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What was once an assembly of divergent systems is now a finely tuned machine, one that enables a man to combine a bull skull with motor oil and use it to liquidate scores of zombies. Dead Rising 2 brought focus and direction to an experience that used to be defined by chaos and disorder. Pandemonium isn't completely wiped out, but this time it works with, rather than against, the player's objectives.
In 2011, a faintly redressed model of Dead Rising 2 and a replacement hero in Frank West may have seemed crass. Now, with both Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record released simultaneously and priced identically, it's a simple matter of choice. Do you want Dead Rising 2 as it was conceived, or a genetically modified clone that's less inspired but, technically, a lot more fun?
In 2006, Dead Rising's clever assembly of ideas rampaged against comfort and cohesion. Time has been kind to Dead Rising's sharp edge of nonconformity, though some of its quirks feel frustrating after two (and a half) sequels provided a better defense of its thesis.
Finally arriving on the Wii U, Axiom Verge still packs a mighty punch long after its initial release.
A beautiful game in several ways, Jotun is a treat that Wii U owners should not pass up.
NHL 17 is a game that overwhelms you with variety of play as well as feedback aimed at making you a better, happier player. Outside of a collection of new game modes including Draft Champions, Franchise Mode and the World Cup of Hockey, everything here is largely the same. The game still looks great. Still feels great. And most importantly, it still plays great. Little refinements throughout yield small but noticeable improvements on the experience.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice has an even balance of good writing, new gameplay design and fantastic presentation. Bringing back familiar faces to push the story and containing a healthy dose of difficulty, which is what most fans of the series adore, only helps its overall case. Definitely a worthy addition to the Phoenix Wright family.
Resident Evil 4 does indeed make a perfect 2005 appearance on the current generation consoles, which is a huge plus. It’s such a significant game in the series, so much that it helped the name Resident Evil become more than just a linear zombie shoot ‘em up with jump scares. Its impact can not be understated. With that said, the lack of tweaking and adaption with the controls made the 2016 experience on the PlayStation 4 a bit tough to love. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s tough to recapture RE4’s magic when you’re fighting with the controls. In the end, a classic is still a classic, despite its flaws in this generation.
In sum, Hue presents an accessible, familiar, yet unique-enough experience that is absolutely worth checking out if you're a fan of this genre. I would even suggest that if you got burned out by similar games that got too hard too fast to give Hue a chance.
Alone With You sometimes suffers inside of its medium, an understandable impedance of a small project that simply can't be good at everything. Its eagerness to sidestep conventional challenges with singular objectives, however, will last longer than some of its prosaic mechanics. Valuable science fiction maintains a crucial element of humanity, a facet of storytelling Alone With You embraces with, of all possibilities, relatable human beings.
Annual franchises can be tough to get excited about and to differentiate, but Codemasters has made some great decisions with F1 2016 to make it a clearly superior version to last year's, and quite possibly the best version in the franchise to date.
It may not be the Metroid Prime sequel you were looking for, but if you keep an open mind and give it a shot, you're likely to be pleasantly surprised overall, especially if you have some friends to play co-op with.
A strong release for 2D fighting fans and an overall successful return for one of the genre's most legendary franchises.
While it has been a few years since I’ve reviewed a Madden NFL title, EA Tiburon’s efforts in Madden NFL 17 seems to be incredibly focused on keeping the necessary modes intact, the gameplay elements accurate on both sides of the ball and, most importantly, not trying to overreach. The developers seemed focused on bringing the best Madden NFL title in the last 10 years and they have very much accomplished that feat. This is a must-have, folks.
A stellar sequel and an outstanding game in its own right, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a AAA experience worth your attention.
Unto the Evil is a bit expensive, but offers some pretty good additional content for the multiplayer component of DOOM. If you're a fan of that, Unto the Evil is required to keep pace with the community, but otherwise it may be best to save your efforts for the next DLC which should cater to the more popular campaign mode.
Battleship is exactly what you'd expect it to be and whilst Clash at Sea provides a bit more to the game than just playing straight up classic it falls short due to it being, well, rather boring. It's almost unforgivable that you can't skip the animations along with AI turns and with a seemingly minute player base the likelihood of getting an online match seems slim. If you really do have a hankering to play Battleship my best suggestion is to buy or recover the physical game and play that instead.
No Man’s Sky is a unique experience for this generation of consoles. It brings a relaxing gameplay design that is geared more towards exploration, rather than sci-fi action. In addition to exploration, it has a healthy crafting system, an interesting monetary structure that adds extra motivation, and an endless amount of adventures and secrets to uncover along the way. No Man’s Sky isn’t perfect execution by any means, especially when compared to the intentions that it was built on, but there’s enough here to warrant the journey.
Scouring Abzu's marine paradise opens an argument for emotive communication and softened storytelling. Too often, however, Abzu is less a defense of its beliefs and more a negotiation out of a cornered medium.
Quadrilateral Cowboy's fascination with precision is only matched by its fondness for personalized anarchy. Imagine the empowerment of executing a line of effective and largely improvised code combined with the ignorance that you're just moments away from shooting yourself in the head. At its best, Quadrilateral Cowboy is all of the fun and experimentation of retro-future cyber heists without all of the existential horror that comes with most definitions of mortality.