Jeff Marchiafava
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Writing For
Game InformerLatest Reviews
What the Nintendo Wii lacked in horsepower, it made up for with a secret weapon: Wii Sports, a collection of simple mini-games that were so fun they had players around the globe chucking Wii remotes through their televisions. Wii Sports didn't just sell the potential of motion controls; it became synonymous with the Wii...
ReCore
When Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune and development talent from the Metroid: Prime series get together, you can expect plenty of platforming, exploration, and robot animals. Unfortunately, any hope of ReCore being the ultimate Mega Man/Metroid hybrid proves as farfetched as Joule's mechanical companions. While ReCore's gameplay foundation is mostly solid, a host of technical...
Furi
Few games boast the audacious style of Furi. The wildly colorful visuals and retro/sci-fi soundtrack immediately establish a world like no other, grabbing you and refusing to let go. Like a digital pied piper, Furi brought a steady stream of intrigued coworkers to my desk to watch over my shoulder while I played. Once...
With a story penned by Hollywood director and screenwriter John Milius, the original Homefront was an ambitious military shooter rendered mediocre by technical limitations, dated graphics, and a lack of distinguishing features. A few regime changes later – which include both the series' developer and publisher – and Homefront: The Revolution returns with some...
Some gaming experiences simply aren't conducive to mobile platforms. Rather than try to translate Hitman's complex mix of stealth and action to touchscreens, Square Enix Montreal targeted a completely different genre and aesthetic for its new mobile spinoff. Surprisingly, the Hitman formula works well as a tabletop-themed puzzle game, but the underlying puzzle mechanics...
Unravel
Yarn-based characters have been a surprising trend in recent years, thanks to playful platformers like Kirby's Epic Yarn and Yoshi's Woolly World. While Nintendo's crocheted protagonists and the worlds they inhabit are brimming with unbridled joy, Unravel strikes a bittersweet tone. With little more than a silent protagonist, a grand orchestral score, and a...
Pony Island
Plenty of indie games emulate the retro style of a bygone era, but developers somehow still manage to find new twists on the classics. Pony Island's novelty doesn't lie in its gameplay, which is comprised of simple endless-runner action levels and forgettable faux-programming puzzles. Instead, the main draw is the entertaining Da Vinci Code-style mystery...
When some of the creators behind the 1996 point-and-click adventure game The Neverhood regrouped on Kickstarter to make a spiritual successor, fans of the cult hit happily ponied up almost one million dollars to fund the project. What they got for their money is a sterling example of an age-old adage: Don't judge a...
What can you know about people by looking solely at their work? That's the question designer Davey Wreden poses in the opening minutes of The Beginner's Guide, his first game since 2013's clever and thought-provoking The Stanley Parable. Whereas the previous title focused on challenging player agency with humor and...
Announced in 2012 as a Move-based PS3 game, Until Dawn has undergone a number of delays and design changes during its prolonged development. Normally, such production woes are a bad omen for the fate of a game, but Until Dawn doesn't just limp to release like a bloodied survivor; it emerges as an excellently...
Helldivers
Most twin-stick shooters serve up ammo and enemies in equally infinite proportions, embracing the shoot-everything-that-moves formula that has come to define the genre. Helldivers is different. While the hordes of enemies are just as endless, limited ammo and the ever-threatening presence of friendly fire create a more challenging and calculated shooter.
Evolve
Turtle Rock hasn't been shy about getting Evolve into the hands of players. The developer provided play sessions at virtually every gaming convention over the past year, and offered fans extended alpha and beta sessions before release. That "proof is in the pudding" approach revealed the core gameplay experience of Evolve, but also opened...
