Dan Stapleton
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Writing For
IGNLatest Reviews
Lone Echo
Lone Echo and Echo Arena are the rare games that demonstrate the true value of VR and hand tracking. Its sense of movement feels great, and it couldn’t exist in any other way. Lone Echo’s well-acted story and interesting environments move at a slow enough pace that you can soak...
Star Trek: Bridge Crew feels like a promising first draft of a fantastic Trek simulator, but it only goes boldly for a few hours. After the novelty of finally sitting on a beautiful Federation starship bridge wears off and you’ve exhausted the handful of mission types, all that’s left is...
Prey
Prey’s curious alternate-history universe, intriguing sidequests, hidden threats, and detailed environmental storytelling make Talos I a joy to explore. The unsettling sense of paranoia that comes from knowing any object could turn out to be a hidden enemy gives even the quiet moments a palpable tension. All of that picks...
Mass Effect: Andromeda is an expansive action role-playing game with a few great moments that recapture the high points of the landmark trilogy that came before it, and energetic combat and fantastic sound effects contribute to a potent sci-fi atmosphere. Without consistently strong writing or a breakout star in its...
Halo Wars 2 will scratch a real-time strategy itch and give you a dose of Halo-Universe flavor with a decent story, but it won’t go much deeper than that. A run-of-the-mill campaign, controls that hamper micromanagement, conspicuous bugs, and multiplayer that relies on luck limit its long-term appeal, but its...
Watch Dogs 2
Watch Dogs 2’s distinctive hacking and puzzle mechanics do a great job of reminding you that you’re not playing just another Grand Theft Auto clone as you tear through its beautiful Bay Area map. Marcus is a bit too friendly of a guy to be believable as our instrument of...
Civilization VI will go down in history as the most fully-featured launch version in the series. Many of those are smartly revamped versions of Civ classics, but it finds its own identity with great new ideas like spread-out cities, customizeable governments, research boosts, and leader agendas. And even though the...
EVE: Valkyrie
Progression and microtransaction problems aside, after a VR stint in EVE Valkyrie I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to playing a dogfighting game on a regular screen. It’s just too good at showing me what I’ve been missing by not being able to look around freely...
Being Batman in Akrham VR is a great way to more intimately experience Rocksteady's universe and to search for clues in this brief mystery. However, the world and characters around you are largely rigid and unresponsive to your actions, which leaves a lot on the table for a game about...
No Man’s Sky has sci-fi spectacle of strange new worlds on its side, but not much else. Its gameplay is underdeveloped and repetitive, and in my dozens of hours played it’s introduced very few new ideas to mix up its crafting, upgrades, combat, or universe. The promise of limitless exploration...
Human: Fall Flat’s slapstick controls and ridiculous animation do a great job of making repeated, frustrating, and unfair failure at physics puzzles seem fun for a while. And when that fun runs out, you can extend it by bringing in a friend and drawing silly things on your goofball character....
Relatively simple in concept but complex in the possible manipulation of the market, Offworld Trading Company manages to make a type of gameplay that’s traditionally slow into something fast and exciting. It’s a tad too easy to trip yourself up before you even begin, but once it gets rolling this...
