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A paranoid and misanthropic images of society
If NES Remix were a DJ, it wouldn't be Danger Mouse tearing up The Grey Album—it would be that guy in your dorm who insisted on DJing at college parties but couldn't bear to play a single song all the way through.
The Wolf Among Us falters in episode two
It's finally happened: Ubisoft broke Assassin's Creed.
When I fall, I flail wildly, smashing buttons in an attempt to boost or double jump back to a safe platform. The protagonist cries out in frustration before giving up, and I can't help but empathize.
In this series we look at Clementine, see a child, and then experience where she ends up, getting to feel the disconnect between what it means to be a kid and how to be an adult. You can make the argument that being an adult requires making the hard decisions, and that's what The Walking Dead series comes down to.
The plot of Tesla Effect really only works in the sense that a) people familiar with the series will twig to shorthanded character reveals and b) explanations are eventually given for things that happened. At no point, however, do you feel like you're sharing in a struggle, and at no point is the game funny enough to get away with having such a paint-by-numbers plot.
inFamous: Second Son shows what the PS4 is capable of, and nothing more
NHL 15 is not very good. It's not whole. But I keep playing, because it's enough.
As far as Battlefield Hardline is concerned, the 1980s may as well have never ended.
For now, the game is just echoes; echoes of The Banner Saga, of India and the Middle-East, and of poorly-written Saturday morning cartoons. But the thing about echoes is that they are always less substantial than the original word: “good enough” comes back to us as “enough.”
With Burial At Sea episode two, Irrational closes another circle, bringing the series back around to the first game. It is all of the wonder of Elizabeth confined to a smaller, half-known narrative. There is a thin line between giving people the things they are asking for and giving them exactly what they've already had. This game walks that line—in ever-shrinking circles.
As an action-adventure game, Tomb Raider needs to have you spend eight to ten hours shooting people in the face. That the developer at least tries to address this dissonance in earnest is perhaps commendable—so few games strive to account for the expected incongruities that even the ambition distinguishes the effort. And yet their attempt makes their failure more pronounced.
Remember: NES Remix only pretends to be a simple game. Nintendo understand the deadly allure of both nostalgia and perfection: they introduce new players to The Way Things Were; they also challenge long-time players to prove their skills. Make no false move in any given level and be granted three "rainbow stars," an award for mastery and masochism in equal measure. I've lost hours to repeated attempts at meaningless three star scores.
By the game's end, I found I didn't care about any of the characters. Instead, I was fed up, hunting down the rest of the prismatic cores in order to reach the end. The game had done a full 180. It's a major disappointment, given the promise ReCore shows at its beginning, when it's just Joule and Mack.
Masquerada declines as the plot slows down. The herky-jerky pace gets more grating, the mania for proper nouns more distracting. What looked like a scrappy little underdog RPG turns out to be a collection of worn-out ideas.
At its core, I Am Setsuna plays precisely like a classic JRPG of the Active Time Battle variety, and requires smart, spur-of-the-moment strategy as those games once did.
Rise of Iron, rather than reminding me of days of glory, has instead reminded me of all the ways in which Destiny’s incoherence has undermined its ambition.
A couple hours into Glitchspace, I hoped for a break in the progression and the chance to explore my newly acquired skills, but instead the complexity is continuously layered on top of itself until the game ends. And it ends with you literally walking back up to the title screen, ready to clock in for another shift. I think I’ll take my lunch break instead.
Californium can't get past writer's block