Latest Reviews
When you’re in the midst of a tense, down-to-the-last-read match in the middle of a battlefield erupting with explosions, Dead or Alive 5: Last Round is great. When that fight is compromised by out-of-place barely legal schoolgirls in bikinis or a game-crashing bug, it’s decidedly less than great, and the...
Homeworld: The Remastered Collection does a fantastic job of polishing up and reintroducing these formerly hard-to-experience classic real-time strategy games. Over the 15 years since it first came out, these exciting, large-scale space battles haven’t been matched, much less surpassed, and its outstanding atmosphere and story can teach modern game...
Hand of Fate takes familiar elements from collectible card games, action RPGs, and choose-your-own adventure games and jumbles them all together to create an experience that generally feels unique and fun. Isolated technical glitches, an overly generous dealer, and simple combat dampen some of the fun, but the novelty of...
Sunless Sea
Sunless Sea gives you a wonderful world to explore and packs it with memorable written vignettes. Its permadeath flirts with repetitiveness, and combat is disappointing, but it’s far from running out of ways to inspire one more trip back across the Unterzee.
The basic conflict at the heart of The Order: 1886 is that considerations for a cinematic approach are prioritized above the needs of basic gameplay. Its best aspects are its stunning looks, atmosphere, and style – which are truly fantastic – and entertaining fiction. But the shallow, slow, and generic...
Kick & Fennick
Kick & Fennick is a pleasant surprise in a crowded platforming field. The obstacles present--portals, bounce pads, zip ramps--have all been seen before, but their implementation is anything but stale. It's a spartan world with only the barest hint of a story, and the futuristic environment looks the same from...
The Escapists
As a mix of sandbox, puzzle and open-world action, The Escapists offers something fresh and entertaining. The nature of what it’s simulating leads to some annoyances and careful handwaves to keep things light, but with both enough space between those moments to feel like I was actually producing my own...
Evolve
It’s rare for a big multiplayer game like Evolve to feel so considered and intelligent. Everything – skills, mechanics, and design choices – seem to interlock in a way that’s both natural and purposeful. That it’s so mechanically rich and still conveys the raw energy and fun of duking...
Attila is an adept refinement of Rome 2. From the desperately paced campaign map down to each individual skirmish on the ash-specked earth, it’s a cleaner, better thought-out experience. There are more impactful decision to make, and better utilities with which to make them. The political systems are still some...
Grow Home
Hopping through the floaty gravity and feel-good physics of Grow Home is as pleasant a gaming experience as they come. Dangling hundreds of meters above the ground while I stretched to reach a crystal induces some mild anxiety, but when you've collected those crystals and unlocked B.U.D.’s full range of...
Outlast
Outcast is so shoddy in storytelling and character building that Nic Cage’s odd acting choices are a welcome awareness of awfulness. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Brian Formo is a review contributor to IGN. You can chat with him on Twitter, where he reveals his middle name and sports addiction.
Apotheon
I give Apotheon high praise for its homage to old-school side-scrolling adventures and its ability to recreate the captivating style of Ancient Greek art. Unfortunately, a ho-hum story and frustrating controls prevent me from doing the same for its moment-to-moment gameplay. No matter how pretty it is, unless it nails...
