Polygon's Reviews
It’s the people, the world, the journey itself that all make this game tick.
MechWarrior 5 is impressive when it’s able to work long enough to live up to its own potential.
Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a ridiculous gem that’s finally getting a second chance
I kept hoping for something to anchor the whole experience to some kind of message or resonant detail that would bring the rest of my pain into focus. But after finishing the game and writing this review, I’m still waiting.
An updated view of the action makes Darksiders Genesis look fresh, but after looking under that new paint job I found a game that feels tired, despite a few bright spots.
In another level, I continuously switch between late fall and the depths of midwinter, controlling the old man as he crosses rivers and lakes. Ice floes can only be used as platforms in the extreme cold, but if he fails to jump back to the warmer season at every opportunity, he freezes to death. He is brave, but vulnerable.
Too many glitches, too few truly memorable moments, and an overabundance of wombats prevent the game from becoming a truly majestic beast.
Narcos: Rise of the Cartels succeeds completely at just one thing: It makes me interested in watching the Netflix series. The game had a lot of potential, and at least superficially it looked like something that may be better than the standard advertorial we’ve come to expect from this kind of tie-in game.
It’s not the lack of elegant dialogue or the glitches that make this game so disappointing, but the idea that a series that was so obsessed with what would be possible from gaming in the future has turned into a way for people to attempt to revisit the past.
I play as Twine, a young child who was bedridden after an accident in which their older sister was seemingly killed while trying to recover treasure from a temple guarded by a magical barrier. The only beings who can pass through that barrier are giant stone golems, which can be controlled by magic. It's this magic that allows Twine to direct the golems from bed. So you're not just playing as a character; you're playing as a character who is controlling a monster.
Jedi: Fallen Order is a flawed, sometimes messy game, but it’s a Star Wars experience I didn’t know I wanted. And after finishing it, I definitely want more.
I still have stress dreams some day that I’m back in school and the exam is tomorrow and I haven’t studied; it’s nice to see a critical part of my life back in The Sims 4, where it can inspire a whole new set of anxieties and disasters.
The surprise in Sword and Shield is that I’m still finding things that surprise me, even after putting in so many hours. It’s in how Game Freak has made a linear game feel so much less linear.
Perhaps there’s an angle from which Superliminal is a satisfying, Portal-style thriller, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find that angle. And as the game was so fond of reminding me, perception is reality.
In present day, Need for Speed Heat seems limited, reminding me of all the things that made it distinct, but still hedging against them in case I don’t find them enjoyable. I’m confused about what would have made this game better, but the series seems just as confused about what it wants to be.
Despite these issues, I couldn’t help but love Planet Zoo for what it is: a game about trying to make the world a little better, by making sure some animals are well looked after. From its story beats about protecting animal welfare in the case of evil capitalists trying to drive profits, to the first time I was able to release a set of endangered pygmy hippos back into the wild, I felt like all my stress was working toward something.
Pistol Whip is one of the most intense, immediately gratifying action experiences of 2019, in VR or out, with a skill ceiling that’s much higher than it first appears.
This is the sort of thing that might keep smaller children occupied for a time, but buffet rules apply: The food doesn’t taste better just because there’s a lot of it. And that’s maybe the best thing I can say about Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020: There is certainly a lot of it.
Disco Elysium shines most when it gets weird. I was once pretending to be a psychic medium to get a woman to let me look through her supposedly haunted bookstore for a huge novelty polar bear freezer I could use to hide a very dead human body. I knew there were probably more reasonable options for places to store a corpse, but where's the fun in keeping it somewhere official and boring? This is what my character thought was best, and I was there for the ride.
Having been smitten by the core world-building gameplay of Death Stranding, I am stunned to realize that many of the game’s strongest, most appealing gameplay ideas (specifically the world-building and cooperation) are tossed aside in the final acts, in favor of a much more linear, scripted, cutscene-ridden experience. The freedom and sense of ownership I enjoyed while creating this world are dashed in favor of explaining and wrapping up a story that never had much going for it to begin with.