Polygon's Reviews
It felt nostalgic, like playing a video game sitting next to a friend, taking turns flipping the manual pages back and forth. It felt like making notes in those margins, circling hints and clues to come back to later. Sometimes, it was utterly surprising. A person found something so bizarre, unlike anything I'd seen yet in this world - and it flipped the game upside down. There's the community aspect to the language, too: Little bits open up as others present theories and translation methods, each pulling a different piece of information into the puzzle. When someone makes even the tiniest breakthrough, it feels unreal.
I didn’t expect to enjoy smashing the heads of monsters like this. I also didn’t expect to enjoy a story about a hyper-masculine man like Jack. But what I’ve come to learn in my time with Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is that Jack isn’t a knight in shining armor. He’s better.
And I haven't even mentioned naval travel, field bosses, or timed battles. In its sheer breadth of content, Lost Ark is gargantuan, and learning its intricate systems means being rewarded every step of the way, for a very long time. As it stands, after 90 hours, I have roughly 40% of each region completed, and have multiple characters well into the second tier of endgame content.
I’ll always have those moments on the battlefield where Triangle Strategy is willing to meet me halfway — just like it did when it sent me Narve, the wandering mage, who showed up at my encampment the night before a pitched battle, plucky and sincere, to offer his services. His elemental spells were weak, but he had potential. In the morning, I put him next to Rudolph, the bandit whose skill with a bow and affinity for bear traps made him a staunch protector. Narve struggled against a few elite enemies, but Rudolph watched over him. They both emerged unscathed, and became fast friends.
Aging gracefully, Polyphony’s racing series has never seemed more like itself
Eight years after those first clumsy beginnings, the series isn’t about Hope for the Future anymore. The Destiny I’ve always wanted is here.
It’s a strong, tarmac-based counterpart to the Dirt series, and satisfies a wider range of competitive urges than the dedicated F1 simulation that launches every year. And the consistently exciting racing, as both spectator and competitor, that Grid Legends delivers should have every racing fan wondering why something like this can’t be found in real life, too.
I kept hoping and waiting for some similar Remedy subversion in this mediocre military shooter - waiting for some Remedy splinter that would pop out of the skin of this boring carcass of a game. Yet nothing emerged. Remedy's brand is merely a thin film into which this limp mess was stuffed.
Elden Ring is FromSoftware’s most accessible, and difficult, game yet
Many players will undoubtedly grab these versions to replay some classics from their childhood, and I already feel for them when that wave of disappointment hits. But truth be told, I feel worse for people hoping to finally give the series a try now that the entire collection is on a mobile, family-first platform. If that describes you, and you’ve been waiting for this moment to finally dive into Kingdom Hearts: Keep waiting.
Strange Horticulture is, appropriately, a strange game, one of those simple premises that balances intrigue, sense of place, and puzzles in a satisfying, tactile way.
Returning to Aloy’s machine-threatened world is well worth the wait
This new fortification system is also present in siege battles and small settlement engagements, and it's probably the biggest change to the overall Total War formula. Capturing points on the map builds up your resources, which you can then spend on fortifying defensible areas. It's a compelling tactical addition, bringing Total War closer to other real-time strategy games where it's not just about wiping out an army, but capturing points, defending them, and using resources wisely. It does, however, also take away from what Total War battles always seemed to be about: careful, tactical positioning within a semi-realistic environment.
There's a sweet spot in the middle of each run where you're powerful, but only just powerful enough to barely survive each new wave. In the final third of each run, though, things start to feel perplexingly staid.
Like Hades and Returnal, Sifu is a run-based game where each attempt is an opportunity to get further than your last. But unlike those games, its execution is needlessly complex, and it's really, really hard to tell if you're making any permanent progress.
OlliOlli World showcases that creativity in its fairly expansive multiplayer and social elements as well. Within each level, I can see leaderboard stats for other players - including a few close to my skill level, deemed my rivals. But I can also watch replays of their runs, to see how they've approached these different levels and what tricks landed them their scores. I can watch replays for the top scorers, too.
Dying Light 2’s appeal is, ultimately, more game than story.
Still, Pokémon Legends: Arceus made me care about battling, and I actually wish there were more trainer battles scattered throughout the world. But I missed some of the predictability found in the mainline series. Whenever I'd go to swap out one Pokémon for another mid-battle, I held my breath, never knowing if I'd have to take a hit from the enemy before I could attack. Hours in, I felt like the game didn't give me enough information to make some of the strategic decisions I wanted to. I love the direction in which the battles are going with Legends: Arceus, but a handful of "what the hell" moments killed some of my enthusiasm.
Prior to checking out these remasters, I hadn't touched the games since the first time I played them on PS4, and I was worried about the atrophy of my combat skills. I was initially dying more often than I thought I should have been, so I looked for adjustments. I then realized that in Performance Plus mode, I needed to use a lighter touch on the sticks to aim accurately; the controls are that much tighter on this setting. Soon, I was nailing headshots left and right. The Uncharted games are not celebrated for their gunplay, but the combat feels terrific at 120 fps - as do the spectacular set-pieces here, such as Uncharted 4's pell-mell urban chase sequence and The Lost Legacy's jaw-dropping train finale. Plus, it's exciting to see these games' stunning real-time cutscenes running at 60 fps.
Rainbow Six Extraction is all grind and no payoff