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If you didn't dig it way back when, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Special Edition won't do much to change your mind. It's still impressively open, but once you actually reach your objective marker, it morphs into a shallow experience with shaky writing. Mod support will naturally help grease the wheels a bit, but make sure you stick to Xbox One if you're going the console route and stay on the beaten side path.
Despite its brisk pace and sparse storytelling, Small Radios Big Televisions manages to feel like a complete handcrafted package. The game shines when you're weaving between corridors and virtual worlds hunting for keys to a mystery among forgotten places and glitchy spaces. Like any great mixtape, Small Radios is packed with moments worth remembering, even if feels like it should be just one song longer.
While I don’t love every change Respawn has made in Titanfall 2, at the end of the day the positives more than outweigh the negatives. It’s hard to sulk about the lack of A.I. grunts in most of the multiplayer matches when you’re unloading a red hot chest laser into a mech that is hovering 50 feet above ground pelting you with missiles. There isn’t a shooter on the market that can compare with Titanfall 2 when it comes to imagination, inventiveness, and flat out spectacle.
Hitman has been an uneven project (Marrakesh and Colorado were a cut below), but even at its worst it's still an above average stealth romp. It's been a long and laborious seven and a half month process with several delays to boot, but it's all here now, and worth picking up. Not to mention, Square Enix has done a noble job of actually updating the thing beyond DLC, fixing up several large glitches that plagued the first few episodes.
While Halloween Forever is simple, I think the developer achieved what it set out to do, which is to make a fun, pick-up-and-play platformer that would feel at home on the NES. As someone who loves the console and still goes back and plays its games, I can appreciate this spooky little game. It's cute, it's easy, it's colorful, it has a decent chiptune-ish soundtrack, and it illustrates perfectly how we all feel about candy corn (barf).
If BlazBlue: Central Fiction is the end (and I don't think it will be), it's a fitting one. It packs in pretty much everything past games have offered, and then brings in several great new characters and one of the biggest stories in fighting game history.
Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, despite its issues, is still an improvement over the original Xenoverse, although minimally. It has its letdowns but long-term it will offer a better experience due to Bandai Namco's promised year of post-release support, including three DLC packs, as well as the present gameplay improvements and slightly more content. If you’re a Dragon Ball fan and enjoyed the first game, Xenoverse 2 will leave you off satisfied.
Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni reminds me a lot of Senran Kagura Burst in that it feels like a rough draft of greater things to come. The combat is there, and the game looks amazing, but with an overabundance of uninteresting plot and a lack of original or compelling personalities, I found myself skipping over more of the game than I should have in order to keep myself entertained.
Owlboy is a special game. Almost a decade in the making has certainly allowed for a rarely seen amount of polish and effort in an industry brimming with day-one patches and rushed deadlines. I'm at a loss when trying to think of critiques, honestly. I can't even say that I wish there was more of it because what is here is just so damn satisfying from start to finish, and I wouldn't want to ruin that.
Earth's Dawn could be a far better game than it is if it were just a bit more focused and refined. A lot of issues with the game could have been fixed by just making the missions something you could do in each level at your own pace without loading them separately one at a time from the main menu. The level design lends itself to Metroidvania-like gameplay, but the missions themselves just drop you into the map and tell you exactly where to go and what to do, versus just letting you roam freely and do as you wish completing missions along the way.Even with its flaws, I think many people will enjoy Earth's Dawn, but I don't expect it to be a hit or even a cult classic. If anything those starved for something similar to Odin's Sphere or an RPG-style beat 'em-up might get some enjoyment out of it, while most will find the repetition a bit too much.
But the narrative picks up the slack, and despite a slow start, it builds into a nice crescendo and naturally, a cliffhanger. Batman: A Telltale Games Series: New World Order keeps up the status quo, with slightly enhanced screentime for Bats. That's not a bad thing though, so if you've been enjoying yourself so far or fancy yourself a Batman person, three out of five good episodes so far is a safe bet.
The old Civ mantra of “one more turn” is stronger than ever. The additions make for a much deeper strategy game and the inclusion of most of the features from previous entries makes for a remarkably well-rounded launch. It will be interesting to see where Civ VI goes, but I have a feeling there won’t be nearly as dramatic a change as Civ V saw.
King's Quest: The Good Knight is a satisfying narrative conclusion to Graham's saga and is a unique approach to storytelling that we don't see often. It's not a return to the first chapter's exploratory focus, which many of you have been pining for since last July, but if you enjoy the narrative stylings of the previous two tales, you'll be sure to crack a smile (or shed a tear) in turn.
From beginning to end I was completely entranced by these kids' quest to escape the horrors of Heavenly Host. Corpse Party has a timeless story built around solid characters and a genuinely creepy setting that is able to buoy its sometimes outdated gameplay.
I didn't see myself playing through (and enjoying) Battlefield 1's campaign even just weeks prior to this assessment, but here we are. It somehow manages to be a good amalgam of the staple formula DICE has relied on for years, with a bit of anime (flashes of Metal Gear Solid V and flowing shonen capes) sprinkled in for good measure. I'm really not looking forward to spending $50 on the DLC to get more maps, but for now, I'll be coasting along in Operations for the next few months.
WWE 2K17 is a poor simulation of the WWE product, often because it seems ashamed of pro wrestling.
Even with a few uninspired stages, Skylanders Imaginators manages to nail the childlike whimsy of the beat-'em-up genre so many of us grew up with. It's still a blast with friends, and even more-so now that you can share your creations and tweak them together. The series has shown signs of slowing down in recent years here and there, but it's not done yet.
You don't really need Ashes of Ariandel unless you've squeezed every ounce out of Dark Souls III already or thrive on PVP. I think the concept of splitting up their resources took away from the sum of both parts, but there's still plenty of challenges and surprises to warrant another bloody good time. Or a future Game of the Year version bookended romp.
While I would argue that Rigs: Mechanized Combat League is by far the superior online multiplayer game for PlayStation VR, if its frantic in-mech motion is too much to handle or you're otherwise more interested in an engaging cooperative experience, this fits the bill nicely. There are some glaring balance issues for Rebellion to work out, and Battlezone is far less advisable as a solo game, but damn if it isn't thrilling when everything comes together and your team perseveres against all odds.
There really isn't anything positive I can say about this game, outside of a few choice spots of interesting art direction. The level design is dull, the platforming is simplistic, the graphics look a few generations old, the RPG elements are basic, the music is forgettable, the enemies are pushovers, the difficulty is turned all the way to easy – I'm honestly at a loss for words. I would like to think I have this amazing vocabulary to intelligently convey just how abominable Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity is, but the best I can come up with is just calling it bad. This is a bad, bad game.