With the loss of some of its personality, Forza Motorsport 6 sometimes feels like a little less than the sum of many much improved parts, and there are certain quality-of-life changes that feel increasingly overdue. But these are only distractions, bumps in the road that make Forza feel "just" great when looked at from a distance.
Halo 5 offers some of the best multiplayer the series has ever seen
Black Ops 3 doesn't meaningfully move the series forward
Fallout 4 brings great gameplay to match its world and ambiance
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.
Frustration tangles up Unravel's better ideas
If Garden Warfare was an attempt to make a multiplayer only shooter that just about anyone could enjoy, Garden Warfare 2 takes that a step farther by removing the original's budget-priced compromises. Making the original Popcap concept into a shooter isn't novel anymore, and I hope that the developers pay attention to the game's potential balance challenges over time to make sure that "asymmetric" doesn't become "lopsided." But Garden Warfare 2 stands strong on its own, and with friends.
Street Fighter V is the skeleton of a great fighting game
Taken for what it is, and what it’s doing, Hitman is still pretty great, and it’s still offering something that no one else has done and still aren’t doing. And in establishing a strong, episodic offering for the series, Io has built a foundation to carry the Hitman series forward much sooner than they ever have before.
The Division's MMO aspirations get in the way of its shooter fundamentals
Quantum Break is a surprising success
Doom struggles somewhat to finish what it starts, and for a franchise that practically created what we understand as shooter multiplayer 22 years ago, its largely flavorless multiplayer is surprising. But on the whole, as a new interpretation of one of gaming's most formative, difficult to pin down cyphers, id has done a pretty great job in making something that feels familiar and fresh, and, most importantly, pretty damned fun.
Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a flawed, but often great breath of something different and exciting in an open-world landscape full of the same old thing.
At around six hours long, Song of the Deep doesn't have enough time to become a disaster, and there are redeeming aspects of it. The character, the voiceover, the presentation are all a change of pace from the video game status quo, and the sense of discovery the first half offers is welcome. But it's hard to shake the feeling of a game with potential that never quite figures out how to deliver on it.
Headlander isn't Double Fine's funniest game, but it's one of its most consistently fun
Mankind Divided's cybernetic playground feels fresh, even if it doesn't go as far as expected
A boring collect-a-thon and empty open world drag down Recore's strong fundamentals
Gears of War 4 is a remarkably complete package.
Battlefield 1 succeeds far beyond expectations
Titanfall 2 has the basics down, but loses much of the focus