USgamer's Reviews
Although it's a little on the short side, and its production values are a bit oldschool, Titanfall 2's single-player campaign is a really enjoyable experience while it lasts. It's very inventive and fun, and a great warm-up for the game's excellent multiplayer component, whose gunplay and controls are absolutely outstanding. All it needs is a few more maps and modes.
I went in to Battlefield 1 with admittedly low expectations. I was excited about the setting, but I had my doubts that DICE could execute on it given their recent track record. Thankfully, DICE not only does justice to World War I, but refocuses the series as well. Battlefield 1 does a great job of getting back to basics, and it's aided by some fantastic map design. Overall, this is the most fun that I've had with the series since Battlefield Bad Company 2, making it one of 2016's best shooters.
Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City are amazing games, but this collection doesn't stand up to the same quality. The visuals have been improved, but at a loss of the dark ambiance of the originals. The 30 fps frame rate isn't locked, with the occasional stutter marring the experience. Worse, there's no new content available here. If you own either game on PC, there's no reason to get Return to Arkham.
Manual Samuel is a good-looking, genuinely funny button-pressing test of dexterity that starts out well, but unfortunately becomes increasingly complicated and frustrating as the game wears on. It's a nice idea, but one that will probably only appeal to those who enjoy games like QWOP.
With its beautifully tuned handling, great graphics, and surprisingly deep career mode, Mantis Burn Racing is an enjoyable and entertaining top-down racer. The only thing that really lets it down is its rather limited track selection, which results in the game becoming a little repetitive as you progress through later levels.
While the brilliance of its director's past games occasionally surface in Cold Case Investigations, this thoughtlessly designed and incredibly brief adventure will do nothing but disappoint fans of the defunct developer Cing.
Shadow Warrior 2 is a beautiful, fast-paced shooter with a ton of guns. There's an RPG-like layer of additional skills and extensive weapon customization, a great cast of characters, and nothing to get in the way of pure reckless shooting. And when you're done with the campaign, there's four difficulty levels, New Game+, and co-op play waiting for you.
You can't come up with a more intriguing VR premise than "Batman simulator," and developer Rocksteady has done their best to make it work. But despite how cool it is to simply exist in Gotham, the limited interactions and dumbed-down puzzles make the experience feel much less confident than it should be.
PlayStation VR Worlds does a great job of showing off Sony's tech, but the experiences contained in this collection are far too slight to be anything more than sideshow attractions. If you're looking to make the most of PSVR, you're better off buying full games than a modest collection of tech demos.
Hangar 13 tells a great story in Mafia 3, pitting Lincoln Clay against those who took his family from him. Great characters, solid dialog, and some top-notch motion capture flesh out the world. Unfortunately, the open-world nature of the game kills the story pacing with a repetitive mission loop. Mafia 3 could've been great, but it's just good.
The Gears of War series returns in fine form. The well-scripted and fantastic-looking campaign ends rather abruptly, but while it lasts, it's an exciting thrill ride of intense firefights and over-the-top set pieces. It can feel a little repetitive and relentless at times, but overall it's a lot of fun. The game's six-mode multiplayer PvP feels refined and well designed, and offers plenty of long-term potential, while Horde 3.0 is ideal for those who want to join friends in a long, and very challenging firefight.
Make no mistake: Some of Color Splash is best-in-class material. But some of it is just awful. As much as I'd like to be able to give it an unqualified endorsement, I really can't. The excellent visuals, music, structure, and writing sit at odds with the toilsome combat system and the addition of far too many gimmicks and gotchas. The game is as irritating as it is inspiring — and while there's much to love here, be aware that finding it requires slogging through some truly rocky moments.
PES 2017 is a remarkably good soccer sim on the pitch—so good that it makes up for the bulk of its shortcomings elsewhere. There's no denying that it's a niche sim with a high barrier to entry; but if realistic gameplay is your number one priority, then PES 2017 comes highly recommended.
Striking an almost perfect balance between RPG and construction game, Dragon Quest: Builders manages to hold fast to the best parts of the series whose name it bears while creating a guided, structured format for the Minecraft concept. The end result works brilliantly, with top-notch visuals, music, and writing that help drive home the appeal. There's room for improvement here... but not much.
Azure Striker Gunvolt 2's offers a unique method of taking down bad guys, which is enough to differentiate it from the Mega Man Zero series that indirectly spawned it. Tagging and shooting foes is tons of fun and the ability to play as Copen is a nice addition, but Gunvolt 2 still has notable issues with repetitive level design. Still, if you enjoyed the first game, there's no reason you won't have a blast with this one.
Yo-kai Watch has a great degree of potential, so it's tragic to see Level-5 squander it over fears of upsetting their massive cash cow. (In Japan, anyway.) This sequel carries the same sense of spooky whimsy as the first game, but unfortunately doesn't lose the underlying tedium. If you're looking for an alternative to Pokemon, you might want to see if the next game fixes Yo-kai Watch's woes—if it gets localized, that is.
Telltale continues to craft its own version of Batman and Bruce Wayne. The action is still solid, but this is all about the story: Who is Bruce Wayne when everything he knows to be true is a lie? Given the truth of his origins, who is Batman? Telltale's Batman relies on safety and familiarity to subvert expectations here and it works well.
FIFA 17 bounces back nicely after a down year without sacrificing any of its primary strengths. The Journey is a well-produced campaign mode that complements the existing feature set nicely, and the move to Frostbite appears to have gone off without a hitch. It's not really accurate to say FIFA is back since it never really left, but it is fair to say that it has momentum again, and that speaks well of its future as we head into the back half of this generation.
Although Rise of Iron's story campaign comprises some quite exciting and intense missions, it's really short and only takes a few hours to burn through. Fortunately, though, the expansion's endgame content offers a host of activities and objectives to keep players busy, with weapons, collectibles and secrets to uncover, and a well balanced PvP environment to enjoy. It all adds up to a solid expansion that should satisfy the Destiny faithful, even if it doesn't exactly wow them.
NBA 2K17 addresses most of my biggest issues from last year in cutting out canned animations and going back to basics with MyCareer, and it's still as polished as ever. It's easy to take its excellence for granted, but Visual Concepts' ambition and willingness to take risks keeps it from ever becoming stale. NBA 2K17 is the champion, and it's tough to see it losing that title anytime soon.