Polygon's Reviews
F1 2017 is a game that's as much fun to think about as it is to play, and as intriguing to plan out and strategize as it is to race. And it is a lot of fun to race, because so much of F1 2017's enjoyment comes from things built up over time, not the year-to-year bullet-point features of video gaming.
A handful of the ideas in LawBreakers seem like concepts that are past their sell-by date, from the dubstep soundtrack to the cyber soldier aesthetic. That's a genuine shame because beneath all that, is a mechanically exciting game. The aerial combat feels fresh, and the twists on standard shooter game modes are solid attempts at flipping the script. But LawBreakers' confusing hero design, poor tutorial system and unbalanced maps all sabotage an otherwise good game.
In XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, fighting a losing battle might be just as much fun as fighting and winning.
Yakuza Kiwami makes it clear just how far the series has come, and just how far it still has to go. It's keenly designed to bring newly minted Yakuza fans more firmly into the fold by providing all the contemporary comforts they might expect, while also giving longtime fans more to chew on than a shot-for-shot remake ever would have. It's a patchwork, for better and for worse, and as much as I enjoyed my time with it, there's no denying that some of those patches are looking more tired than others.
Despite the new protagonist, this game serves as a celebration of everything the Uncharted series has come to represent over a decade of mostly strong releases from Naughty Dog. And because of the new protagonist, it also offers a glimpse into what the franchise could become in the future, with some new developer leading the way. Naughty Dog did right by our memories here, and I hope that whoever takes on Uncharted next does right by them.
Madden NFL 18 doesn't shake up its gameplay but the new story mode is a success.
Subsurface Circular extracts maximum entertainment from limited resources through the admirable trick of great writing, excellent pacing, sparkling dialogue and bang-on story beats. It's a lovely little game, the fine work of a developer whose main skill differential is neither coding, art nor level design, but good old-fashioned storytelling.
You can swap between the three agents you bring into the field instantly, letting you chain their different special attacks together for maximum impact. There are some clever choices here too. Derby star Daisy, for example, has to cool off her minigun by dashing through enemies, which turns a typically boring weapon cooldown mechanic into a renewable power resource.Remember those great characters? Well, practically all their dialogue is bland beyond belief. Much of the writing in Agents of Mayhem is “joke adjacent,” meaning it's delivered with the tone, pacing and structure of a joke, but is not, in actuality, funny in any way.This has likely started to feel like a litany of sins rather than cogent critique, but it's the best way I have of illustrating Agent of Mayhem's failings. It is not felled by any one thing, but is rather undone by a thousand little cuts. Agents of Mayhem heaps theoretical fun on you. Characters, powers, upgrades, tons of missions — it's desperate to for the player to just have fun. It's a noble impulse, but one that it's depressingly incapable of consistently delivering on.
It is frequently a game which occupies two opposite spaces simultaneously. It is the best game. It is also the worst game. No game has ever made me as miserable as Dota 2 has. But no game has made me feel so consistently rewarded for my time, and as consistently, wonderfully connected to the friends I play it with.
If more of what Sonic is what you want, then this is very much that, but more, and bigger, and faster. But for me, as someone with fond memories but key criticisms, Sonic Mania seems content to paint over some of the series' problems rather than fix them, making for a game that falls a little short of what might have been.
In addition to shaking up old ideas, The Enemy Within also introduces some new things to its mechanical and narrative tool belt. The Riddler makes an early and violent debut in the game with an interesting new backstory, and with our new big villain, there's a new big ally ... maybe. Amanda Waller has brought her mysterious government task force, known only as The Agency, to Gotham on a hunt for the Riddler. Indeed, we are in something of an Amanda Waller renaissance these days, with her featuring in no less than three concurrent franchises in television, movies and games.Batman: The Enemy Within makes incremental improvements on a successful formula — and the introduction of a new, relationship-focused choice mechanic was a big hit. It might drag here and there, but it sets up for big things to come in further installments. If Enemy Within is anything like its predecessor, a little patience will pay off.
At its core, this is a game that's funny and good-hearted, presenting a world where a single queer dad's ability to be a good father is never called into question. It's a pretty cool accomplishment for a silly game birthed from a meme.
Asymmetric Then there's the lore. West of Loathing takes place after a major magical disaster: the Day the Cows Came Home. Portals to hell turned the cows demonic, and great darkness spread across the West. West of Loathing elicits this powerful emotional connection with stick figures. It bonds you to its world with nothing more than doodling and dialogue. There's a pretty good turn-based adventure game there, under the hood, but West of Loathing's many strengths are all personal: connections made between developer and player when you both laugh at the same time. Absurdism aside, there's something fundamentally human and direct baked into the game's whole design from aesthetic to script. On top of it, you can dunk your hand into a spittoon of caustic toxins to pull out an enchanted sword. That's the kind of player choice I didn't even know I wanted in a Western RPG.
I continue to think of Tacoma as a story first, but it's more than that, clearly: It's an interactive experience, and that plays for and against it. The story is built out of the playback mechanic, which gives birth to the subtler suggestions of what's really going on with this station. But the playback system means there's a lot of talking to listen to, and a lot of wireframes to stare at. For a game about an abandoned space station, Tacoma gave me plenty of company. But the moments where I had to reckon with being alone in space were the ones that stuck with me.
This RPG won't revolutionize the genre in any sense, but as a breezy riff on a familiar formula, Miitopia is a pure delight.
Hey! Pikmin did exactly what it needed to do, without extending itself any further. It gave me a series of interesting places, a series of clever puzzles, a series of cute vignettes and soft storybook scenery. The worst thing to say about Hey! Pikmin is, simultaneously, a recommendation — it's perfectly pleasant, well-rounded, and didn't leave me dying for more.
I spent the equivalent of a working week playing Aven Colony and it was hard labor. This is a game of relentless concentration and chore-work, with only the briefest flashes of magic and relief, offering almost nothing new to the city building, or resource management genres.
Much of the pull of this world is delivered through Pyre's narrative, which drives the game forward in spite of the repetition of its sports game-style core. Sharply written dialogue is interspersed between rites, illuminating a story that branches in dozens of different ways. That plot is carried on the shoulders of a wonderful cast of characters – party members such as the gruff demon Jodariel, the bitter bog witch Bertrude and my personal favorite, Sir Gilman, a snake with a single large eye who wears a clunky metal helmet and wants nothing more than to be an honorable knight.
Like all successful pieces of nostalgia, Kingsway knows the adventure on the screen is less important than the adventure in your mind. Kingsway took me far down those winding paths, deeper and deeper with each hesitant chitter of nonexistent hardware.
In some ways, Gigantic is a jack of all trades, pulling influences from half a dozen different disparate games and genres. That mixture might sound messy on paper, but in practice developer Motiga pulls it all together to create matches that feel tense, challenging and hugely rewarding.