GamesBeat's Reviews
As someone who hasn't touched collectible card games since the mid-1990s — and hasn't played Warcraft since it was still a real-time strategy game — I'm amazed at not only how quickly I picked up Hearthstone but also how much I've played it. It's easy to learn, easy to get into matches and play, and it's fun. It's led me to check out other digital card games — and I'm again surprised at how much I enjoy these.
Lego Dimensions truly sets a new standard for toys-to-life games. The pure joy of playing with actual Lego bricks (even offline) combined with many innovations that make the Toy Pad peripheral an actual, useful item, sets this game apart from its competitors.
When a game series is this good for this long, you can sometimes find yourself taking it for granted. Forza Horizon 4 once again refines its formula in a number of notable ways. But those improvements are getting diminishing returns. This is the best Forza Horizon game, and that makes it one of the best racing games ever. But that just doesn't wow me like it once did.
Episode 5 cements the series as Telltale's best
Firewatch is special and rare.
Oxenfree might just be a big next step for adventure games, particularly when it comes to the way it presents dialogue choices. Night School Studio has managed to execute an interactive story that treats player choice in a mature and subtle way. It's an emotional experience with wonderful characters and great writing, and it's one that masters its 70s and 80s influences.
Make no mistake: Etrian Mystery Dungeon is hardcore game. With every floor the difficulty and pressure increases, leading to a point to where only those with nerves of steel and the patience of a saint will do well. But as the difficulty scales, so does the enjoyment. Successfully crawling out of a dungeon is supremely rewarding.
Majora's Mask is an odd one, but it's a legendary game from Nintendo's library, and one that deserves a rerelease. With its graphical improvements and system enhancements, one of the best Zelda games is even better this time around — and that's really saying something.
Tearaway packs charm and ingenuity into every pixelated pulp. You’ll bounce along to its perky soundtrack, fall in love with the way its ocean waves — as rolls of white paper — break on the shores, and smile when you see just how personal the ending is.
Titanfall 2 is a major surprise. I was expecting to love the multiplayer and to tolerate the campaign, but I love everything about it. Respawn isn’t just making Call of Duty with mechs. It has found its own way, and that has paid off with a special game.
Destiny 2 is everything you could ask for in a sequel. The systems of the original Destiny have been tweaked and tuned. The graphics quality is superlative. Destiny 2 feels less like a grind, is easier to get into, and is a superior project to the original Destiny in almost every way.
The ending of the game will leave you wondering just what was real and what was an illusion. I thoroughly enjoyed the dramatic arc of each major scene. It starts out calm, moves to disturbing, and then descends into chaos and madness. I think the storytellers and designers exercised tight creative control, with a game that is understated as well as explosive.
This is now the best Spider-Man game, taking the crown from Spider-Man 2. It is also one of the PlayStation 4's best exclusives and one of the best super hero games ever.
Because BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is an anime fighting experience that allows for constant aggressive offensive and defensive reads, wrapped in accessible execution that makes slightly complex mechanics easy to grasp. If this can add more fresh competition to your world, embrace it.
Score: 95/100
The Division 2 is surely the game that fans of The Division wanted to play and that Massive Entertainment wanted to deliver the first time around. Good things come to Division agents who wait.
So as long as the war between me and Noie can rage on, I'm going to keep loving Super Mario Maker 2.
When I go to give Link’s Awakening to someone else, would I recommend this version? Is this the game I want my kids to play? And yes. It is. Absolutely. Because the truth is that it does recapture its old magic. It’s just not the time machine that I thought it could be.
The best thing I can say about New Horizons is that I think it's going to win over some players who previously bounced off the franchise. And it will do so without losing any longtime fans in the process. Those players will find more to love than ever before.
The improvements that Naughty Dog made in gameplay and graphics showed that they were able to completely overhaul a system that wasn't all that bad to begin with, and the result was gameplay that kept me entertained even though it was the longest game that Naughty Dog had ever made. As I said, the action in this game is intense, grueling, and raw.