Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
If it's playing I can close my eyes and feel what HLM made me feel. Because my associations for HLM2 are confusion and frustration more than exhilaration and escapism, the second doesn't seem to have power. But there are some lovely pieces in there for sure.
The Assignment and The Consequence are dark, they're frightening, they get the blood pumping, and there's nothing else quite like them around. You'll know when you've been Tango'd.
Apart from the splendid graphics, there's nothing particularly outstanding about White Night, but it's a decent horror-mystery game. It'd fit beautifully under the Alone in the Dark banner and seems like a much more obvious successor than…well…
Don't underestimate how clever and how careful Evolve is, and just how many deeply different elements it genuinely manages to balance. But sadly that's not backed up by a huge amount of personality.
What makes Hand of Fate so very special is that it does very successfully bring one very human emotion to bear: hatred. I'm gonna give you what for, Australian Raistlin.
With such a light story and relatively sparse worlds the game needed its combat to feel polished in order to shine. Sadly the unwieldy controls mean it's an interesting-looking game which never quite delivers.
I'm sticking with Game of Thrones, but I'd definitely appreciate some changes to the pacing. I.e. calm down! Sure, feel free to maim and kill anyone anywhen, but give me a chance to look around a little first, won't you?
Like the best open world games, it's a factory for anecdotes and you'll create plenty of gems in its company. That's worth celebrating, no matter how derivative the various machines in that factory might be.
The Remastered edition might not be quite as modernised as we'd hoped, and it's sorely in need of a little more PC-specific TLC, but it is such a pleasure to have it back, so much happier on a modern monitor and good speakers than the original edition, and with non-crazy controls too.
It's a comfortable game, lots to do, very silly, definitely fun to play. But it's also sitting still, putting its feet up, rather than surprising us with something delightfully new.
If you've never played the remake at all, it's worth visiting the mansion again just to meet Lisa Trevor, and if you've never played Resident Evil at all, now's the time. It's a slice of cultural history that has exerted enormous influence but has mostly avoided direct imitation. When something is this well-crafted, the flaws of a counterfeit are obvious.
In conclusion, then: Loadout is a riot. Loadout is free. It does not, however, provide a model that is conducive to me wanting to spend any money on it. The loadouts of the name are fun to make, but ultimately lack the variety they believe themselves to have. These things seems like a failure for a free to play game, but perhaps I am simply not its cash audience.
What we've got here is a mildly absorbing romp through an extremely generic setting, delivered with no sense of aplomb.
I reached the point of only sighing or shouting in frustration, despite sitting in front of a gorgeous-looking game with a ton of potential.
With that said, don't take away too negative an impression of GW3:D. Though what it adds doesn't do much for me, what it brings from GW2 is simply brilliant, looks better than ever, and has never been on PC before – and everyone should try Pacifism mode at least once in their life. Parts of GW3:D are wonderful. But the most telling thing is that they're all contained in 2D rectangles.
All told though, no previous Telltale game has made me feel this tense and this wary. It's dangerous. Its pacing is nothing at all like the show's, but its ever-looming dread very much is. I only hope the rest of the series similarly refuses to pull punches.
With Inquisition, BioWare have handled the narrative and consequence of conversation and action with more assurance and depth than Telltale, while also constructing one of the finest and most forward-looking CRPGs ever made. And I'm as delighted and surprised as anyone.
Far Cry is a series still struggling with that balance, between offering you the freedom to do what you want while enforcing the limitations to make what you want meaningful. I think it's also only a game away from needing a gritty, Bond-style reboot back to its Far Cry 2 roots.
WWE 2K15 is a lot like the WWE itself – burying its female performers, mishandling its roster, screwing up its own booking and failing to establish characters. I say that as a fan. But maybe if we want a daring, innovative wrestling game, we'll need to wait for somebody else to jump into the market.
The structure of the game helps, but GTAV's singleplayer is not simply a case of making the best of a bad situation. I've been surprised over the past week how much I've enjoyed revisiting these storylines and missions, after first playing them on XBox 360 at release.