As designed, Sable is a freeform journey across gorgeous landscapes in pursuit self-discovery. Agency is at a premium and the player can go as far as their initiative can take them. As executed on an Xbox One, Sable is a devastating technical calamity unfit for basic service. It was a cruelty to observe the heights Sable was capable of reaching and yet not be able to experience them for myself.
DariusBurst Another Chronicle EX+ is as thin as $40 can stretch the fifth iteration of its namesake. Its cumulative and sweeping arrangement of DariusBurst's horizontal shooting excellence is, objectively speaking, worth an investment of time. Its position against Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours in the same marketplace, along with its own slapdash assembly, weakens its necessity in any enthusiast's collection.
80's Overdrive asserts that Out Run's combination of breakneck racing and frantic traffic negotiation will fit neatly inside the progression-focused model of a modern game. It doesn't, and 80's Overdrive almost runs out of gas before it reaches a comfortable destination. All the lavish neon and thumping synthwave in the world can't help 80's Overdrive make twenty minutes last six hours.
Oninaki is an abundance of compelling ideas enveloped in a fog of stammering expression. An extensive progression system, myriad combat options, and a sincere and original premise aren't enough to overcome the rote execution of its world, characters, and basic combat. Oninaki's only viable curiosity is what kind of game it may have been with more time, budget, and expertise.
God's Trigger's grindhouse kitsch is effective because you can believe it was made by deeply inspired people who barely knew what they were doing. Blundering adrenaline has an unconscious authenticity which, by its nature, translates to a gnarly player experience. Misadventure is technically still an adventure.
Dangerous Driving bets that spurned fans of Burnout still want more Burnout made by the only people they would trust to make more Burnout. It's a skilled recreation, albeit one that forgets wild innovation and grinning novelty were as important to Burnout's identity as racing and smashing up outrageous cars. Dangerous Driving, ironically, is defined by familiarity and comfort.
While Team Sonic Racing makes a statement with its collaborative squads of racers, its identity is lost in the amorphous complexion of a conventional kart racer. Worse, its gorgeous locales and myriad customization options aren't quite enough to support a despairing imbalance between luck and skill. Silver the Hedgehog's presence is one of many indications Team Sonic Racing is burdened with deadweight and light on inspiration.
Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! is a bright and cheery arcade drumming classic digitally packaged without the physical equipment normally used to play it, conceding a DualShock 4 as the solitary drum to bang across dozens of energetic pop anthems. It's a fun, albeit plain, rhythm game that you can imagine being even more fun with the hilarious drum controller that isn't included or available in North America.
Call of Cthulhu is an emphatic character sheet fed to a game deficient of opportunities for self-expression. Imagine if, instead of a dramatic exploration behind the power and poison of enlightenment, Lovecraft only wrote a flat outline. Call of Cthulhu is eldritch horror without emotion or agency, and its madness is entirely mundane.
Not A Hero absorbs Resident Evil 7's discordant third act and recasts it in the mold of a conventional action shooter. While a sharp focus (and a welcomed protagonist swap) aid Not A Hero's general coherence, it's a vision of a life the seventh Resident Evil chose to leave behind. A safe move isn't often the strongest.
Detached is an exploration of space and occasional snuff film laden with mundane objectives. Like premise without plot, even the most satisfying sense of motion can't progress without an equivalent destination. In 2018, there isn't much room for Detached beside more mature takes on virtual reality.
Mr. Shifty begins in the same place it ends; by punching a man through a window. Defenestration is appealing, especially when it's preceded by short form teleportation, but the first instance is more gratifying than the last. Mr. Shifty deals in scale, quantity, and strategy in the wrong order, assuring its sharp edge dulls after an auspicious opening.
While shoot 'em ups are conspicuously underrepresented on modern hardware, Ghost Blade HD's presence amounts to little more than a fleeting cameo. Just because it's the only port in the storm doesn't mean that anyone will stick around after the raging winds subside.
Banned Footage Vol. 2 is a more conservative approach to Resident Evil 7's post-release program. It plays in the same space as Vol. 1—both are insistent and diverse recasts of Resident Evil 7's components—but it exchanges chaos for stability. Eccentric blackjack, exacting resource management, and a condensed, comfortable reprise of the proper game are suitable, if not safe, slices of content.
Bright colors, breezy enthusiasm, googly eyes and collectibles — Yooka-Laylee nails Banjo Kazooie's aesthetic and embraces every last trope from Rare's 3D platformers. It's also firmly disinterested in twenty years of forward progress, doubling as a paean to Banjo's banal challenges, mushy control, and distressing tedium. It's tough to feel bitter—Playtonic delivered what was promised—it's just awfully easy to feel chafed and bored, too.
VR's viability hinges on making sensible objectives integral to the wonder implicit in its format. Robinson: The Journey understands this and makes visible strides to balance astonishment and curiosity. Too often, however, it gets tripped up by contrasting wandering ambition against capricious behavior. Ideas fight, rather than support, one another, ensuring Robinson's first steps are also its last.
PlayStation VR Worlds is intended to raise belief in its accompanying hardware. And it does; once for each of its five technical showpieces. Afterward that high is only reached through a vicarious transfer from newcomers, positioning VR Worlds' potential as a dramatic flash instead of an imposing statement.
As a commemoration of style and simplicity, Spectra speaks in the dearth of speedy arcade racers. Regrettably, Spectra's ambition, like its appeal, doesn't stretch beyond austere representation.
The Legend of Korra dissipates potential as quickly as it disappoints a prospective audience. Korra's fiction and Platinum's development lineage impart a veritable dream team of narrative and design, but neither party seemed to bring the necessary hardware to live up to their respective and respected standards.
By tying humor and outrageous context to its moving parts, Saints Row The Third and Saints Row IV became viable systems in the modern open-world paradigm. Gat out of Hell (mostly) forgets all of this, sheds (mostly) all of its psychotic humor, and bolts on (mostly) dated mechanics. Its intended function may be a stop-gap between major iterations, but its execution feels like a failed audition against its recent past.