Wesley LeBlanc
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Game Informer Latest Reviews
Mafia: The Old Country, on paper, contains a lot of promise for the series. It’s a return to linear form, eschewing the biggest problem with Mafia III; it brings players to the earliest period of this series’ timeline; and it’s set in the mafia homeland of Italy, refreshing the formula with Sicilian countryside instead of East Coast metropolis. Though it’s a beautiful game, with an excellent Sicilian dub to boot, it unfortunately leaves a lot on the Don’s table, failing to rise to t...
It took about 60 seconds of playing Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound for me to realize that developer The Game Kitchen has created a strong case for the Ninja Gaiden series to reclaim its home in the 2D plane. Across its 12-hour runtime, Ragebound seamlessly blends gorgeous pixel art, inventive level design, and sublime gameplay to create one of the best retro throwbacks I’ve ever played.
Wheel World’s unique visual style, laid-back nature, and delightful soundtrack promise an inviting adventure set atop a bicycle in a world where they’re more common than cars. But the gameplay itself, the progression, and the barely-there narrative break that promise with an experience that only gets more frustrating and monotonous the more you play. Rote races, dull dialogue, and an empty world left me wondering why Wheel World’s denizens love biking around it.
Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is the first game from newcomer studio River End Games, but it carries the confidence and ideas of a team that’s been working in the stealth genre for much longer. With its top-down view, wonderfully designed setting, and simple but engaging mechanics, each chapter feels like an hour-long play session in a beautiful diorama puzzle box. The gameplay is backed by a short and sweet story about home and perseverance against all odds, and includes stunning cinematics ...
Just as the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series made skateboarding more approachable through gameplay, it also brought an at-the-time alternative culture into the homes of players around the world. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, which combines a remake of arguably the most beloved entry in the series with a follow-up that represented the first major deviation into one homogenized package, masterfully recreates the gameplay pleasures of these games. THPS 3 + 4 is going to please any fan of the se...
DLCs rarely get their hooks in me. While I enjoy the add-ons I do play, few reach beyond a reminder that the base game is good and this is more of that – what I’m looking for usually lies in the hopeful sequel. Lies of P’s new Overture DLC, with its $29.99 price tag and a 20+ hour runtime that could comfortably be called an expansion, rips free from the strings of the base game to surprise and delight. It features dozens of new enemies, some with truly wild new attack patterns to master...
I was skeptical of Elden Ring Nightreign when I first learned of it. Elden Ring is a masterpiece, and though I yearned for yet another visit to The Lands Between, doing so in a run-based roguelite format with a battle royale-style circle closing in on me wasn’t my first choice. In my first dozen hours in Nightreign, I remained skeptical. I wondered if this arcadey format cheapened everything that made Elden Ring so great – it certainly felt like it was on its way to doing so. But at some ...
I hated my first 10 hours with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. I then realized I wasn’t meeting it on its terms; I was trying to morph what is clearly a realistic immersive sim-like digital LARP into the Skyrim-esque experience I figured it would be as yet another open world RPG. Only when I took a step back and engaged with all KCD2’s systems did I grasp what developer Warhorse Studios was trying to accomplish. For the rest of my 66 hours, I experienced near-perfection, an RPG whose mechani...
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector uses an explosive beginning to rip the amnesiac Sleeper protagonist away from any familiarity, forcing them to endure a journey through the stars riddled with stress, unrest, and a foe constantly on their tail. But it’s those feelings, that unavoidable discomfort, that push Sleeper into new friendships, communities, and trials of trust that ultimately prove it’s not about the destination – it’s about the journey. Buoyed by the excellent returning dic...
Booting up Assassin's Creed Shadows for the first time felt surreal. I was looking at a samurai and a shinobi on the start screen of an Assassin's Creed game. The series had finally made it to feudal Japan. As a longtime fan, though, I was nervous the actual game wouldn't match the heights of the Japan-set Assassin's Creed my imagination had cultivated over the past decade. After more than 55 hours in the feudal Azuchi-Momoyama era, I'm left somewhat conflicted about this long-awaited adventu...