your way in a much bigger survival-horror playground than the original. Although a disjointed plot and weak protagonist make it slow to get started, being pursued through an intriguingly bizarre world by plentiful and disturbing monsters kept my palms sweaty and my heart in my throat thanks to a strict adherence to the most important survival horror rule: you should always be on the back foot.
Ultimately, FIFA 18 on Switch is a story of what could have been. Watered-down game modes give the whole experience a feeling of it being a work-in-progress rather than the complete package offered in the PS4 and Xbox One version. If you only want a quick FIFA fix in single-player or local play, the Switch version delivers. But it's such a diluted, Sunday League experience it's impossible to recommend if you're already playing on home consoles.
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.