Kill Screen
HomepageKill Screen's Reviews
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.
NBA2k15 is both a marvelous basketball videogame and a douchebag simulator
Just as I see Supergiant's uneasiness exercised in the mechanics and themes of Bastion, I cannot help but find Transistor's obsession with performativity a bit telling of its creators' desire to break the sophomore slump.
While many new arcade games are built for spectatorship, they can be a little unwelcoming, full of secrets favouring someone who has survived a few rounds. That applies to most videogames, after all, but Smash Bros. found a middle ground, with enough combos and generally good ideas to feel rewarding, but none that can consistently overcome a monkey wrench. TowerFall Ascension, then, is the new arcade's Smash Bros.: an answer to a new genre that may be more alienating than it realizes, despite its inclusive agenda.
There was a time, there was a time, I had never imagined the possibility of battling a phallic mouse on a computer, but I—we—can never have those days back again. We have to forge on into the filth.
Lumino City is a real world filled with relationships as thin as its papercraft inhabitants. Whether intentional or not, it seems to be the focus, given that there's not much in the way of "adventure" in this point-and-click adventure.
Super Smash Bros. finds more tricks to play on Wii U
Nidhogg is fundamentally about that laughter; not the happy laughter you give to a good joke, but the manic and true laughter you use to break down walls in yourself. I think that laughter is why some people fight. I know it's why I play Nidhogg.
My memories of playing Out of the Park are all couched in numbers—the 0.2 OBP, 0.8 OPS hitter that almost never hit, but when he did sent it out of the titular park; the closer that held a 1.5 ERA going for most of the season; the time my Mets were down to 0.39 winning percentage, but came back up to a 0.49. I have come to love baseball for this. And since a sport that turns people into statistics makes great fodder for a game that turns statistics into people, I have also come to love Out of the Park.
Perhaps, like a clever university student sitting an exam he's under-prepared for, Age of Wonders III takes the question of how empires are made and rejects it. With the attention that it lavishes on combat—from the panoply of tactical spells and abilities you can discover to the extraordinary visual detail afforded to even insignificant corners of every battlefield—Age of Wonders seems largely uninterested in the mechanisms of power. It's more focused on the application thereof.
Uncharted 4 never pretends to be anything other than the sum of its highly-polished parts. Its initial aim of interrogating the ability of adventure fiction to mature seems assured in the knowledge that it doesn't need to.
Out of the void, Hyper Light Drifter meticulously crafts a post-apocalyptic samurai story, one that bends and folds the tenets of zen's vivid ambience alongside the warrior path of bushido, something familiar yet fresh, quiet yet resonant.
Street Fighter V is for lovers.
The game, like the best works of science fiction, understands that horror can come from discomfort inherent to the erasure of boundaries we assume exist. The unintelligible whispers of static and the shattered visuals of glitch provide only the most cursory glances at a machine world inaccessible to us.
The Total War formula mostly acts as a functional framework on which to construct the violent, mystical world of Game Workshop's Warhammer. This is the most dramatic departure Creative Assembly has taken from their typical playbook with the series, and it needed to be; a game about a warring fantasy kingdom must feel different than one about the rise of the Roman empire. For the most part, it does.
Downwell may not have the lifespan of Spelunky or Nuclear Throne, games that have continued unfolding over years for their players. But it also doesn't appear to be aiming for such heights. Its focus is as straight and unyielding as the well down which it drops you. It is fun and addictive, but moreover it's adrenaline-pumping and shocking in its barbarity.
Stephen’s Sausage Roll is tough and tumbly, with a greater emphasis on one’s own form than any other puzzle game, which usually waiver the avatar as too grotesque of its gorgeous world.
Everyone should be squirming to play Push Me Pull You
At its core, VA-11 Hall-A is the rare cyberpunk story that has heart, and even goes so far as to give its female characters agency in their own lives. It’s a story where we, the player, take the backseat, and soak it all in. Just like a good book.
Starbound likes to subvert expectations at every turn. With another player in co-op, Starbound’s combat moves firmly in the direction of ridiculousness, especially as you’re barking orders at each other about the need to avoid, of all things, damned penguins driving huge tanks, as if it were a weird game of Pretend.