Digitally Downloaded
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Long time series fans will still find some enjoyment in the solid stealth platforming mechanics but that's only if they face the fact that these games are Assassin's Creed titles in name only.
The writers at Telltale quite obviously ran out of juice after four episodes, leading to this “in between” episode that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Explicit narrative aside, I found Stranger of Sword City to be a real winner of a dungeon crawler.
Of course Republique serves to act as an Orwellian-style warning against totalitarian and far-right regimes. The overwhelming bulk of the game is geared towards developing that theme, and its narrow focus does come at the expense of characters that I would have liked to see developed to far greater depth. But it's also a superb pure stealth game, and it's always nice to see these kinds of games done without a reliance on violence.
Overall, Chronicles of Teddy is a pretty cool game. The reward of discovery is well worth the trip, and with some tweaks here and there, Chronicles of Teddy could have been one of the best releases of 2016. As it stands, it is still a gorgeous title worthy of your time.
There's nothing overly serious about Stikbold, and that is where most of the charm comes from. For a game that is nominally about Dodgeball I was overly impressed with how the developers were able to keep the experience fresh and comedic throughout.
The problem McDroid has is that it really doesn’t offer anything that we haven’t actually experienced in a game before, and for a while now the consensus seems to be that people are bored with the tower defence genre. McDroid’s inability to do anything genuinely new is a real problem. People already have their favourite tower defence games.
Candlelight isn't a long game but it kept me entranced throughout the entire playthrough. It's a fantastic example of a simple idea executed very well, with extra effort spent in ensuring the player will have a good time. This isn't a game which you will get excited about - but in some ways it's even better than that. This is a game that you can get comfortable with, that will help you relax, and will make you look at platformers in a new way.
DiRT Rally is an excellent game that has a fairly high barrier of entry due to its uncompromising control scheme and challenging style of play. Some better race training could have really helped to offset this difficulty, and is one of the few areas where this title missed a golden opportunity for its players. The end result is a game that can be difficult to get the hang of, but also provides a great sense of accomplishment than most racing titles once you do learn how to race the way it wants you to.
Arc System Works has it in the team to tell a great story. Over in the fighting game space that's exactly what it achieved with the Blazblue series. It's also a highly technically proficient team, and a real mastery over art and design. Xblaze isn't the team at its best, but I suspect that the quality of the visual novels that the team does produce will only improve from here.
Hyrule Warriors Legends isn’t as technically impressive as the original release on the Wii U, but it stands out as a true highlight among portable Warriors games. Content rich, rich with Zelda lore, and a mechanically-tight brawler, it’s a love letter to the fans, and it’s good to see that Koei Tecmo is still working on this property… it bodes well for what we might see on the NX down the track.
Your enjoyment of NightCry is going to depend a lot on your perspective, which is why I suspect this is going to be one of the most divisive horror games since Deadly Premonition. To judge NightCry at face value would be to grossly overlook all the work that Nude Maker has done to create an authentic Clock Tower-style, classic stalker horror experience for the modern day.
Though the game is a pure play brawler (albeit with really stylish violence and a stunning aesthetic and music score), the theme adds genuine flavour to the proceedings. People tend to forget, but Shakespeare himself was a populist playwright, and his work was filled with the old hyperviolence, sex and a bit more hyperviolence on top of that to get audiences roudy and cheering the actors on.
My only recommendation is that if you're coming to this looking for multiplayer fun, consider buying copies for friends too, because from day one the community for the game has been fairly limited. But it's a cheap game, so even if you decide to stick purely with the pre-built levels the developers threw in with the base package, you're still going to have a good time with this.
Modern board game design greatly de-emphasises the importance of dice rolls in favour of systems that are more predictable and strategic, and I've got to say that I much prefer this brave new world of strategy over luck that we have in our board games now.
My overwhelming experience over the entire course of Grumpy Reaper is that it's pleasant as a casual puzzle game.
This game simply drips with atmosphere in a world that manages to transition from one darkly beautiful sight to the next.
The lack of overall options and content creates a shallow feeling that EA Sports UFC 2 can never quite shake. It is more pronounced in the career mode, where there was perhaps the greatest opportunity to do something interesting with the source material, but outside of the original tournament the game never shows much personality in that mode. The same can be true of the other modes as well.
In the end, Trackmania: Turbo is a beautiful game that tries to set itself apart from the pack. It's definitely better than most, and it's clear that Nadeo have become rather accustomed to making these games. As the first TrackMania to make its way onto the PlayStation 4, I do recommend it if it is your genre of choice. But note that, thanks to the uninteresting campaign track designs, how long the game can hold your attention for is definitely proportionate to how much time you might be willing to pour into the track editor.
There are those that enjoy it for its quirkiness and originality, and then there are those that simply find it too different to really resonate. For my part I really appreciate what Idea Factory has achieved with this game, and, while the theme is quite dark, it’s presented in that same bright and cheerful, satirical space that we’re so used to with this developer/ publisher that it’s charming and irreverent. It’s always nice to play games like that.