Polygon's Reviews
Battlegrounds manages to exist within the crowded shooter genre in an unfinished state, and feel both fresh and creatively complete. From its early access launch on March 23 to its official launch today, Dec. 20, its creators have had nine months to repair, polish and expand on their baby. That the most substantial updates have been improved server performance, vaulting and car horns speaks to the confidence Greene and his squad have in the game's foundation.
Xenoblade 2 is its own thing, and that's something rare and precious these days outside of the indie gaming space. Cherish this weird little creature, warts and all.
Perhaps that's the issue. Deep within all of this stuff, under layers and layers of outdated game design carried by the Lego brand, is a promising game. The writing and character direction is, by and large, excellent. At its best, the game is a celebration of Marvel, putting together characters from lore deep-dives with big-screen names like Captain America and Star-Lord. At its worst, it is a vague, opaque slog through hundreds of identical enemies and bad level design. Sadly, Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 is more “stepping on lego bricks” than “excelsior.”
Star Wars Battlefront 2 is made up of many different parts that are pretty good, but the whole is consistently undermined by poor choices in the game's multiplayer economy. No aspect of Battlefront 2 is beyond redemption, but it's hard to fall in love with any part of it, either. It's mostly a disjointed, sporadically fun collection of modes set in familiar Star Wars scenes. Because players have no idea what is really being sold to them, or when, you have a big-name launch that gets in the way of itself more than it creates fun.
Don't let Fire Emblem Warriors get lost among the many Switch releases
If you're getting a sense that I'm waffling here between love and meh, you're reading me right. I love the premise of this game, which folds together so many of my favorite things: platformers, mobile-style brain-suck puzzles, sexy orcs and overly complicated meals. And I love so, so much of its execution, especially the gorgeous art and music.
Need For Speed Payback doesn't do many favors for itself. It's a fun racing game whose flashy story would be fine if I felt like I was building a blinged-out career worthy of it. Instead, I felt driven toward pure stats upgrades, heedless of what the car was or what it looked like.
If you're excited about the prospect of playing first-person shooters on Switch, Doom is a good bell-weather. Personal physical limitations and hand size seem to be the biggest variable when it comes to enjoying the genre. But even if hands are perfectly built to slaughter demon hordes, you're still going to have to swallow some iffy visuals.
The Frozen Wilds arrives in time to petition for a spot on Game of the Year lists. The expansion accomplishes this goal with ease, rehashing what worked the first time around. Sure, The Frozen Wilds doesn't add much new, and shares Horizon's flaws, but the expansion operates fine when taken as simply more of a great thing.
Sonic Forces creators' good intentions and interesting ideas don't amount to much in a game so clumsy and limited in design. It certainly doesn't help that Forces follows right on the heels of Sonic Mania, a game that not only demonstrated a more focused design sensibility but also did a far better job of realizing its creators' ambitions. Forces may have had a larger budget than Mania, but it feels like the poorer creation all around. Unless your dearest dream has always been to play a Sonic game as your own original fan art character, Sonic Forces doesn't have much to offer.
The campaign attempts to bring up the "tough" questions about war, but when you're intermingling those questions with outrageous, comic violence, it comes off as disingenuous.
Steven Universe: Save the Light feels like watching an episode of the show mixed with some sweet old-school RPG nostalgia. It's got the pure heart that makes Steven Universe so special, which makes it all the more tragic that it's just so riddled with stability issues. I hope that future patches will alleviate these problems, but this is a game that could have been perfect. Instead, it's just a colorful shell of its potential — beautiful on the outside and a complete wreck on the inside.
And that's the strength of this sequel. It balances a steady stream of suffering and hurt with exuberant humanity. It deals with our darkest impulses and our best, and plays them both up to a ridiculous degree. There's nothing subtle about Wolfenstein 2, but it's all affecting in a way that makes the game feel special and coherent. There are moments in the game that made my heart swell, while others were so grisly I had to look away.
In essence, Assassin's Creed Origins is much the same game as the original Assassin's Creed, which came out a decade ago. It's a formula that people like to play, and it's certainly been honed and improved over the years. Origins is, then, undoubtedly the best iteration of this formula yet. But I yearn for a fresh approach and new ideas, something that astounds the senses as much as the wondrous world this game inhabits.
For a character nearing 40 years old, it's amazing that Mario has remained not only a beloved character but one whose games are generally expected to be great. From that perspective, it's no surprise that Super Mario Odyssey is, yes, a great game. But more than that, it's a fantastic, even fundamental addition to Mario's legacy. From a plumber to a doctor to a tennis star to, uh, a Goomba, Mario has endured. No, this will not be the last Mario game, but it is almost certain to be lauded as one of his best.
Rogue Trooper Redux is a fun game, but after plowing through the campaign I'm left wondering why it exists. Why re-release a game that's perfectly adequate but doesn't do anything particularly noteworthy or special? What's even more puzzling is that it ends on a cliffhanger. Considering there has never been a sequel, I would have rather have seen how Rogue's next chapter played out than tread down a well-worn path once more.
Much more than a licensed game functioning as a box of fan service for existing Gundam cultists, Gundam Versus is a fresh, well-crafted fighting game that's worth your attention whether you care about Gundam, the fighting genre or both.
While Etrian Odyssey 5 may not be well-suited for genre novices or people who shy away from the combat side of RPGs, you'd be hard-pressed to find a stronger example of this particular slice of the genre. It offers enormous customization; fresh challenges both inside and out of combat; a setting rich with things to do besides simply fight; and best of all, that addictive mapping feature. Here's a game destined to appeal to the lizard brain of Type-A personalities, to people who love to line up details and see everything slowly take shape. With each line you draw on the in-game map, you bring a tiny bit more order to chaos and transform the unknown into the familiar. Etrian Odyssey 5 isn't simply the best game in its own franchise, it's easily the richest and most satisfying dungeon crawler to appear in the past decade.
At the beginning of this review, I outed myself as someone who's not a huge South Park fan, but I've watched enough of the show to understand that this is its modus operandi. It foregrounds loud, over-the-top, “edgy” humor, and it backgrounds surprisingly thoughtful character arcs. South Park: The Fractured But Whole matches the show's strange mix of intentions; it is totally aligned in that way. And in that way, it provided the perfect reminder for why the show (and, to a lesser extent, this game) aren't for me.
It's a brilliant horror game, one that understands when to ratchet up tension and when to pull back and let you collect yourself. If the first game was a failed attempt to capture the spirit of Shinji Mikami's classic Resident Evil 4, the sequel is a successful attempt at something much better: finding a chilling, exhilarating voice of its own.