Game Informer
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Latest Reviews
At its core, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is still Pac-Man. You still run around a maze eating dots, and when you eat a power pellet, it’s time to go to town on some ghosts. But the Championship series tinkers with everything else core to the experience, modernizing the game to...
I generally hold the Pro Evolution series in high regard. Some years I may have thought the controls were needlessly complex, obscuring the larger gameplay, or wished the career or online modes were more substantial, but I understood and appreciated what was being attempted. PES 2017 crosses that line between...
In 1950, an English computer scientist named Alan Turing conducted an experiment to determine if a machine could exhibit lifelike-like behavior and fool someone into thinking it was human. He believed we would one day create such a being. His quiz later adopted the name “the Turing test.” In the...
Overcooked!
The devil is hungry as hell, and he’s ushered in the apocalypse until someone can sate his appetite. A humble soup cook is tasked with this challenge, but a tasty bowl of tomato soup clearly won’t be enough. Just when it seems like humanity is doomed, a sentient, mustached onion...
Valley
If games like Firewatch, Soma, and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture are referred to as walking simulators, Valley should be called a running simulator. Although it begins with your character slowly exploring mysterious cave-drawings in the Canadian Rockies, the first action you learn is running. Once you start, you rarely...
Obduction
My reverence for Myst and Riven is immense. These titles changed my perception of what an adventure game should be, transporting me to vivid worlds that relied on complex machinery rather than convoluted inventory manipulation. The clever mixture of story, puzzles, and exploration was often imitated but never fully replicated...
More than 20 years ago, Alan Emrich coined the term “4X” (Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate) in a preview for Computer Gaming World. The game being described was Master of Orion, and the strategy genre owes much to the classic title; it is essentially the grandfather of all space 4X...
Madden NFL 17
In Madden 17, a specific line stands out from the excellent new commentary team of Charles Davis and Brandon Gaudin. Davis, the ex-player providing the color commentary, talks about how coaches are always looking for that "perfect game." The perfect game doesn't exist in the NFL or in any given rendition of Madden. Even so,...
As other fighting game series expand the genre’s territory with new single-player modes and art styles, The King of Fighters series digs its trench deeper, appealing to the interests of the hardcore fighting game fan. The King of Fighters XIV doesn’t deviate from that, and while the core three-on-three fighting...
In the opening scene of Alone With You, you stand on the edge of a rift with your scarf blowing in the wind. Smoke billows in the distance, and space stations are reduced to rubble. A deep sense of loneliness washes over you, as you come to terms with being...
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is futuristic science fiction, but the message it delivers stems from today’s societal problems. Police shoot unarmed innocents, extremist groups unleash acts of terror, and communities are torn apart by segregation. The story explores these issues thoroughly and makes a clear statement about the threat posed...
Modes are important to a serialized racing title like F1. The racing itself is certainly the foundation, but the modes give the games a larger context. Recently, however, they haven't been good for F1. Whether underserved or absent altogether, the only thing carrying the franchise has been nothing but a set of four tires. But...
