Nic Rowen
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DestructoidLatest Reviews
That’s where Iconoclasts lives too, outside the lines. Of its genre, its inspirations, and its expectations. It’s a delightful surprise, the kind that doesn’t come around often enough.
At the same time, if you’re an enthusiast fighter and want a competitively viable game with a lot of depth to explore, Injustice 2 makes a strong case for itself. It’s the full package in a market filled with fighters that have come out half-cooked. I plan on savoring it for months to come.
I feel so badly for this game in a way. It seems so close to being something special and wonderful, but is just undermined at every turn by baffling design choices, poor controls, and frustration. Maybe some of these issues will be addressed in a future patch and Rain World will become the game it feels like it should have been. Someone else will have to let me know. As far as I’m concerned, my days of being a slugcat are officially behind me and I won’t be looking back.
And really, pleasant surprises are what we’re talking about with Styx: Shards of Darkness. Don’t let the reduced price tag or the fact that Styx’s previous titles aren’t exactly household names fool you. Once you get past the slightly budget look of the UI and occasional control jank, there is a solid core of a pretty damn good stealth game here. Give him a chance, and Styx might just steal your heart (only to pawn it at a fraction of its value, the little bastard).
I hope so. I hope in six months I’m excited about For Honor again. I hope people will throw this review back at me later and say For Honor just needed a few tweaks to achieve greatness. As it is, this is a game with a disposable single-player campaign, multiplayer matches that crash or disconnect as often as they complete, and a slew of fantastic mechanics that only rise to the surface in a single game mode out of a half-dozen.
Too often RPGs and turn-based tactical battle games are the domain of knock off Middle-earths. Of poor fantasy pastiches stitched together with wizards sporting wispy gray beards, dwarves slurring cheap Scottish accents, and knights brandishing impractical shoulder pads. It is a joy and a treat to spend time with a world so different, so unique and intriguing. Even if it is a dying and depressing one.
But that’s not me. Mood and atmosphere can carry me a long way, and I adored every second I spent in Hyper Light Drifter‘s world. The combat and movement often left me slack-jawed and giddy, a perfect homage to the ’90s RPGs that obviously inspired Heart Machine, while still feeling completely fresh and constantly surprising.
I would love to be able to give XCOM 2 my unreserved recommendation, but I can’t ignore the elephant in the room. If you don’t intend on playing on Ironman mode, and have enough patience to deal with (not so) occasional glitches, it’s excellent. If you were looking forward to a hardcore playthrough, or can’t stand it when technical issues get in the way of a good time, you’ll definitely want to wait for a patch or two before deploying.
Despite the grind, despite the perhaps undue commitment to brutality, and despite what I feel is a joke at the player’s expense at the end, Darkest Dungeon still manages to be one of the most engaging and intriguing roguelikes I’ve ever played and I’ll probably still be diving dungeons and trying new party compositions weeks from now. After all, it would be madness to stop at this point.