Polygon's Reviews
Rally driving, for me anyway, is about plowing headlong into the unknown, understanding the risk of fast driving in a way you can’t on an oval or a well-known circuit. That makes taking a square left perfectly, or drifting through the full 180 degrees of a switchback, seem even more high-five-myself awesome. And I got exactly that in Art of Rally. If that’s the experience you want, too, Art of Rally will serve it as much as it will an escape from the present day, for a delightful joyride through a beautiful countryside.
Try as I might, I cannot find fault in Hades. It’s even created a calm in me that no other similar game has. Loss isn’t a frustrating experience met with loud swear words and the sounds of scrambling feet made by my previously sleeping cats. Failure is just another step on a long adventure with one of my favorite games, years in the making and well-worth the wait.
In 2002, the original Mafia may have felt like an epic, but in 2020, Mafia: Definitive Edition feels more like a quaint mafioso side story. “Small-time,” as Tommy describes one of Don Salieri’s operations.
Rivals is quite charming and, at only an hour or two long, doesn’t wear out its welcome. If Return of the Obra Dinn is the chart-topping hit of this growing little genre, Rivals is the local garage band album that gets a glowing write-up in the alt-weekly: small, messy, lovable. Rivals is seemingly built with one audience in mind: older weirdos like me who don’t mind a little more Wilco-style music in their detective games.
If anything, Super Mario 3D All-Stars shows the breadth of what a 3D Mario game can be, and much of that is truly excellent.
This isn’t a sequel. It’s yet another chance to play Spelunky with fresh eyes; everything is just a little different, another stroke that proves perfection is imperfect. Even the best can get better.
That means some kind of personal journey or transformation for the star, and supporting characters with some depth and likability. Given every chance to be a preening overdog, newcomer Vince Washington turns the character Hendrixx Cobb into a warm, believable friend instead. Michael K. Williams (Omar from The Wire) is just shady enough as a streetwise mentor to make an endgame choice - one the game even forced me to reconsider! - both reasonable and personally regrettable.
OK multiplayer stitched onto a great campaign
Everything I love about the original is still here; it’s just a little older, a little kinder, and a lot better looking.
Secretly one of the better shooters of 2020.
I’m looking forward to the dozens, if not hundreds, of more hours yet to come.
Madden NFL 21 then, is a lot like a best friend in the time of social distancing: someone I desperately want to see and spend time with, except doing so also recalls how much we’ve actually lost over the past five months.
The ease of the interactions made me miss the real-world dog park even more, where there’s always someone new to meet or a cute pup to pet. It’s definitely not a replacement for it, but in a pinch, it’ll do.
Story and character do not drive the action like in Tartakovsky’s series — air flips and fist punches do. A sense of exhaustion sets in almost immediately, while a hunger to get just a little more Samurai Jack in my life kept me soldiering on. By the standards of tie-in games, that feels like a success.
Even if you just show up to take in the sights, it’s an experience that is well worth your time. Just turn on the AI pilot, kick back with a glass of Champagne in first class, and enjoy the ride.
Spiritfarer works because the entire game is built around creating these connections to the characters, all of which are complex people with tangled stories. And none of the spirits are purely good or bad; some are people leaving a mess behind for others to grapple with.
At the end of those levels, I collect an object that I need to return to Fallgrim Tower — as the game drip feeds me information, I learn I need all three of them to escape. I fight my way back, deliver the item, and then start off again toward a new temple. The premise is concise and understandable — go here, collect this, come back, repeat two more times, win.
Crossroads also has a multiplayer option, which at least sounds fun, but there aren't enough people playing this game, so it's not viable unless you were looking for a "waiting for a game" simulator.
With new stages to be added in coming updates, Fall Guys is already cementing itself in the “favorites” section of my Steam library.
Destroy All Humans! is a damn fine B-game from an era when publishers bothered to fund such things.