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Tearaway takes its developers’ aims further by coupling the tactile nature of touch screens with constant prompts to bring the player’s face, surroundings, fingers, and creativity into most every gameplay scenario.
New bells and whistles aside, how many more times do I want to do this? I’m sure I’ll play the next one.
Etrian Odyssey Untold doesn't capture the same imaginary dimension—the once-enchanting hedge mazes becoming a flurry of slain woodland creatures. There's simply too many tweaks and choices at your disposal for an old pro like me not to fiddle with them.
Wii Sports Club shows the beauty of fixing what's not broken
Super Mario 3D World is an embodiment of joy.
Given the obscene number of hours I put into BF3's multiplayer mode, I'm clearly not immune to Battlefield's pleasures, especially the breadth of vehicular warfare, its scary-real weaponry, and the way it prizes teamwork over COD-mandatory fast twitchiness. But at a certain point, boredom sets in, one that the addictive mechanics of next-level, next-gun, next-gadget cannot slake.
Resogun does introduce some new things: all that visual razzle dazzle turns into a sort of optical obstacle in places, hinting at what a modern bullet hell game might feel like. But the game's warm reception is ultimately just a testament to how much fun those old arcade games are, even in 2013. That, I am obligated to say at this juncture, is my final answer.
The organic "lobby" structure of Rivals' open world is a promising idea, unfortunately mismatched with a low player limit and an imbalanced power relationship between the cop and racer. I suppose you could seek to defy the odds and play as a racer, but eventually the cops will find you, and they will wreck you—probably more than once. Don't be offended though; they're just doing their job.
Contrast conjures a children's magic show - and is about as believable as one
There's no point in detailing Ghosts' plot because Infinity Ward didn't put much work into writing it.
Killzone: Shadow Fall aims high, misses, lands in great-looking, idiotic stars
Doki-Doki Universe wants to be a Pixar film. You know: artful, sentimental, tapping into a core of childlike earnestness that was buried beneath years of front-page tragedies and daily grind. But it wants to play it safe; it avoids getting too weird and abstract, as Noby Noby Boy, another storybook toy-game, did. No, Doki-Doki Universe is a Dreamworks film. It teeters between juvenilia for the kids and knowing winks for the adults, never committing to, or satisfying, either.
Stick it to the Man is a game that seems almost too obviously referential to a subversive subculture to look as bright and be as assertive as it is. But that doesn't stop it from being as boldly weird (and ultimately super funny) as it is.
Correction: Due to an error, our score for this originally read "70." It has been updated.
Above all, the problem with Homefront: The Revolution is that it, like so many others before it, presumes that whatever freedom is is obvious and transparent, and so can simply be acquired in a transaction like any other.
Virginia needs to go back to film school
For the ultimate failure of This Is the Police is that it makes everyone culpable but the police.
The great pity is that Lifeless Planet is not entirely without merit—Board has a good eye and ear for aesthetics. He'll make you trudge through a Mars-like landscape for five minutes and then have you turn a corner to find a 1970s-era Brutalist Soviet apartment block. Board loves this Duchamp readymade approach to level decoration, where mundane objects become striking by being dropped into an alien context. The Rich Douglas-composed soundtrack is majestic and mysterious, and Board uses it sparingly to preserve its power to move you. It is genuinely impressive to arrive at a Lifeless Planet vista, received by a stirring musical crescendo. It's a place that deserves a more compelling reason for you to visit it.
As it stands there are a few hundred other games I’d crawl through before coming back to this one.
What happens when you combine the roguelike with a traditional JRPG? Nothing good