Keza MacDonald
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Writing For
IGNLatest Reviews
It’s unfortunate for Explore the Dungeon that we are living through an amazing period for dungeon crawlers and roguelikes, but even if we weren’t, it would stand out as depressingly uninventive and simplistic. Unlike the show it’s based on, it’s both deeply boring and devoid of imagination. For a real sense of adventure, play Spelunky.
Assassin's Creed III is very enjoyable overall, but it’s not consistently brilliant. Not everything about the game gels together convincingly and the missions’ unnecessary prescriptiveness sometimes undermines the sense of freedom that the rest of the game works so hard to create. But it achieves so much that you can’t help but respect it; no other open-world game has ever given us a setting that's as impressive to observe or as full of things to do as this. Connor’s story has its lulls but it still tells a tale much richer and more compelling than most other games manage, set in a fascinating period of history. Assassin’s Creed III isn’t as huge an improvement upon its predecessors’ achievements as many players will be hoping for, but it’s still up there with the best that the series has achieved - even if it isn't quite the best.
It’s a strange game, Dragon’s Dogma; it does some really brave and interesting things, but it also feels unfinished, with technical problems that often spoil things. The combat, though, is one of the best real-time RPG fighting systems around, with flexibility and variety that carries the whole game. It deserves to be complemented by an absorbing fantasy world and an array of well-written quests and characters, but instead the quests get repetitive and the fiction is soporific. Dragon’s Dogma has the scale and challenge of a great action RPG, but not the character or polish. Nonetheless, if you can persist, there’s a lot to love here, and some great ideas that make you want to give it a chance.
If you can’t play online, Armored Core V is rather dry, but if you can, it’s a detailed and substantial mech experience made loads better by the addition of other people. It doesn’t do anything to make the genre more accessible, and you’ll have to be prepared to scale a high entry barrier and deal with its accessibility issues if you want to get into it - but if you do make the effort, you’ll find that this is the best mech game in a long time, one that’s deep enough to satisfy even the most seasoned player. Let’s hope it manages to sustain the active player population that it needs to really shine.
I can’t help but love Asura’s Wrath for having the bravery to try something completely new. It sets out to be a new kind of interactive animation, and it succeeds completely at that. But a game this light on actual content is difficult to justify as a full-price release; it’s style over substance, and some players will feel cheated by the paucity of actual gameplay in amongst the six hours of brilliant spectacle. You should absolutely play Asura’s Wrath, because it’s an experience like no other, but be aware of what it is before you put down your cash.
The reviewer's job is difficult when it comes to a game like Dark Souls. I simply can't unreservedly recommend that you buy it. It's not a game that you play to relax. It doesn't care in the slightest about whether you're enjoying yourself, and it doesn't give a fig for your notions of entertainment or your mental well-being. If you just play games for fun, this isn't for you, and no amount of insistence on my part is going to change that. But if you're interested in the limits of the videogame form – to see just how focused, how pure and how uncompromising in its vision a game can be – Dark Souls is unmissable. If you take the time get into Dark Souls' mindset, to begin to understand the twisted way in which it operates and taste the rewards behind its cruellest challenges, this is one of the most thrilling, most fascinating and most completely absorbing experiences in gaming.