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You can't shake the feeling that it's also an unending gyre of game loops.
This War of Mine manages to convey an important message very well. By turning the player into an active participant in the cutthroat rationale of life as an ordinary person attempting to survive a warzone, it encourages a level of empathy only possible through interaction. Instead of simply hearing the stories of people who suffer unimaginable hardship as civilians during war, the audience is asked to inhabit these narratives. When our choices became their choices—as completely awful as they may be—we can better understand the ground-level tragedies taking place across the globe at this moment. 11 bit Studios' greatest success with This War of Mine, it turns out, is in creating a videogame that is profoundly unpleasant to experience.
Super Smash Bros. finds more tricks to play on Wii U
Nevertheless, these new elements have been seamlessly integrated into the recognizable LittleBigPlanet foundation, and as a consequence never feel like the source of drastic change. What they offer instead is rejuvenation: a jolt of exhilaration—of imagination—from a series whose novelty had perhaps begun to wane.
I'm still captivated by the structure the game is built on, the way it will give character priority over spectacle. Much of the choice and consequence talk is a bluff, but it can still surprise you.
NBA2k15 is both a marvelous basketball videogame and a douchebag simulator
When I returned to the Paris rooftops far above the rabble below I marveled at how clean and ordered the city looked. It seemed endless, pristinely crafted and elegantly set. The rabble of the people turned to a muffled hum, and I forgot about the blood and shit-strewn streets where people carried heads on pikes and screamed for justice from a conflict I would never really experience. On the roof of the city, I thought I could maybe catch the faint words of a song that had some political resonance. But in retrospect it was probably just the wind, carrying nothing at all.
This is Call of Duty coming to terms with itself—pushing and pulling between social responsibility and the joy of instinctual, itchy trigger-fingered chaos. Not since Modern Warfare has an entry to the series felt much more than casually disinterested in humanity.
Beyond Earth grasps its topic less firmly, but more fully, insisting that whatever future comes to pass won't be the only future that might have been. Truth be told, though, Beyond Earth likely won't have quite the staying power of either Alpha Centauri or Civilization V.
What Sunset Overdrive was shooting for was punk. Where it landed was mallternative.
Gabriel Knight is a game best thought of in the past tense. It works the second the game is finished and becomes a highlight reel. The pulp plot briskness, with the seared-in mood acquired from wandering in circles. The moment-to-moment frustrations fade. That's why playing the 20th Anniversary remake of Gabriel Knight broke that spell again.
Styx's greatest strength is in always providing another option when a passageway appears to be impenetrable.
Bayonetta 2 erects some of the most solid fighting mechanics and phantasmagorically gonzo visuals in gaming to date—certainly, something as compulsive and massive as this boosts the Wii U to the front of the pack—and through its formal choices communicates a singular, unfiltered vision of sexualization.
This may seem superficial, but in a lot of important ways—its music, language, representation, and sense of joy—FIFA 15 is a more cosmopolitan and worldly sports game. We could use one.
In short: I didn't need Drake for long. Actually I played about two chart-toppers before I no longer felt the need for his voice as a lighthouse through the darkness. I began to feel comfortable in a horror game, which is a problem. I slept soundly that night.
I couldn't turn off Gremlins or Chucky or Bun Bun fast enough, tripping over myself to end the experience. But Alien: Isolation reels me in for more. If the light of the churning sun streaming through the window is the last thing I see before having my face torn off, then it was a good run. Next time I will happily take it slower.
Before you start, you have to make a tacit agreement with Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: This is one of those times where you'll gaze into the abyss, and the abyss will gaze into you.
But the truth is that it is a good game in spite of the fact that it has bones that threaten to burst from the fantasy skin laid overtop; that it is yearning to mutate out of this Lord of the Rings form and into something truly revolutionary.
NHL 15 is not very good. It's not whole. But I keep playing, because it's enough.
In the end, Ethan Carter's ratios are just a bit off: maybe a little less hand-holding at certain times, a little more at others. But to pretend that it's not there at all is just a refusal to acknowledge the way in which details and design choices can limit or direct play.