GamesBeat's Reviews
Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a big step forward on multiplayer play, the quality of the single-player story, the imaginative story paths, and the outstanding quality of the wide-open landscapes, and the wide variety of enemies. I suspect that Activision has a very good chance of restoring the series to record levels in comparison to the last couple of years.
I wish I liked Knights of Pen and Paper 2 a lot more than I did. It has a lot of charm and heart — I can see it in the gorgeous pixel art and in all the neat jokes and references built into Paperos. But it just isn't very fun to play. If you happen to be in that cross-section of being both a tabletop player and an RPG fanatic, it might be worth checking out. For everyone else, however, your time is better spent elsewhere.
Yo-Kai Watch is a rather odd beast in many ways. Kids' trends are always difficult to predict, and even with the massive marketing push behind the game, it's hard to say if Yo-Kai Watch will achieve Pokémon-like levels of cross-cultural penetration. It certainly isn't up to Pokémon's level: while exploring is fun, combat is a passive, frustrating slog that keeps it from being as enjoyable as it should be.
Warhammer: End Times — Vermintide gets so many things right, and its designers have made enough smart decisions about how to deviate from the Left 4 Dead, that it makes the difficulty knee-capping and technical mishaps all the more disappointing. It's absolutely worth a look if you're looking for something to do with friends and love slay hordes of monsters. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself quitting earlier than you might want to.
The Need for Speed reboot improves upon several of the more recent installments in the game, which were plagued with problems more serious than these. But I was disappointed when my pure joy in the look and driving feel of NFS drained away over time, sucked out by boring treks across the city and one too many encounters with unfair A.I.
Life Is Strange's conclusion is as effective and powerful an ending as we could hope for. It's been an emotional, haunting, and often ridiculous time following Max and her friends on their timey-wimey quest, and I'm going to miss them.
After seeing what Freestyle Games has done, Rock Band's enormous library, and the promise of making it available across releases feels like a crutch by comparison, tying that franchise to its established model. I'll still hop back to Rock Band to play drums, but right now, Guitar Hero Live is where you'll find me clanking away, waiting for the next time I get to perform Ida Maria's "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked."
Kingdom has solid ideas that get lost in its own simplicity. It's a little too conceptual, and I found that it had a hard time holding my attention after a few in-game days. It has a whole kingdom out there to explore, but it just isn't varied or interesting enough to warrant the type of commitment it ask of the player.
That's the kind of story about Master Chief that I like. He knows what the odds are, and he keeps attacking anyway, taking the fight to enemy. Instead, we get a story about betrayal and an ultimate showdown. But that showdown isn't that satisfying, and it's not even what Microsoft promised in some of its earlier commercials. I was disappointed because I expected something really significant to happen in the ending, and all I got was a cliffhanger.
Assassin's Creed: Syndicate is a solid entry in the series, with a great setting and two likable protagonists. It gets its badass female character just right, and it nails the fun with carriages and zip lines. The Victorian London cityscape offers a huge gameplay map, but many ways to get around easily. The amount of fun, if mindless, gameplay Syndicate offers bumps up the score quite a bit.
Minecraft: Story Mode will never have the same kind of success that Minecraft does. That's OK — few things do. But what's important here is that Telltale gets what makes Minecraft tick and has translated that into something that fits its story-focused mold.
Tri Force Heroes is a lot of fun when you're playing with friends, but make sure you have two buddies who can dedicate some time. The experience just isn't as engaging when you're alone, and you lose a lot of the social elements when you play with strangers over the Internet.
Episode 5 cements the series as Telltale's best
Above: The Sword Coast Legends team really likes oozes. One early dungeon has three different types.Image Credit: Jason Wilson/GamesBeat
Yoshi's Wooly World is an adorable game, and it's often a fun one. However, the light difficulty prevents it from reaching the excellence of Yoshi's Island. It's still the best Yoshi adventure since that classic, but no one is going to bring up Wooly World in future "best platformer ever" discussions.
Konami has made the years-long derby with EA interesting again, posing a stunning comeback with its latest effort.
All three Uncharted games are must-plays, and Bluepoint Games has done an exceptional job porting the trilogy over on PlayStation 4 with The Nathan Drake Collection. The 1080p HD visuals and 60 frames-per-second add a fresh coat of paint that make all three entries look and feel relatively ageless. The set pieces are as thrilling as ever, and the characters are still charming and well written. But the lack of a multiplayer component is one strange and noticeable decision.
Hearts of Stone is a collection of some of the best quests The Witcher 3 has to offer. Its story is cohesive; its characters are worth meeting; and the thematic diversity is worth seeing. If you've already beaten the original experience, these quests are worth checking out. If you haven't, make these quests a top priority. They feature some of the best writing in fantasy games, period, and make the expansion more than a worthy addition to one of the best releases of the year.
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.
Chibi-Robo: Zip Lash is a solid little platformer that entertains despite faltering at times. It's cute, it's charming, and it offers some nice little twists on the 2D action/grappling formula that make it stand out. Be warned, however, that you will likely come out of the experience with a serious sugar craving. (I want to try some of the tasty-looking German candy I collected, but I don't know anywhere around here that would carry it. Argh!)