Justin McElroy
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Writing For
Polygon Latest Reviews
To be straight with you, I had to really plumb the depths of my critical mind to scrounge up those dings. They are problems, don't get me wrong. They just can't come close to dimming the pleasure of this fast, fluid experience. Dead Cells may be the most fun I've had in a game all year.
Night in the Woods isn’t perfect. I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. Life isn’t perfect. But as the game itself tries to espouse, if you’ve got the patience, you may find that there is true beauty in that revelation.
The promise of the Vita was console-quality experiences on the go, but Severed isn't that. Rather, it's the sort of expertly executed cocktail of mechanics that would work as well on a comparatively diminutive smartphone screen. So while Severed may be something of a swan song for the Vita, it's also a reminder that great games are bigger and more lasting than the platforms that contain them.
Like I said, I could go on, but I'm gonna stop there. Frankly, Escape Dead Island doesn't deserve another second of my time, and I hope to all that is holy it doesn't get a single second of yours.
Even with that misstep, Crimes and Punishments is easy to recommend to fans of Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous creation or adventure game fans just looking for something different. It may not provide much in the way of deductive challenge, but it succeeded more than any mystery game I've played in genuinely making me think.
It's a testament to The Stick of Truth that my enthusiasm for the game didn't dim in the face of those hiccups. Despite them — and the jokes that occasionally run out of steam — this is an experience that even the most casual fan of South Park is going to get something out of, and one of the truest translations from screen to game I can recall. At the risk of belaboring the metaphor I started with, other developers have painted Cartman's face on a stock car. Obsidian has ripped out the pistons and swapped in the still-beating heart of South Park. Other games treated the world Matt Stone and Trey Parker have crystallized over the past two decades as a prison they have to escape from. The Stick of Truth happily confines itself to that world, and manages to build a comfortable, hilarious home of its own.
Taken as a whole, Broken Age is still a easy-to-recommend, extremely charming game with some lovely messages about growing up. But it isn’t quite the landmark achievement in video game narrative I spent its year-long intermission hoping for. Some of Act 2’s puzzles are quite clever and there are some great gags throughout. But Act 1 had so much narrative promise, I couldn’t help but be disappointed to see Broken Age’s poignant story bogged down by so much puzzling it its second half.
But I could forgive all of these missteps, the weird microtransactions, the underwhelming graphics, the off-kilter systems, if, on a very basic level, it was fun. It’s not. Crimson Dragon manages to take riding on a sweet flying dragon and make it a bland, frustrating slog. In my book, that’s about as unforgivable as sins come.
The return trip to Rapture is welcome, but Burial At Sea’s first episode is confusing