Some baby reviews for recent completed games from the last two months (all recent releases):
I'm still not really sure what the actual gameplay is in this game. Most of the time you are just walking around picking up collectables. None of your ghost abilities are particularly cool or used in interesting manners. The combat/stealth is rarely used and thank goodness because it's extremely poorly implemented. Being detected feels unfair and hiding is just frustrating. It also looks stupid in terms of visuals. Salem is a pretty neat place to explore though and the individual locations have a nice amount of detail put into them. I also liked the stories of the the ghosts you encounter along the way. They are usually pretty sad, as death tends to be, but it's nice helping people find closure. I would have liked more of that. The narrative is a bit corny, but it was interesting enough. The ending is mega cheesy though. It's also hard to take the main character serious when he looks like someone you would find posting on a web forum discussing the finer points how to let people know you are an atheist and treating ladies like a gentleman.
Overall: This game is pretty messy. Sort of interesting messy, but not interesting enough to buy for any serious amount of money. I'm not surprised in the slightest it bombed.
I knew what I was getting into with this game, but it's still really sad after Activision gutted High Moon. The new devs (Edge of Reality, Loadout) wisely use the gameplay framework from High Moon, but failed in pretty much every other department. It doesn't use the license well, the level design is just sad, the art direction is pathetic, and
there are almost no worthwhile setpieces. War and Fall were really special games that I cherish my experiences with and they completely
nailed all of those categories. The worst parts of Rise of the Dark Spark is definitely everything on earth. It doesn't tie into the movie at all other than character overlap and the visual direction required for an earth environment is clearly well beyond Edge of Reality's ability. At least on Cybertron they could crudely paste the High Moon assets together. There was one good level in the whole mess that was basically
Descent with Transformers, but it was over far too quickly. I also had a bit of fun working on achievements in the horde mode, but it got old after a couple of hours.
Overall: I wouldn't recommend this game even if you were madly in love with the Transformers franchise. I am filled with sadness knowing I will never get the finish to the Cybertron series that I deserve.
If the next Sniper Elite game doesn't just shove a damn silencer on your sniper rifle history-be-damned or move to a time period when the use of them was common, I might face palm out of existence. I mean, making a stealth sniping game where your primary tool that defines your role in the game is completely counter-intuitive to the actual approach a sane sniper would take when faced with an area filled with 50+ enemies just seem unbelievably stupid. And no, environmental noises are just a ridiculous solution to the problem and in the back half of the game the developers become increasingly stingy with them, pretty much forcing abuse of the silenced pistol or Rambo gameplay. That said, the game is a massive improvement over V2. The levels are large and have tons of routes to take including ones that sometimes avoid enemies all-together. Stealth systems have been improved from the awful near-binary setup from V2 (being spotted instantly from 100 meters away wasn't fun). The AI is fun to abuse and I managed to complete around half the levels of the game without ever being seen. The minimap also helps a lot in this regard. The engine has received some nice upgrades such as tessellation and bokeh depth of field. The art direction is pretty strong too, but I was pretty sick of the desert by the end. There is only so much you can do with time of day settings apparently ha.
Overall: While a solid improvement over V2 in pretty much every category, the developers still have some frustrating issues they need to work out as the series moves forward. I recommend checking it out if you saw the potential in V2 and in particular it's DLC. If you can access it via family sharing and are interested, just play the first 3 levels. You will have seen the best the game has to offer.
I know a lot of people have written their thoughts about this game recently so I'll keep mine short. I loved the approach they took for a World War I game. They handle a lot of interesting topics from the war that wouldn't have worked well in a shooter and they walked the line between light-hearted and grim nicely. I never felt overly depressed playing the game (the war certainly was a depressing piece of history) and I never felt they tried to be overly cute. I do think the game was too long for the tale they were telling though. Some of the narrative movements took too long to get where they were going. The puzzles weren't overly complex, but I was happy they didn't err on the side of obscure solutions. I don't think slowing down the pace of the game further with harder puzzles would have benefitted the story at all. The instant deaths from obstacles were pretty inoffensive barring one or two scenarios where there were a few too many obstacles between checkpoints and I'm not really sure I see an alternative to death for some of the mistakes.
Overall: I still think that QTE medic segment at the end of the game was a huge mistake, but after my irritation subsided I was pleased with the experience as a whole. It's an ambitious concept to pursue with solid execution and I think it's worth checking out if you want to see a major publisher actually have some balls.
I had intended to play this game around release due to my love for Ubisoft's two experiments last year (Blood Dragon and Gunslinger), but Dark Souls II took precedence and I didn't buy it till this summer sale. Basically the game is a fairytale story with kinda-sorta JRPG mechanics in a watercolor painted 2D world and it all comes together phenomenally well. The story follows a lot of basically fairy tale archetypes, but it's told in ballad form and has some very pleasant character development. I'm not a fan of poetry, but I thought the writing format worked well for the tone of the game and the creativity made up for the lack of spoken dialogue. I thought the party interaction after each new character joined your group was a nice touch as well. The battle system is built around a timer and you have various tools to mess with the timer or the enemy attack time. Ubisoft wisely included a built-in battle speed option which made my timer management a little bit easier and they also make it pretty easy to avoid battles if you wish (this is nice when going back to an area to explore a bit) . The only real issue I had with the combat in the game was the battle music. It felt like there was only one variant for the whole game and it gets pretty tiresome. I think each zone should have had a unique variation of it. The art is some truly incredible work. The water color style looks magnificent and each new area you enter is a real treat. I would definitely rank it at the top of the UbiArt pile over both Rayman and Valiant Hearts.
Overall: I love pretty much everything about the game. It might have been a touch too long, but I didn't mind. I definitely recommend picking this up even if you aren't a JRPG battle style fan, I wasn't either and this game won me over.