Polygon's Reviews
Paper Jam's cute and punchy moments are offset by its frustrating repetition
Resident Evil 0 is better in retrospect than it was at release
'Rubble Without a Cause' is a step backward for King's Quest
Oxenfree doesn't live up to its potential, but has a story worth telling
That Dragon, Cancer is the best of games. It reveals to us what it means to be a fellow human being finding the strength to survive terrible circumstances. It shares through words, pictures, sounds and actions. The actions give us a sense of the pain of others. They show, rather than tell. This story is unique in that it tackles the most dreaded of human experiences in the form of a video game. If you play this game, it may change you.
Rainbow Six Siege is already fighting a difficult battle trying to enforce a more methodical vision of a competitive shooter. It's a minor miracle that Ubisoft Montreal has built such a solid foundation in that regard. But the bizarre progression hooks Siege borrows from free-to-play games, its dearth of content and its network problems make for an awful lot of frustration to overcome in search of those rare moments of unit cohesion.
If you can judge a game based on the moments that make you put it down for the night, Just Cause 3 is hard to criticize: I only stopped when I needed to sleep, not because I wanted to put the game down. The "did you see that?!" factor seems unlimited here, and it kept me coming back to discover what unexpected domino of explosions I could start next with a single grenade. The formula of the Just Cause series hasn't been expanded, but it has been improved. And it's rare that a game is so comfortable in its own skin.
Xenoblade Chronicles X is an awesome game buried under a mountain of annoyances
Battlefront trades complexity for accessibility
Fallout 4 brings great gameplay to match its world and ambiance
Rise of the Tomb Raider executes the franchise formula with confidence
Black Ops 3 doesn't meaningfully move the series forward
Yo-kai Watch's charm overcomes its repetitive nature
At only a couple of hours,The Park doesn't linger or overstay its welcome. It makes smart use of established horror tricks and tropes, and gave me a character that I immediately liked and cared about, even though I recognized I'd been on this ride before.
Halo 5 offers some of the best multiplayer the series has ever seen
Syndicate doesn't get everything right. It doesn't solve all of the series' problems, and at this point, I'm not sure if any one game could. However, it's the first step in a uniformly positive direction that the franchise has taken in years.
"Polarized" feels a lot like a dog chasing its tail. We're used to Life is Strange taking back its most extreme consequences, because up until now that's been the entire point of the game: to fix things. But this episode is so focused on that idea — fixing it — that we sort of lose everything in between here. And all those little details are what made me love the series to begin with.
It's hard for me to mask my excitement about Guitar Hero Live, because in my opinion, there's nothing more exciting than a developer who's capable of outsmarting an entire genre's fanbase. Guitar Hero Live isn't just well-executed; it's clever and innovative in ways that no one other than FreeStyleGames ever imagined. My fears that Guitar Hero Live would be wringing blood out of the franchise's stone were unfounded; at some point, FreeStyleGames found itself a newer, better stone altogether.
After a few hours with Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, I know I'll be returning upon its release ... It's a clever twist on the classic formula, with an inspired use of the Wii U hardware, and a spooky, pitch-perfect Halloween game in its own right.
Witcher 3's first expansion isn't terrible or great, and that's the problem