Anthony Shelton's Reviews
You'll find a lot of fun in Back 4 Blood. Turtle Rock Studios managed to take something that was old and give it enough of a touch-up to make sure we recognized it but played with it differently. It's fun to hop on with your friends and blast away the zombies and compete to potentially take out the Cleaners, but you have to get past the first half of the game to get to the best parts. It doesn't help that the story gives you nothing to cling to, but once you get past those parts, the tension and excitement kick in. But sadly, playing solo hardly gives you anything like what you get playing online and with friends.
New World’s ideas come across as very solid, but the more I’ve engaged with it, the more I see problems. Those problems have nothing to do with the foundation of New World, however. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with New World besides the economy and lack of main missions, and only the former can destroy the game. The rest of the issues can be fixed with time and enough attention to the details.
A lot of Forza Horizon 5 feels similar to Forza Horizon 4 in a way previous Horizon games haven't felt with their prequels, but Adventures bring unique storytelling and slight edutainment to the Horizon formula and if more Horizon's are in the future, particularly ones not in Europe and America, it's not a bad foundation to build on. Driving feels as good as it ever has and Playground Games absolutely succeeded in interpreting the beauty of Mexico. The seasonal model returns and it does a better job of incentivizing people to group up, but it's still not quite enough to entice people to do activities like Forza Arcade.
Battlefield 2042 felt like an eternity away, but now it’s only a little over one week from release. After spending three days with other media types playing the next giant war game, I can finally say it’s ambitious but isn’t able to match the ambition so far. I say so far because while we did play online with our group and while we did have at least 4 hours with each mode (some of us had six with Breakthrough), that’s not enough to properly assess modes like Hazard Zone and Portal. I also don’t know if they’re going to start the battle pass during the early access period. So for now, check out my review-in-progress.
Turtle Rock added interesting content in Tunnels of Terror. Ridden Hives offer a compelling challenge, new Cleaners are somewhat worth experimenting with, No Hope is undeniably challenging, and Warped Ridden make you think twice, at least for a moment. But what's missing is purpose. Heng is useless, Ridden Hives aren't worth the risk for the reward and Warped Ridden aren't any more terrifying or game-changing. It's hard to identify Turtle Rock's aim, but there's no question it was off.
This is the way I want to play tower defense from now on. The Last Friend isn't a challenging first attempt at combining tower defense and beat 'em up, nor good at telling a quality story, but it has fantastic mechanics. Weak difficulty aside, each world brought imaginative enemies and bosses and surprises that made it worth seeing what came next.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge feels like it's designed from an Ninja Turtles arcade beat 'em up template, which strips it of creativity and originality and makes it feel predictable and familiar. But the fluid combat continually sucks me back in, even though that also suffers from combat designs that should've been left in the past.
The events in Endling create sad emotions but they do not connect with how mankind is destroying the Earth. Events happen and we're supposed to feel something because they happened, but the emotions are diminished because there is no connection to the message or the characters. It held up in the short five hours of play thanks to intriguing survival mechanics, but even those were messed up by an unfortunate, frustrating tug of war between survival and story progression.
Just Dance 2023 is a dichotomy. For all the new elements that are a fresh and welcome addition, there are just as many egregious omissions. Combine that with a second-rate song list along with Just Dance+ that is equally inadequate, and Just Dance 2023 Edition feels like dancing with the devil under the pale moonlight.
Redfall resembles the vampires it's based on. It lacks identity, and sucks the life out of you. Every time I see a spark of potential, it's stomped out by bugs, braindead AI, and an empty world not worth exploring. I wish Arkane well in their next endeavor, because they need to let this one die.