Dan Stapleton
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IGNLatest Reviews
Phoenix Point has a lot of interesting ideas to contribute to the revitalized turn-based tactics genre but many of them are in need refining and balancing. Things like managing faction relationships and disabling individual enemy body parts are great, and it strikes a good balance of complexity with inventory management. At the same time, it’s woefully underdeveloped in certain areas like mission variety and base-building, and a late-game difficulty spike is so severe and unfair-feeling that it crushed the spirit of this XCOM veteran – twice. Combine that with a general lack of polish and it leaves Phoenix Point in a state that still feels very experimental and unrefined – but it’s an interesting experiment, to be sure.
It’s been ages since we got a great single-player Star Wars action game, but Jedi: Fallen Order makes up for a lot of lost time. A strong cast sells a dark story while keeping things fun and loyal to Star Wars lore, and fast, challenging combat mixes with energetic platforming, decent puzzles, and diverse locations to explore for an all-around amazing game.
With The Outer Worlds, Obsidian has found its own path in the space between Bethesda and BioWare, and it’s a great one. And considering that new RPGs from either of those influential developers are still years away, this game couldn’t have been timed any better. It’s not as explorable as one big open world but it still packs in a large portion of flexible quests and conflicts within its series of smaller ones. And the combat, character, and companion systems have enough new spins on existing ideas to make it feel like an homage with its own personality rather than a copy.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey's greatest challenge is working out – or simply Googling – how its basic survival, crafting, and combat mechanics work. Once you understand them they become mostly trivial, and the main appeal becomes appreciating the exploration of the huge and lush prehistoric African map. Evolving your tribe’s abilities feels artificially drawn out, but it’s hard not to develop a soft spot for these disposable apes because of their authentic animations.
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is a very successful throwback to the days of dogfighting games like Star Wars: X-Wing and Wing Commander: Privateer. It smartly updates the gameplay with optional assists that make it a snap to jump in and get right to the most satisfying parts of the action. This open area of space we’re free to defend or exploit is full of side activities (including a crazy ship-painting tool), and those blunt the inherent repetition of fighter-vs-fighter combat scenarios. And the story – while definitely padded out more than it needs to be – is suitably small-scale and personal for a mercenary/smuggler type like Juno Markev.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is an aggressively okay co-op shooter that doesn’t come close to recapturing the joy of its predecessor’s action or its surprisingly interesting characters and story. It doesn’t completely fumble the fun of its weapons and abilities or counteract the pleasing sensation of squishing Nazis between your toes, but it does make it harder to enjoy at seemingly every turn with an out-of-place leveling system, busted stealth gameplay, some aggravating boss fights and inadequate checkpoint saves. Frankly, I expected more from the Blazkowicz twins.
With its large open world and vast array of upgrades to earn, Rage 2 feels very much like an antidote for Far Cry fans who have overdosed on that particular style and want a new take on the large-scale shooter-RPG idea. Though Avalanche hasn’t quite figured out what makes a world feel alive and dynamic or how to make good use of its vehicles, it absolutely nails the moment-to-moment combat thanks to a Doom-inspired energetic pace that few shooters manage to pull off. Combined with a steady stream of great weapons, abilities, and upgrades, its firefights are constantly reinvigorated even as mission objectives become repetitive.
Just Cause 4 has everything you expect from a Just Cause game, almost to a fault. Relative to Just Cause 3 the improvements are widespread across its beautiful open world, but generally minor. So while blowing up yet another dictator’s army is the same kind of mindless explosive fun and physics-based comedy the series is built on, it doesn’t do much to incorporate the new weather systems or grapple mods into combat. That leaves me with a distinct “more of the same” feeling.
State of Decay 2’s zombie-infested maps are good places to scavenge, fight, and survive in. Combat is satisfyingly brutal and the special zombies inspire some real fear of permanent death, even though the Blood Plague turns out to be more of a sniffle. But the bugs are just as persistent as the zombies, and after a dozen or so hours the repetition of both eventually take their toll, making the appeal of replaying feel more limited than I’d expected for a sandbox RPG.
The wide variety of mech and pilot abilities make Into The Breach’s tactical combat deep, satisfying, and replayable. Every turn creates a new complex puzzle, and though sometimes there’s no perfect solution, finding the best way to minimize damage creates frequent eureka moments as you learn to make the most of the abilities you’re given to work with. It’s a small-looking tactics game that’s kept me playing more intently than most big ones.