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At the end of the day, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood checks the necessary boxes to make it a suitable follow-up to the prior game. In terms of the gameplay, level design and overall pacing, The Old Blood has learned a handful of lessons and made the appropriate tweaks to improve the play experience from its predecessor. Unfortunately some of the spark that make last year's game oddly inspiring is gone, which makes it decent fun for shooter fans, but ultimately unsatisfying for anyone beyond that.
It’s not surprising that Spartan Strike is an incredibly fun game to play, and 343 Industries certainly has the experience under its belt to produce high-quality action games. Can it compare to the upcoming Halo 5? Of course not. Spartan Strike is an stylish little package, and is being sold for an amazing price. As such, 'true' Halo game or not, it is easily one of the best games to come out on the iPad this year.
The Ark of Napishtim is still great, in short. Long time fans of the series will appreciate the visual upgrade and first time entrants to this chapter should find themselves at home, especially if they have appreciated some of the other entries in recent years.
Perils of Man provides a solid point and click experience that will immerse you into this fantasy story and definitely racks up enough game time to make the small price tag worthwhile.
Shovel Knight is yet another fantastic indie addition to the continually growing Vita catalogue. It might lack Vita-specific extras (and is therefore a pointless purchase for people who already own the game on some other platform), but for old-school retro platforming fans who might have missed out on this fantastic title so far, it's a must buy.
In the end players who have experienced the original State of Decay might not find much to sway them into purchasing the Year One Survival Edition. However, others should give it a go. It's rough around the edges, but it's an intense and even emotional experience, and still one of the better examples of a zombie survival game.
Yes, the game has its moments where it's creepy. Yes, one of two of the ghastly lightning flashes made me jump in my seat. And yes, the story was promising at first – until it becomes an obvious end for Dr. Lang and a boring yet remarkably confusing one for Alex. As a free game, Sepulchre would have been worth a playthrough. But as a paid product, The Charnel House Trilogy fails to deliver on its promised horror.
BRAWL is by no means a perfect game, but it does well enough to join the ranks of party games I will be playing when friends come to visit. The game is unforgiving when it comes to the AI, and some players can learn from this while others will be destroyed constantly, which is unfortunate. With some tweaking here and there and adding difficulty levels, BRAWL could be amazing. Taking the game as it is, however, I have to say that I would really only pick this up if I had people that I could call up for an evening of beers-and-bombing.
The Weaponographist is a solid game to play if you're ever in the mood to dwindle a few minutes or hours off the boring day you're having. The pick-up-and-play quality, easy-to-understand nature and lightweight gameplay all come together to make The Weaponographist an easy recommend for everyone.
All that aside, Project CARS is a truly fine racing game, and for PlayStation 4 owners this will be the first next-generation racing game of worth for serious revheads to sink their teeth into. Beginners to the genre, or people who are used to racing games where powerslides are enough to get around corners may feel very frustrated with this one at first, but I can't think of a example of the sport that is more worth taking the time to get to know, and master, than this one.
The gameplay mechanics and presentation values in Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today are solid, but the puzzles will frustrate a segment of the audience. Worse yet, the end does not pay off the effort to get there. There is an interesting narrative at play that makes this dark, depressing world worth exploring, but I cannot fully escape the feeling that this is an incomplete, but valiant effort.
Rooms: The Unsolvable Puzzle may seem impossible to complete at times, but it is a great game to return to once your mind is cleared from the sheer full-body frustration experienced when trying to complete the more difficult levels. While the graphics are nothing special and the controls may give you a hard time despite the game being controller-compatible, the story and gameplay are well worth an entire playthrough at least once.
I struggle to see many people wanting to sit down to play a runner game, however. Yes, it's had far more effort that's been put into its presentation than any other example of the genre I can think of, however by its very nature this is a very limited genre, and Infinity Runner just doesn't do enough to prove its merits beyond an iPhone time waster.
Given Rockstar's reputation for creating controversial content with satirical tones and sharp social commentary, it should come as no surprise that GTA V carries all the classic hallmarks of this developer, and does it times better than before. Its graphic content might turn you away, but if you take the time to dig in a little deeper, you will find that GTA V is a worthy descendant of the previous games as it carries all the classic hallmarks - it is sharp, witty, intelligent, and just the right shade of nasty -, and is a true inspiration for future open-world action adventure games.
Elliot Quest isn't a classic game, and at times is too beholden to the Zelda formula for its own good. The great problem in creating a game that so emphatically invites comparison to a classic series is that it will be compared to that series. Elliot Quest never had a hope of comparing to those games, but it does a decent job as a modern homage to them.
And yet despite those two criticisms, here is a game that I played through in a couple of long sessions of play, and typically my patience with 2D platforms is very, very limited. I could have done with a stronger and more robust narrative, and I would have loved to get to know Shao better, but where I generally tolerate the gameplay of an Assassin's Creed game because I find the world and history so inviting, this time around the reverse is true, and I rather like that.
Retro minimalistic titles with great soundtracks and gameplay gimmicks were a fresh breath of air just two years ago, but since then the mobile and download markets have been weighted down with them. While Convoy could easily and mistakenly be wrote off as another 'clone', one of the most challenging and grittiest indie titles of the year would be missed out on. If Mad Max: Fury Road turns out to be half this good, I'll be set for life.
Anyone who has fond memories of playing Dungeon Keeper will find War for the Overworld to be a nostalgia trip. It's not as advanced as it could be at a technical level, but further fixes and updates could lead to an improved experience.
Dialing the difficulty up also provides a real test of anyone's management abilities. So look past the satirical elements of Tropico 5. The humour is there, and it's funny, but the real strength of this series - especially with Sim City falling off the map completely in recent years - is that it plays so, so well.
The use of the gamepad is by far the most enjoyable aspect of Affordable Space Adventures. In fact, it's so well done that it's close to being the best use of the gamepad on the Wii U so far. Sadly the game is held back by some serious game design choices, and while it's still playable, it's just not the kind of game that deserves to be remembered as a classic.