Ben Reeves
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Game InformerLatest Reviews
Mastering a martial art takes years – if not a lifetime. Disciples must hone their bodies to the point that they perform every attack, every counter, every movement with pinpoint precision. A skilled warrior must move without thinking. Likewise, mastering Sifu's combat system takes a high degree of dedication and practice. Like a true martial artist, you must push through the practice pains before you reap any rewards.
You wake up in a dark cabin, chained to a worn table. A mysterious man sits on the other side of the room. You can't see the details of his face through the darkness, but his crazed eyes pierce the shadows. Something under your belly lurches as he invites you to play a card game. The rules seem simple; you summon creatures to attack your opponent's army of foes, and you easily win the first few hands. Still, you can't shake the anxiety of what might happen if – no – when you lose. You play on, the eyes on the other side of the table slowly burning a hole in your stomach.
The early Crash Bandicoot games of the ‘90s were partially experiments in how to navigate 3D space. Crash didn’t freely traverse an open world; he marched down tightly designed digital tunnels. The camera zoomed in and out of the action and panned around the character, which seemed novel at the time. However, Crash’s movement was limited in ways that seem restrictive by today’s standards. In some sense, Crash Bandicoot’s gameplay was a product of those limits of technology as much as it was any single creative vision. And yet, those limitations helped produce one of 1996's most memorable platformers. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time proves the classic formula still works in 2020.
For many, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a revelation. Nintendo smartly rethought old conventions and delivered an adventure that felt new while holding true to the spirit of the series. I put almost 200 hours into Nintendo’s open-world epic, and after I’d put the controller down for the last time, I was hungry for even more. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity delivers that "even more" while we wait for the true sequel. It’s far from a revelation, but it is an adequate diversion.
After archeologist Tasi Trianon’s plane crashes in the Algerian desert, she sets off on a journey across the sweltering sands in search of help. However, Tasi quickly discovers that there are holes in her memory. As she slowly uncovers the remains of her fellow party, she puts together the pieces of her fragmented past. Tasi’s suppressed memories are almost as horrifying as the ghoulish creatures that now stalk her from the shadows. Tasi’s journey is one of the most intense experiences I’ve had in a long time. Unfortunately, Amnesia: Rebirth’s puzzle design is equally as terrifying.
Last year’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was a loving tribute to the PSone classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and its beloved successors, which were developed by Koji Igarashi. However, a year before the release of Ritual of the Night, Inti Creates released another game under the Bloodstained banner that looked deeper into Castlevania’s past for inspiration. Now, Inti Creates is back with Curse of the Moon 2, an incredibly straightforward sequel that feels largely similar to the first, and sadly suffers from many of the same flaws.
Darksiders is a shape-shifting franchise. The original game offered a fun mix of combat and puzzle dungeons, like a fusion of God of War and The Legend of Zelda. Darksiders II added Diablo-inspired loot into that equation. When Darksiders III released in 2018, it incorporated elements of From Software's Souls games. Darksiders' experimentation continues with Genesis, a co-op friendly, top-down action game. For this prequel, Developer Airship Syndicate repackages many of Darksiders' signature aspects into a new container just in time for the holidays, but this delivery is filled with more packing peanuts than presents.
When Jesse Faden walks into the Federal Bureau of Control and picks up the director’s handgun, she inadvertently assumes authority over the enigmatic government organization. The director’s gun is a powerful and versatile tool, but it’s also a deception; Jesse’s greatest weapon isn’t the one in her hand, it’s the one in her head. Control gives players access to a host of powerful psychic abilities that are as satisfying to use as they are to watch. So Jesse has the gun, but she doesn’t need the gun. Jesse is the gun.
Back in 2015, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night director Koji Igarashi convinced more than 60,000 Kickstarter backers to fund Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – a spiritual successor to his beloved classic. That project is still in development. In the meantime, Igarashi teamed up with Inti Creates to develop Curse of the Moon, a game that teases Bloodstained’s world and acts as a different sort of spiritual successor, following the tradition of Castlevania’s earlier adventures. Curse of the Moon is an impressive ode to the NES era, but as a tease for what’s to come, it elicits more indifference than excitement.
Mountain climbers don’t climb mountains because it’s easy. Difficult challenges are often intrinsically rewarding, and Celeste is that kind of experience. This adorable platformer about a troubled young woman named Madeline who pushes herself to climb a mountain is full of platforming sequences that mirror the heroine’s own struggles. The journey isn’t always easy, but the view from the top is spectacular.