Polygon's Reviews
I genuinely liked New Tales From the Borderlands and its characters. I only wished their stories had a little more time to breathe.
Gotham Knights is lacking some of the interpretive moves that made both Rocksteady’s Arkham games and WB Games Montreal’s own Arkham Origins so fascinating and unique. It’s yet another encounter on the same rain-soaked streets.
Who could have predicted that such an odd amalgamation could elicit such joy? With Sparks of Hope, Ubisofts Milan and Paris have turned one of gaming’s strangest elevator pitches into one of Mario’s greatest spinoffs.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is a prime example of what a AA studio, given enough trust and resources, can accomplish. It’s a concise experience that didn’t waste my time, but it also scratched an itch I didn’t even know I had: a well-crafted stealth title meshed with folk horror elements that I had been craving since Siren: Blood Curse’s release in 2008. With an emotionally resonant script and an expert flow between stealth, horror, and exploration, A Plague Tale: Requiem feels like the sequel Innocence deserves.
By the time the parasite does finally obstruct your ability to use machines or change weapons, the damage is already done. There are few enemies left and the game is almost over, so whatever additional tension might have resulted from these restrictions never materializes. Scorn is a transportive experience to be sure, at times a genuine masterwork of visual craft. But the unfulfilled possibilities linger a little too prominently, a reminder that it falls short of being a mechanical masterpiece, too.
And so I chip away and bristle against it where I can. I will allow myself to grind, but I will listen to a podcast during the most unbearable moments. I will not feel bad about getting every last Primogem. I will accept that my brain might feel an itch for a while, because I simply will not get to that “one world quest” for a week, and my log might be more clogged than I’d like it to be. Instead of worrying, I will simply close the game and try to forget about it for a few days. Then, on a fresh Saturday morning, I will return to its beautiful world, and find that my flowers have regrown.
Enjoying Overwatch 2 is an exercise in cautious optimism — not just in the future direction of its ever-changing lore and world, but in the idea that years of new content will ultimately deliver on the promise of a full sequel.
The gameplay changes, which are the most meaningful improvements among FIFA 23’s additions because they serve all modes of play, don’t just give me more things to do, or moves to memorize on my gamepad. By opening up new ways to exploit my team’s strengths, they actually tell me I’m better at soccer — video game soccer — than I give myself credit for. Of all the things I noticed in FIFA 23 right out of the box, that might have come last. But it mattered the most.
As indebted as the game might be to the bones and essentials of Devil Daggers, Hyper Demon truly looks and plays like nothing else I’ve encountered in 2022. In a year with no shortage of twitch shooters like Neon White and Metal: Hellsinger, Hyper Demon reigns supreme as a bullet-hell shooter par excellence.
But in the end, all there is to remember about No Place for Bravery is the red from all his murderous encounters — the bloodletting Thorn has committed from brutalizing his foes, the insurmountable pain of his cheap, repetitive deaths, and the immense frustration of never seeing the game reach its fullest potential.
Return to Monkey Island is yet another game in the Monkey Island franchise that makes only a slight effort to reflect the ever-shifting gaming landscape, while confidently clinging to the DNA that made it so beloved in the first place. And if you’re looking for the secret to creating an enduring franchise, you could do a lot worse than that.
There is a lot to evaluate in NBA 2K23, and a lot of that evaluation is yet to come from its restive community, various influencers, and people like me. But NBA 2K23’s appeal and value, for once in a very long time, far outweighs its raw and constant calls to spend money, and the guilt and icky feelings that brings. As I said back in August, if nothing else, no one can complain that Visual Concepts did nothing for its franchise mode. So if the microtransactions truly bother you that much, you can always go to MyNBA Eras and rewrite 40 years of history at no extra cost.
It’s hard to picture Metal: Hellsinger being as memorable as it is without its lineup of popular artists. After all, the soundtrack can’t be divorced from the game’s main appeal. But even though I would have liked to see more risks being taken with its core pillars (similar to BPM: Bullets Per Minute’s experiments with roguelike elements and more varied weapons), Metal: Hellsinger achieves a pulsating, vibrant synergy, and it knows how to pull your strings.
The Chaos Wastes introduces a mass of randomness and unpredictability to your playthrough, changing up things as fundamental as the construction of levels, with certain paths being blocked off, or starting and ending points being moved about or even reversed. Loot also takes on a more significant role, as the game isn’t afraid to let you become overpowered, or even just oddly built, with bizarre combinations of boons. All is stripped away after completion. This is Vermintide 2’s endgame — and its best facet. Forget all the cosmetics; forget your “Power Level,” specific equipment, or career. Jump into the Chaos Wastes, with friends, and smash your way through the hordes, relishing in the fact that you’ve no idea what’s next. Since the beginning, Vermintide 2 has had a solid core, capturing much of what makes these kinds of horde games so enduringly popular. But it’s also proven, over time, that it has something new to offer, with The Chaos Wastes adding some much-needed volatility to this endless procession of fantasy brawls.
Splatoon 3 exudes polish, but lacks ambition
The Last of Us is very much a product of its time, and there’s certainly issues there. But now that I’ve seen how well it’s aged overall, I can really appreciate it — not as a cultural relic or a stepping stone, but as its own grisly, beautiful creation.
In exploiting this fan-like thirst for knowledge as authority and authenticity — even if it occasionally undercuts the storytelling — the game also creates an easy choice for the curious outsider: Either play, or don’t. Immortality embodies the most enticing hallmarks of the “if you know, you know” meme — there’s no quick recap for a politely interested stranger that can adequately sum up the question What happened to Marissa Marcel? The only way to fully appreciate the scope of this project, flaws and all, is to throw all expectations of story and structure out the window, and realize that the simplistic divide between film and games is holding us back from doing so much more with either medium.
It’s been a long, long time since F1 fans have had a licensed management sim that lived up to the dramatic highs of the real thing. The recent explosion of interest paved the way for the perfect timing for a return to this style of F1 game. But even more impressive than its timing is its execution, which leaves extremely little to be desired. It’s been more than a two-decade wait — but it was more than worth it.
Big plays in past Maddens often felt like a lucky (or unlucky) dice roll. If you focus on the 10 yards in front of you, Madden NFL 23 plays almost flawlessly. It’s, again, the bigger picture where the game most often stumbles.
Even so: I can’t help but marvel at the scope and imagination with which Creative Assembly has brought Warhammer’s fantasy world to life. And maybe I can forgive Immortal Empires for occasionally not working properly because it’s so packed with factions that already bend the rules by design. There are leaders whose army buffs I haven’t even touched, and parts of the world I haven’t yet set foot in. But if my past few campaigns have taught me anything, it’s that there are trees falling everywhere, and they’re making quite a lot of noise.