標籤彙整: Game Reviews

After the Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare series gave players two games full of exciting heroes and intense battles across fun multiplayer modes, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville rebrands the series. However, despite the new name, make no mistake: This new entry carries forward the enjoyable multiplayer suite from those enjoyable Garden Warfare games while experimenting with PvE modes to mixed results.

Regardless of what mode you want to dive into, you can expect zany, over-the-top action from start to finish thanks to the roster of 20 playable heroes. Rockets whiz past you to annihilate your teammates, drone-style onions and zombie parrots provide air support, and sentient oak trees emerge from the ground. Thanks to a wide range of hero classes to choose from, from a basic foot soldier and a shotgunning healer to an agile mushroom ninja and a fire-breathing snapdragon, you can approach every situation how you want. Picking the right class and equipping perks (like health regeneration and the ability to move and dodge while reviving a teammate) to suit your playstyle is endlessly rewarding as you experiment to find the right loadout for your playstyle and characters.

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Learning the skills of the various plants and zombies is daunting at first, but simple controls and abilities make it a breeze to jump into any mode with little to no practice. While you have a plethora of options available from the start, the robust competitive multiplayer suite is the main attraction.  My favorite modes return from Garden Warfare 2, like Vanquish Confirmed, offense-versus-defense Turf Takeover, and control-point-based Suburbination. I also love the tense new Battle Arena, where two teams of four duke it out in an elimination mode. In addition to no respawns, when you choose a character at the start of each round, you are unable to choose that specific character again for the rest of the match. These restrictions lead to strategic team compositions and white-knuckled firefights you rarely encounter in other modes.

You can also dive into PvE options with the wave-based Ops mode and three open regions full of missions to complete and collectibles to gather. While laying out your defenses and protecting your point from the increasingly difficult waves of enemies in Ops is a blast, the PvE in the three open regions is hit-and-miss. While I liked some of the more straightforward missions and boss battles, others fall flat, delivering an uneven experience. This inconsistent enjoyment propelled me back toward the multiplayer suite on several occasions, as I worried about whether the next mission would be fun or frustrating.

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No matter the mode you choose, you earn coins to spend on cosmetics and experience to level up your heroes. Experience points are used to level up and promote individual heroes to earn upgrades for their abilities. These upgrades are useful, like giving the Peashooter’s bullets a homing property, or increasing the rate of fire for the Foot Soldier zombie. I like the straightforward nature of the promotion mechanic and wish it carried into the cosmetic items, but unlocking those is more complicated and less engaging.

In-game currency is primarily used to purchase random pieces of cosmetic equipment from a giant capsule toy machine. The randomized nature of this method of unlocking is annoying, with the brief moment of excitement from seeing what you got usually giving way to disappointment. Because many of the items are underwhelming components or customizations for characters you don’t often use, the act of progressing through the cosmetics you want feels throttled. However, Battle for Neighborville also runs themed events that let you chart paths to specific customization components by spending prize bulbs you earn with experience – just don’t expect to earn the top prizes of an event without investing some serious playtime or saving up over multiple events. I like the idea of having multiple paths to earn customizations, but this convoluted method is unrewarding and unmotivating since there’s rarely a clear path to getting the exact piece you want. The team does have a soon-to-be implemented solution to this problem, but here’s the bad news: It’s a premium shop using real-world currency.

Those looking for zany multiplayer fun can find it here, but that also comes with an unnecessarily complicated economy and inconsistent PvE components. Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville lets dedicated soldiers dive back into this long-running conflict, even if everyone else has moved on to other battles.

Correction: This review originally stated that it is not possible to change characters during PvE levels, which is not accurate. The text has been updated accordingly.

Score: 7.75

Summary: Battle for Neighborville delivers exciting competitive and cooperative multiplayer, but an overly complicated economy and inconsistent PvE elements take away from the experience.

Concept: Take sides in the seemingly endless conflict between plants and zombies in a third hero-based shooter

Graphics: A cute-but-unremarkable visual experience with bright colors, delightful animations, and unique character designs

Sound: Series mainstay tracks react to the action on the battlefield and amp up the action

Playability: While the prospect of learning the unique loadouts of 20 different heroes is daunting at first, the controls are easy to pick up for anyone who has played a shooter before

Entertainment: Despite strong competitive and cooperative multiplayer action, the PvE elements fall short of those marquee modes. The progression leads to more frustration than satisfaction

Replay: Moderately high

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The mystery around Death Stranding has piqued everyone’s curiosity as to the game’s true nature. Part of this is down to the creator himself, Hideo Kojima, who has consistently obfuscated his titles with complex stories, themes, and the personal fancies of an auteur. It’s also due to the incredulous feeling that there must be more to the game than what we’ve seen so far. Surely players must do more than transport cargo – a video game trope in and of itself. But Death Stranding (whose main character is named Sam Porter Bridges, no less) is unable to muster significance.

In order to rebuild America after a mysterious event that has blown a crater in the middle of the country and destroyed society as we know it, Sam treks across the land delivering supplies and connecting pockets of survivors. Doing so requires loading Sam up with packages of various sizes, weights, and possibly mission-ending stipulations – such as breaking fragile equipment and even delivering a pizza correctly.

I was initially frustrated by the teeter-totter nature of keeping my balance while traversing rocky, moss-covered landscapes. As I leveled up and became proficient in my movements (the terrain is thankfully consistent in terms of what does and doesn’t trip you up), I realized the fight to stay upright isn’t the fundamental problem with the core gameplay concept. The real issue is that Death Stranding’s gameplay really is as simple as it appears to be, and the elements around it – the story, combat, and lackluster mission objectives – aren’t satisfying enough to anchor the title and get players invested.

Death Stranding has optional side missions and ways to build up the infrastructure of the world, such as making roads and other helpful structures, but the core delivery loop doesn’t branch out in more interesting directions. Your objectives are straightforward and unsurprising; they don’t expand Sam’s interaction with the world, nor do they require novel resourcefulness. It’s all about the journey, as they say, but when the journey feels dull, that’s not a good thing. 

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Combat is also part of Sam’s travels, but it’s not demanding or engaging. Multi-dimensional spirits called BTs rise from the ground and apparate from the air, but they feel more like nuisances than challenges – similar to random encounters in an RPG that cause you to swear more than lick your chops. Marauders called MULEs get physically tougher and have guns and trucks to hunt you down, but defeating them is easy, whether using guns, melee blows, or stealth. Don’t expect the ingenuity or problem-solving required in the Metal Gear series; enemies’ A.I. routines and reactions don’t enliven your interactions with them or encourage experimentation.

Sure, it’s fun to knock marauders down with a piece of luggage in your hand, but you can’t drive them from an area, their encampments are basic, and their loot (unless tied to a specific mission) isn’t particularly enticing since the items can be found elsewhere in the world. Combat is non-essential to the point that plain hoofing it is as effective as any weapon when dealing with both BTs and MULEs. Even the boss battles, if they can even be called that, are simple encounters of shooting and evading over multiple rounds. They lack the inventiveness and thrill of Kojima’s previous efforts, to say nothing of other games. This is a shame, because you can fabricate some pretty useful equipment, like grenade launchers and camouflage rocks you can hide under, despite an absence of compelling situations in which to apply them.

Overall, Death Stranding’s intertwining systems are well thought out. Rain and snow (called Timefall) damage everything they touch, so I like the sense of urgent survival when the weather report shows precipitation on the way. Building zip-lines and safe houses in useful areas is satisfying, especially since they augment the overall network of nodes that keep you supplied and aid your travels.

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Death Stranding’s online connectivity is one of the game’s strengths, not only because other real-life players add useful items like ladders and warning signs to your world, but because it achieves what it tries to do: It creates bonds. I liked knowing I was helping others when I erected a bridge or anchored a rope at a key location, and enjoyed giving others praise for their efforts via the like system. Regardless, this sentiment wanes amidst the larger morass of routine.

That the game ultimately comes up short is unfortunate, because there were times when I was spurred on to complete my delivery mission. Coming over a ridge, reflecting on how far I’d come and knowing that I just had to make it across one final expanse before delivering my cargo felt like sweet relief at times. The game is also visually stunning, which helps when spending all that time traveling from one place to another.

Try as it might, Death Stranding’s story doesn’t shore up its faults. It’s the normal Kojima mix of twists-and-turns, tropes, and overbearing themes, but at least I like that it explores real-world topics like the theory of multiple dimensions and key events in the history of the planet’s biodiversity. Like Sam himself, I often wasn’t sure why I kept going in Death Stranding. Maybe there was a little bit of pride in another task checked off the list, another job done. Unfortunately, this added up to little reward in the end.

Score: 7

Summary: The game bears the unmistakable mark of its creator, but doesn’t leave enough for players to enjoy.

Concept: Transport cargo to and fro in a beautiful-but-convoluted world from Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima

Graphics: The details on everything from the logos to the environment are amazing, bringing to life this strand of the multiverse

Sound: Most of the triple-A voice talent does a great job. I also enjoyed the relatively incidental sounds such as a blaring alarm or the rustle of Sam’s gear

Playability: Apart from an occasional delay in bringing up a newly equipped weapon’s reticle, combat works fine. This includes melee combat, which does not have an enemy lock-on

Entertainment: The pillars of gameplay, combat, and story all bear the mark of creator Hideo Kojima, but none of them stand out or carry the experience

Replay: Moderately High

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A gentle wind rustles the autumn leaves, and an owl’s solitary call echoes across the mountainside in the pre-dusk light. My bike rattles across an old wooden bridge, and the path ahead curves around the rising roar of the waterfall. Instead of following it, I accelerate off the cliff at ill-advised speed, and crash headlong into a tree trunk, just missing the jump. Time to restart the checkpoint.

Such is the flow of Lonely Mountains: Downhill, an idyllic mountain biking game of nature sounds and beautiful vistas juxtaposed against excessive speed and foolhardy jumps. 16 trails across four mountain landscapes all start the same: Your bike and rider are poised at the peak, ready to descend. From here, it’s all about the path to your cozy base camp, bumping and sliding down gravel switchbacks, dirt slides, hidden tree paths, and waterlogged streambeds. Can you beat your best time to the bottom? Can you manage fewer crashes this time? That simple formula carries the game forward, while the precise controls and many shortcuts and add depth to ensure you come back for more.

Gameplay owes a debt to classics like Marble Madness and its isometric view of the slope, as well as the time-trial optimization of the long-running Trials series. However, the injection of a Zen-like natural landscape and soundscape sets these lonely mountains apart. The ambient nature soundtrack is an inspired choice, and the low-poly but vibrantly colorful visuals perfectly capture the hazy sense of speeding down a hill as the background details blur together.

In any given run, you’re challenging yourself to beat time thresholds by any means necessary, hitting the finish line with a cleaner run, or both. The objectives are limited in scope; without more variety in targeted goals, the potential for tedium can set in over time. As it is, the main avenue to difficulty is shaving seconds off each checkpoint, transforming seemingly impossible time goals into increasingly realistic possibilities. The frustration of dozens of crashes is softened because it’s so amusing to see your poor rider go tumbling into empty space, or bang with a grunt into a stone wall. Restarts are instantaneous, so you don’t have time to dwell on your failures.

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The bikes control like a dream, with quick-turning, believable acceleration arcs and lots of variance between the six unlockable cycles, each of which feels like a “class” of its own. One bike excels at big jumps, while another can’t be beat in the off-road. Each one adds a compelling playstyle, and a new way to tackle all the courses. In fact, it’s that compelling variability between playstyles that leads to my biggest frustration. Each new bike unlocks in parts, and you can’t use the vehicle until you get all its parts. In most cases, getting the full set of pieces for a new ride only occurs late in the game, and at especially high challenge thresholds. That’s a bummer, because it means players are bound to limited options for most of the game, and may never get to experience the impressive variety in playstyle encouraged by the different bikes.

For the most dedicated players, that distinction won’t matter much. Discovering new shortcuts never loses that eureka moment feel, and each trail has a surprising array of alternate paths to explore. Mastering the physics of the cycle and learning the visual language of each landscape is a lengthy and rewarding endeavor. Detailed leaderboards help you not only compete against friends and the wider global playerbase, but also help pinpoint individual checkpoints in any given run where you can still improve. Beyond new mountains and trails, cosmetic unlock rewards let you tweak the appearance of your rider and ride. Go especially off the beaten path, and you can even find all the cleverly hidden resting places on a given mountain. To what end? To see the game pause, and watch your rider relax by a beautiful vista for a well-deserved break.

Lonely Mountains: Downhill is a skill-focused arcade experience of surprising depth and replayability. The relaxing aesthetic is a figurative breath of fresh air when compared to other games that compete to be loudest and most in-your-face. Even so, there’s a searing intensity and competitive flair to this outdoor adventure that can easily accommodate serious engagement. Like the real sport, this mountain biking undertaking is ultimately about challenging yourself, and pushing just a little harder to improve, and that’s enough to keep me coming back.

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Score: 8.75

Summary: This mountain biking game blends an idyllic nature aesthetic with tight arcade action to create a surprisingly thrilling adventure.

Concept: Race your mountain bike down peaceful mountain trails at breakneck speed

Graphics: Low-poly, high-color graphics are attractive and provide readable pathing

Sound: Quiet, ambient nature sounds accompany your frantic descent – a simple design choice that does wonders for the aesthetic and enjoyability

Playability: Precise controls allow for skill and improvisation, but some aspects of the long-term unlock approach are frustrating

Entertainment: Somehow simultaneously soothing and thrilling, this excellent arcade-style experience captures the joys of biking, nature, and competing against yourself

Replay: High

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After ridding several haunted mansions of their ghost infestations in the series’ first two games, the taller, goofier brother of Nintendo’s first family is ready for his biggest task yet: cleansing a whole haunted hotel. In Luigi’s Mansion 3, our hero grabs ghosts and solves simple puzzles on a mission to defeat King Boo and rescue Mario, Peach, and the Toads. With themed floors full of fun environmental puzzle and a ton of exciting encounters, this hotel is well worth checking into.

As Luigi progresses through the hotel’s 15 floors (and 2 basements), he encounters all manner of spirits, traps, and puzzles, which require him to use all the moves in his arsenal centered around his ghost vacuum. I appreciate how the puzzles and fights have you use Luigi’s abilities in unexpected ways, often in conjunction with one another. Encounters have fun ways of pushing your expertise with Luigi’s moveset, like one that had me dodging lasers with the vacuum’s burst jump while searching for hidden ghosts with the dark-light flashlight before stunning them with a strobe and vacuuming them up.

The entire adventure is well-crafted, with environmental cues giving you just the right amount of breadcrumbs you need to feel like you discovered the hidden paths yourself. However, the clues sometimes fall too far on one end of the difficulty spectrum; I sometimes was hot on the trail of solving a puzzle when Professor E. Gadd would pipe in with too much information and spoil the discovery, while other times I aimlessly explored an area before finally finding what I needed to do. The secrets, which typically involve rotating seemingly ordinary objects or looking in mirrors to reveal hidden items, are enjoyable to discover and encourage exploration in an otherwise linear experience.

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Luigi’s Mansion 3 also makes use of Gooigi, a slimy clone you can deploy to reach areas Luigi cannot. Gooigi can squeeze through grates, spikes, and drains, opening the door for fun puzzles revolving around opening passageways for Gooigi. The floors all do fantastic jobs of hinting at new areas you can send him, with hidden grates and drains galore. You can only control one character at time, but switching between them is as simple as clicking the right stick. While the swap between the two is mostly smooth, it can be annoying when a heavy object or ghost requires you to use the suction power of both characters. Thankfully, a co-op partner can take control of Gooigi, which makes everything easier. Co-op play in story is a fun way to streamline the experience and tag team challenges, but single-player is still just as viable and entertaining.

Unfortunately, clunky controls prevent the game from being completely without frustration. A fixed camera, an omnidirectional right stick, and motion controls combine for an imprecise experience. While the plunger mechanic for pulling items often locks on, I had to experiment with different control schemes before I felt like I had a handle on Luigi’s aim.

Once you do get a grip on the controls, the boss battles serve as a highlight of the story. From a shark ghost that possesses a pirate ship to a DJ that wields spinning vinyl records, I loved seeing the final challenge for each themed floor. While I don’t want to spoil my favorite boss encounter, it pays homage to kaiju films of the past in hilarious and exciting ways.

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If you’re too scared to go alone, ScareScraper, an eight-player cooperative mode where you try and clear randomly generated floors of ghosts before the time expires, serves as the highlight to the multiplayer offerings. Banding together with the rest of your team to clear out the final few rooms as the timer screams toward zero is a blast. With a strict time limit, you need to be judicious with your exploration, but I love how rewarding a little poking around can be; a trap-detecting alarm or a map showing the locations of ghosts help immensely. Whether you have one other person to play with or a full lobby, ScareScraper is an exciting co-op multiplayer mode.

For a little friendly competition, you can visit the ScreamPark, where you clash in three minigames that feel ripped straight from the Mario Party series. I enjoyed the competitive ghost hunting and target practice games, but the one based on an annoying water section in the campaign wasn’t fun in the story, and it’s not much better here. These minigames can be fun diversions with a group of friends, but the story is definitely the main attraction here.

With unique puzzles, diverse floor themes, and exciting boss battles, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a spooky delight for players of all experience levels. Seasoned ghostbusters and rookie paranormal enthusiasts alike would do well to look into Luigi’s latest eerie adventure.

Score: 8.5

Summary: Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a fun ghost-hunting adventure regardless of your experience with the franchise.

Concept: Climb through a haunted hotel as Luigi on a spooky quest to save Mario, Peach, and the Toads from King Boo

Graphics: Crisp visuals, great animations, and interesting floor themes create a colorful but spooky atmosphere

Sound: Tunes fitting the action haunt the hotel as much as ghosts do, and the satisfying sounds made by the vacuum never grow old. However, the low-life warning sound is more annoying than stressful

Playability: Sucking up ghosts and other items feels great, but clunky controls lessen the enjoyment

Entertainment: Creative environmental puzzles and unique boss battles make this a rewarding experience from start to finish

Replay: Moderate

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Modern Warfare is familiar in name, but its content carries a different tone and flow than we’ve come to expect from the annualized Call of Duty series. Developer Infinity Ward takes big chances in both multiplayer and the single-player campaign, and while some of the ideas hit with deadly precision, others fall flat.

As great as it is to have a single-player campaign back after its hiatus in Black Ops 4, Infinity Ward shifts the focus away from the large-scale conflicts the series is known for towards more intimate firefights where the horrors of war are thoroughly (and grossly) explored. This story experience gets uncomfortable, putting the player in direct control of a young girl who is forced to kill with a knife and gun, as well as a soldier who is captured and waterboarded. The waterboarding even unfolds through a terrible minigame where you have to move your head back and forth to dodge the water. These gameplay sequences feel shoehorned in and do nothing to move the narrative forward – they just make it uncomfortable.

Innocent civilians constantly barge through doors right in front of you or pop up from behind cover, creating intense and disturbing moments where you may accidentally shoot them. Infinity Ward wants you to feel the gruesomeness of war, and its tiring how often you are presented with these scenarios. Outside of a couple of cleverly designed sniping missions and a ridiculous moment where I piloted remote-controlled toy planes, I didn’t enjoy playing through many of the story missions, not just from their heavy themes, but rather the fairly pedestrian combat scenarios within them. Raiding a home, cave, or high rise can be intense, but knocking down doors isn’t as compelling as partaking in the sprawling wars this series is known for. There are a couple of big battles, but they don’t last long or deliver much in terms of memorable set pieces.

While the campaign isn’t as big in scope or as thrilling to play as most Call of Duty games, it does tell a hell of a story – perhaps the best in this series since, well, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The character performances are fantastic – especially for Captain Price, Farah, and Hadir – who get plenty of screen time and are legitimately interesting, especially how they are woven into the conflict at hand. The story is nicely paced, establishes villains you can’t help but hate, and is engaging from start to finish. I also appreciate how the story and gameplay flow seamlessly from moment to moment without loading screens, much like a Naughty Dog production. I completed the campaign in roughly five hours, yet found I enjoyed watching it more for the twists than actually having a hand in some of the battles.

As is the case with most Call of Duty games, the beating heart of Modern Warfare is competitive play, which succeeds by both shrinking and expanding the scale of war. The most rewarding multiplayer experience is a new mode called Gunfight, and it’s designed for just four players. These 2v2 matches unfold on tiny square maps that deliver immediate action and end almost as quickly as they begin, since only two kills are needed for a team to win a round. Part of the brilliance of this mode is how level the playing field is: Both teams have the same loadouts and the map designs are fairly symmetrical. Laying down and camping is also frowned upon, as the match timer counts down quickly, and overtime pushes both teams to be the first to capture a flag. I can’t stress just how fun and frantic these battles are; I couldn’t get enough of them.

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Modern Warfare also balloons more than you would expect in a new take on Ground War, which borrows a page from Battlefield’s playbook with 64-players battling for a handful of control points on a sprawling map. This is another enjoyable avenue of play, but for entirely different reasons. Skill and precision take a backseat to organized chaos, as snipers line rooftops, kill streaks rain death every which way, and a tank could blast you from halfway across the map. Ground War is frantic, and while you won’t make much of a difference as one player, ends up being a great way to blow off steam after competing in this iteration’s excellently designed team deathmatch. Other multiplayer diversions like the new Realism and Night Vision modes are also good fun.

All of the competitive modes offer cross-play and prop up Call of Duty’s legacy gunplay. It’s phenomenal in Modern Warfare, and deeper than ever. The kill streak rewards are nice and powerful, and the speed and feel of weapons still rank among the best in gaming.

Much like leveling a character in an RPG, players can level up guns – a process every bit as captivating as it sounds. With over 50 unlockable attachments and perks per firearm, players can sculpt their wares to their liking, and are pushed to keep using the same loadouts to power them up. I transformed my M4A1 into terrifying beast that was good for both blitz and distance tactics with a grenade launcher and 4.0x flip hybrid sight attachments. These alterations elevated my game significantly, but for every pro there’s a con. My sight zoomed further, but the zoom speed was reduced.

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As awesome as competitive play is, I can’t recommend players spend much time in Special Ops, Modern Warfare’s troubled version of cooperative play. Traversing a huge map with friends to hack computers and destroy heavily armored vehicles is a fun concept, and requires strategy. Aggravating bot spawns that can happen right behind you make the experience overly difficult in an unfair way. Even when my team was organized and moving slowly to clear out any threat, all it took was one enemy from behind to kill someone and create an unrecoverable scenario.

All told, Modern Warfare should have received a new Call of Duty subhead given just how different its avenues of play are. Not every one of Infinity Ward’s ideas works, but a few are successful enough that I could see them as series staples. Modern Warfare’s accomplishments may not be as pronounced as Black Ops 4’s (Blackout being one of them), but it still delivers a hell of a multiplayer experience. Gunfight alone is worth the price of admission.

Score: 8.75

Summary: This annualized series continues to pound out excitement, but this time in ways you may not expect.

Concept: A three-headed experience that succeeds in multiplayer, gets lost in the dark in single-player, and misses the mark completely in cooperative play

Graphics: Infinity Ward’s new engine delivers a high level of realism in the lighting and character models, but the environments are mostly mundane given the focus on smaller conflicts

Sound: The music, voice acting, and rattling gunfire are all excellent, heightening the intensity in all modes

Playability: The pitch-perfect gunplay is joined by a wide selection of multiplayer modes that give players variety, including short and fun 2v2 fights

Entertainment: Leveling up guns is ridiculously fun, and the breadth of modes keeps this experience from feeling repetitive. This is a game you can sink tons of time into

Replay: High

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Some games are better left dead and buried, and MediEvil is one of them. The successful remakes of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon raised my excitement for this re-release, but within seconds of starting it, I realized protagonist Sir Daniel Fortesque no longer has a jump in his step, and instead controls like the clumsy zombie he is. Developer Other Ocean Emeryville gave this 1998 PlayStation classic a dramatic graphical overhaul, which makes the eerie graveyards and darkened tombs pop in 4K. The studio also re-recorded the score with an orchestra, but all this doesn’t do much to help the gameplay, which was considered sloppy even back when the original released.

MediEvil’s setting and story are still fantastic. I love that Sir Dan is heralded as a hero (with his own tomb and giant commemorative statue), yet ended up being the first soldier to die, taking an arrow to the eye in the battle of Gallowmere. It turns out that the villain in this world, the sorcerer Zarok, is just as terrible at his craft, and in raising an army of the dead to take over the world, accidentally resurrects Dan, who now has a second shot at becoming the hero the people believe he was.

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The visual aesthetic for MediEvil was clever and beautiful when it originally released, and Other Ocean takes it to the next level, giving the environments and character models the little details that couldn’t be achieved on the old PlayStation hardware. Every texture and effect looks like it belongs, and the jawless Dan is as goofy and oddly charismatic as ever.

On the gameplay front, players are tasked to lead Dan against a variety of creepy or possessed foes. You encounter a decent selection of adversaries, and have plenty of ways to defeat them – just not with much precision. Dan can switch between a variety of close-range melee and projective-based weapons, but none of them control well. Aiming with the crossbow is particularly challenging, as you are waiting for a little light to appear over an enemy’s head. Just swinging the sword is equally frustrating, since landing hits takes more work than it should given how fidgety the adversaries are. You run circles around foes jabbing at them hastily, hoping that the sword is aimed the right way. Dan’s powerful charge moves are also a bit hard to read and land. Other Ocean tweaked the camera tracking a little, but it wasn’t enough to truly follow the action. It still gets blocked by walls, and unexpectedly zooms directly onto Dan.

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Early in the game, sustaining damage is no big deal, as Dan has plenty of health, and healing stations are usually close by. You probably also have some handy instant-use health vials in reserve. As the difficulty escalates making enemy attacks and environmental obstacles more lethal, every little misstep hurts. If you die, most levels don’t have checkpoints, meaning you’re going back to the beginning to try again. Even if you reach the boss at the very end of the level, you have to start over. Welcome to gaming in 1998, people.

MediEvil still deserves to be heralded as a classic for its time and place in gaming, and I love how it looks in revitalized form on PlayStation 4. However, its gameplay is a relic of yesteryear, and an example that shows us just how far games have come over the years. Rest in peace, Sir Dan.

Score: 6.5

Summary: It may look like a fairly modern release, but it plays like a troubled game from the ’90s.

Concept: Sir Daniel Fortesque’s return is a little too true of a remake, enhancing the visuals, without doing anything to help the troubled gameplay

Graphics: The graveyards pop with new atmospherics and beautiful texture work that meshes well with designs from the original release

Sound: The same great soundtrack was re-recorded by the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Jason Wilson also returns as Sir Dan

Playability: Controlling Dan is rarely fun, as wild sword-swinging and projectile-shooting are the foundation of the gameplay

Entertainment: The story and writing are still clever, but Dan’s adventure hasn’t aged well, and ends up being a chore

Replay: Low

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Playtonic Games debut title, Yooka-Laylee, paid loving homage to formula of 3D platformers of the ‘90s. That makes sense, considering several team members originally worked on Banjo-Kazooie – but sequel takes a much more surprising approach. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair flips the script, abandoning 3D to deliver a focused, well-paced side-scrolling platformer that feels like a successor to Donkey Kong Country (another game members of Playtonic worked on). However, rather than relying too heavily on trappings of the past, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair modernizes the 2D platforming formula in all the right ways to deliver a fun and novel experience.

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair starts with a bang. After completing a brisk tutorial, the game dumps you into the eponymous Impossible Lair, a sprawling, extremely difficult level riddled with dastardly obstacles and challenging boss fights with no checkpoints. You may start the game on the final level, but unless you’re unimaginably talented at 2D platformers, you’re going to fail out before you even know what’s happening. While this experience does little to instill confidence in what’s to come, it effectively throws down the gauntlet to give you something to aspire to.

That experience sticks with you; the final stage looms over you the whole time you play, just waiting for you to challenge it again – which you can try at any point. But how can you conquer the hellscape of obstacles the Impossible Lair presents? By completing stages in the main game, you give yourself a fighting chance.

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Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair delivers well-paced 2D platforming action across more than 20 unique stages, and every one you complete gives you an extra hit point when you attempt the Impossible Lair. I love how this unique approach lets you decide when you’re ready for the final onslaught; you don’t need to complete every stage to finish the Impossible Lair, but some of the are so clever and fun that you may want to keep playing anyway.

From a level that has you dodging deadly buzzsaws to one that tasks you with swinging from different ropes while rolling and jumping off enemies, the diversity in the stages is impressive. While every obstacle course is exciting, my favorite was a nonlinear level that had me going to five distinct areas to complete quick challenges to retrieve five gems.

Yooka and Laylee may control as one character, but their partnership isn’t just for looks. Similar to Mario and Yoshi, the two work together in important ways. When you start a stage, you have both characters, and access to your full arsenal of abilities. But if you get hit, Laylee panics and flies away, leaving you without movies like your twirl jump and butt stomp. You can get them back by chasing Laylee down (or calling her back at a bell), and this adds a thrilling risk to many stages. Every time Laylee flew away, I had to calculate whether the benefit of her abilities was worth the danger of pursuing her.

Laylee’s abilities aren’t required to complete the stages, but they can be necessary for reaching collectibles like quills and coins. Quills are used as a currency in multiple situations, including purchasing game-modifying tonics, opening chests in the overworld, and buying hints from signposts. Meanwhile, coins are used to further open the map to allow you to access the next set of stages. I don’t mind collectibles in a game, but it’s annoying to have to replay levels if you didn’t get enough coins to access the next area in the world. However, the required coin thresholds are low, and I only had to go back to mine for coins once in the my playthrough.

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Tonics are fun in-game cheat codes that modify the game in ways that can make the levels easier, harder, or different. For instance, one tonic makes enemies take an extra hit to destroy, while another makes it so Yooka doesn’t slip on ice. Based on how these tonics affect the difficulty, you earn a multiplier on the quills you collect in that stage. My preferred loadout was to gain 50 percent more quills by using the tonic that gives enemies an extra hit-point, while using another that makes every defeated enemy explode like a piñata with extra quills to collect.

Between stages, you explore a 3D overworld with an isometric camera. This is a gratifying experience, as simple exploration and minor environmental puzzles yield worthwhile rewards like extra quills, tonics, and even alternate versions of the stages. The overworld also lets you tackle single-screen challenges where you must get creative to defeat a set number of enemies. I always looked forward to these creative puzzles to solve, like one with a movement-mimicking enemy that you need to manipulate to make it dive into a buzzsaw.

The stage variants you unlock offer additional coins (and hit points for the Impossible Lair), but things are drastically different from the first time you tackled the level. One alternate version floods everything, turning it into a water stage. Another spills a sticky substance everywhere, making it more difficult to traverse – but also granting the ability to climb up the sticky walls and reach areas you couldn’t before. While you’re still technically playing the same levels, these versions feel as fresh as all-new stages, and I loved the surprises they threw at me.

With rock-solid controls and imaginative level design, I couldn’t wait to see what awaited the chameleon/bat duo each time I entered a new area. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a superb 2D platformer with plenty to love for fans of the genre both new and old.

Score: 8.5

Summary: This great 2D platformer delivers a crowd-pleasing adventure regardless of when you started enjoying the genre.

Concept: A strong platformer that pays loving homage to the 2D games of yesteryear

Graphics: With such vibrant and beautiful backgrounds, stage hazards sometimes blend in and get lost in the action

Sound: A delightful score composed by the iconic duo of David Wise and Grant Kirkhope perfectly suits the action

Playability: Tight controls and well-designed stages are a blast to platform through. Even the water levels are fun!

Entertainment: The Impossible Lair may receive top billing, but the entire journey leading to that titular final challenge is rewarding

Replay: Moderately high

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The Trails of Cold Steel franchise continues to impress me. Whether it’s in the depth added to its fantastic turn-based battle system or the intriguing revelations tucked into its sprawling storyline, Nihon Falcom keeps taking the series in exciting directions. The way the developer has built up a massive world and its political tensions is fascinating, referencing events that happened way back in the Trails in the Sky arc. Seeing how all this history and lore unfolds has been an exciting part of the journey. Fans are constantly treated to callbacks and character reunions that feel like rewards for the long investment. While the narrative is certainly a big draw, Trails of Cold Steel III is also a solid RPG through and through, especially if you yearn for something with a classic feel and modern sensibilities.

As the third entry in this four-game arc, Trails of Cold Steel III sets the stage for the grand finale. Instead of narrowing the focus or dialing back, Nihon Falcom goes all-out, adding tons of new characters and retaining familiar faces. The story picks up about a year and a half since the last entry’s civil war. Protagonist Rean has since graduated and become a professor at a new branch of Thors Academy, one reserved for the outcasts and misfits. After growing exceptionally close to the cast of the past games (don’t worry you’ll see them plenty), I was worried about how I’d take to a new class, but the fresh faces bring a lot of interesting dimensions to the plot. For instance, gunner Juna formerly worked at the Crossbell police academy, providing a more personal perspective on how political events affected that area. 

I grew to love most of the new students, but not all are great. Musse is just awful; her main shtick is constantly hitting on Rean, which is overplayed and gets grating fast. The coolest scenes in the story are the reunions with familiar characters from past games. Everyone reenters Rean’s life in an interesting or surprising fashion, making these moments feel super satisfying if you’ve been following the expansive plot through multiple games. If you haven’t, there is a backstory glossary that catches you up on everything from key characters to detailed summaries that break down each game. You can certainly get by using this, but this story is best experienced having played the previous two entries. 

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Trails of Cold Steel is content to keep its school-year structure, allowing you to guide the new Class VII on field assignments and socialize with them in your off time. The social elements remain a highlight, and this entry provides several opportunities to hang out with your new students or former classmates. You even have a camp where you can catch up, unearthing extra details or opening new side quests. But sometimes you have too much downtime, and the school aspects feel drawn out, creating busywork before you get to the good stuff. Just like previous entries, this installment is massive and slow-burning. I like how this builds up the relationships and world, but bloated dialogue segments and chore-like fetch quests test my patience. 

The turn-based battle system remains one of my favorites in recent years due to its many options. You’re forced to use your head instead of spamming attacks and specials. While the system is still focused on enemy weaknesses, character placement, and timing, Nihon Falcom introduced some new elements to keep you on your toes. A break gauge causes enemies to cease all actions for a turn with lowered defenses. I loved saving all my specials for this moment so they’d pack an even greater punch, as watching the high damage add up is extremely satisfying. Another new addition is Brave Order, which allows you to activate tide-changing perks, such as reflecting damage or taking half-damage. Implementing them into my strategy quickly became a new wrinkle to conquer boss battles. You can also now perform a “Burst” with two linked characters, which multiples break damage by 10. All of these new mechanics play off each other wonderfully, and combining them at the right times is a recipe for devastation. They make you feel powerful, and the gratification from crafting smart strategies is hard to top. 

While I enjoy the combat, the dungeons stand to be improved. For a good portion of the game, you revisit and run through trials in a bland practice dungeon. Outside of battles, you find switches and crawl through ducts to reach different places, with the latter being especially overdone, alongside the commentary about being able to see up the girls’ skirts every time you enter one. The dungeon design is simply uninspired; all the floors have a sterile feel, with only differing color schemes giving them any defining features. You also fight in other places such as forests, caves, and ruins, but they are pretty generic. 

Trails of Cold Steel III’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses. While the story takes its sweet time to unfold, it offers a lot of shocking outcomes. I won’t spoil anything, but I will say that things just keep heating up and I can’t wait to see what’s ahead. There’s something special about following characters for so long across various games – that attachment makes these journeys matter so much more. I just hope the next entry addresses the more glaring flaws, because there’s too much good here for it to be bogged down by a few problem areas. 

Score: 8

Summary: With great combat, an engrossing narrative, and a charming cast, Cold Steel III has all the makings of a great RPG.

Concept: Put lead character Rean in the role of professor and introduce fresh threats to an all-new Class VII

Graphics: The visuals certainly have a dated look, especially the environments. However, the new designs for the returning characters look great

Sound: Repetitive music loses its appeal fast, and the quality of voice acting is inconsistent

Playability: Occasional framerate stutters and graphical hiccups aside, the controls are smooth and all the mechanics are well-explained

Entertainment: Trails of Cold Steel III marks another school year full of adrenaline-pumping battles, interesting new faces, and unexpected hardships amidst political turmoil

Replay: Moderate

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John Wick walks into the room. Like a clockwork automaton, his movements are precise. His eyes effortlessly scan for danger. The gun in his hand snaps forward like the head of a serpent, spitting bullets like venom. Even more than most action heroes, John Wick exudes stone-cold confidence, and Bithell Games’ strategy adaptation perfectly captures that style. I’ve rarely felt like such a capable assassin than while playing John Wick Hex. Even after a few repetitive encounters and an aggressive enemy A.I. tried to cut my ego back down to size, they couldn’t diminish the overall high I felt playing Hex.

The John Wick franchise is all about speed and nonstop action, so Hex’s choice to distill battles down to one-second chunks seems a bit odd. Fortunately, it works. In Hex, you navigate John Wick through a series of seedy underbellies as he takes down a seemingly endless stream of mob thugs. Each time a new enemy enters Wick’s field of view, the action stops and you have the opportunity to issue a new command. John Wick isn’t a turned-based strategy game, but it offers some of that slow-paced, contemplative action. Yet magically, these slow-mo firefights feel as tense and hyperkinetic as a real-time shooter.

Most of my time with Hex was spent calculating the length of time it took for John Wick to complete each order. Firing a pistol takes a full 1.5 seconds, while shoving a nearby enemy takes 1.3 seconds, and parrying an attack takes only .5 seconds. Those time difference might sound relatively insignificant, but the difference between life and death is measured in nanoseconds. Some weapons also take longer to fire than others; lining up a shot with a shotgun consumes more time than the standard pistol, but it does significantly more damage. Fortunately, Hex does a fantastic job laying out the timeline for upcoming attacks, and I always knew what my foes were planning and how much time I had to retaliate. Wick is almost always faster than his enemies, but when three goons burst through a door, managing enemy timelines becomes an exciting juggling act.

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I regularly felt outmanned and outgunned, but overcoming the odds feels amazing. In the span of only a few seconds I could parry one attack, then – while one foe was stunned – initiate a grappling takedown of another enemy, which would place me behind cover and allow Wick to narrowly avoiding incoming gunfire. Finding a few seconds to squeeze off your own attack is often harrowing, but stepping over a room full of fallen foes is incredibly satisfying.

Some of Wick’s best attacks and defensive moves cost focus. For example, the dodge roll makes Wick incredibly hard to hit and allows him to quickly traverse the length of a room. Every time I ran out of focus mid-battle, I felt handicapped; much like reloading, finding time to replenish Wick’s focus is tricky, but this adds a welcome wrinkle to the strategy.

Wick begins the game as a highly capable assassin, which means he doesn’t have much room to grow. The tactics and strategies I used at the end of the game were the same ones I learned during the opening levels. Before each mission, you have the opportunity to purchase upgrades that improve your hit percentages or lower the focus cost for some moves, but these are temporary buffs and I often found it more useful to spend my coins on extra bandages and weapons instead.

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Most of the challenge in the later levels comes from throwing more thugs your way or introducing more resilient enemies. When I did get overwhelmed, I was forced to start each level over from the beginning. Fortunately, these levels are relatively short, but I was frustrated to have to play through a level’s early encounters repeatedly when I kept getting hung up near the end.

The narrative doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Hex is set in a period before the films, when John Wick still works for The High Table and recounts a mission where he must hunt down and kill the lieutenants of a villain named Hex. This plot largely serves only to introduce a number of marks for John Wick to hunt down, and doesn’t contribute much to the franchise’s wider lore.

Despite those frustrations, I continually returned to John Wick Hex because the core mechanics are incredibly tight. Thanks to Hex’s clever time management systems I always felt one step ahead of my enemies and capable of constructing the kinds of sophisticated close-quarters gunfights that make the films so exciting. John Wick Hex might hit the same note over and over again, but it’s one incredible note.

Score: 8

Summary: A few repetitive encounters and aggressive A.I. don’t diminish the overall highs Hex offers.

Concept: Slow down John Wick’s hyper-violent gunfights to create a series of tense strategic encounters

Graphics: This dark, comic book aesthetic fits the tone of the universe. Sadly, a few jerky animations don’t do this hitman justice

Sound: Actors Ian McShane and Lance Reddick reprise their characters from the films, which adds some authenticity to the experience. John Wick is played as a silent hero, so no Keanu Reeves

Playability: Hex expertly breaks down John Wick-style fights into a series of puzzle-like encounters, but your combat options don’t expand much over the course of the game

Entertainment: At its best, John Wick Hex makes you feel like a trained assassin, but those moments are interrupted by strings of repetitive action

Replay: Moderate

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Ghost Recon Breakpoint is a conflicted mess of an open-world experience. It is unreliable in almost everything it offers, from tactical firefights and enemy intelligence to open-world exploration and mission flow. Developer Ubisoft Paris also didn’t solve the issue of repetition that plagued Ghost Recon Wildlands – it’s even worse this time around. Flashes of brilliance are scattered amid the turmoil, but no matter how much you try to latch onto them, the game finds another way to pull you down and upend your progress.

When Breakpoint works as intended, it delivers thrilling four-player cooperative strategy. This includes satisfying stealth, fun drone surveillance, heavy firearms that kick like mules, plenty of useful loot, and maybe even a gripping story sequence that makes you look forward to the next mission. When things don’t go as planned (which is more often the case) Breakpoint is broken. Bosses come back to life, teammates respawn over a mile away, your character is inexplicably unable to aim over a barrier, and enemies stop dead in their tracks right in front of you. In some of my play sessions, a mission would go off without a hitch. In others, my squad couldn’t do anything without some kind of glitch (like one of us falling through the world geometry) throwing a kink in our strategies.

The game’s set up is quite good: You and a small group of Ghosts have been deployed to Auroa to handle a terrorist threat that just happens to have a connection to your past. Cole Walker, a former Ghost who you ran with back in the day, wants to weaponize the island’s innovative drone technology. You need to stop him. From Far Cry to Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft often struggles to deliver interesting villains, but not with Walker. He is immediately imposing, and brought to life exceptionally well by actor Jon Bernthal. Walker holds your interest, but the story doesn’t deliver much to grasp onto other than him, and ends up hitting the same dull note repeatedly. The side stories, of which there are many, also don’t have much of a pulse, even with some moments offering player choice. Breakpoint’s story is better than Wildlands’, but that isn’t saying much. The scenes with Walker are usually captivating in disturbing ways, but that’s about all the narrative successfully delivers.

Ubisoft’s decision to create a fictional place is a success that pays dividends from start to finish. Auroa is an island where the brightest minds in technology congregate to improve the world. Aurora’s scenic mountains, valleys, swamps, and tundra, feature pockets of sci-fi like industrialization. Many buildings look like artistic sculptures, and the people who work here live like royalty in homes with open views of the stunning landscapes. Helicopter rides give players a chance to fully appreciate this beautifully realized world, which is filled with side missions, random points of interest that hold loot and collectibles, and some areas are even used for fun 4v4 PvP Ghost War battles.

The belief that you are a part of a thriving world is more defined than in Wildlands thanks in part to the introduction of a social hub called Erewhon, a small village tucked inside of a mountain cavern. Erewhon, as interesting as it is for the fiction, is sadly used as a mission destination too often, forcing players to fast travel excessively. Why can’t we just call the mission giver on the phone to get a 10-second update before having to head out again?

Outside of this unwanted pitstop, mission setups are usually interesting, giving players numerous interaction points, including some that require a little detective work, like tracking down a document or interrogating a high-ranking official to learn where a dangerous target is. As varied as the mission setup and objectives are, the act of completing these tasks is repetitive, and you are rarely challenged in different ways. Ubisoft’s other open-world shooter, The Division 2, did a fantastic job with mission flow, taking players to through long and well-conceived areas. Breakpoint is the exact opposite, pushing players to either aggressively or stealthily reach a point of interest and then move on to the next. As empowering as it is to enter a location however you want, the lack of structure makes every mission feel routine. With few enemy types to confront over the course of the entire game, most assaults usually end up feeling the same, too. Being able to spawn a helicopter from any bonfire means you don’t really ever need to use any of the other vehicles to explore the world. The best path to success is doing the same things over and over again.

That said, stealth in Breakpoint is handled admirably. The auto-stick cover system creates damning problems for shooting over obstacles, but it works fairly well for sneaking, and the enemy observation meter fills slowly enough to allow for quick course correction should you get stuck on the wrong side of a wall. If the enemies are alerted to your position, they attack with everything they have and can kill you and your squad quickly. However, they don’t stand a chance if you hunker down in a protected spot. They are too aggressive, and will funnel to you one by one until their entire division is wiped out, making most missions fairly easy if you can find such a location. Most areas are filled with rooms you can use to exploit the A.I. Guns feel great and are varied, but what you use them against rarely puts up a good fight.

Enemies drop plenty of loot, and Ubisoft does a nice job of making most of it meaningful. As you progress, you slowly advance in rank (with 150 being the ultimate goal to topple the final mission, which you can access from the beginning). The loot is awesome in how bountiful and varied it is, but none of it makes much sense. Yes, a +7 gun is better than a +2 gun, but you also find a low green-ranked baseball cap offers more protection than a rare gold-ranked helmet. The rags-to-riches path of making your character look cooler as the game goes on isn’t here, and instead seems to be completely random as to what the most powerful items in the game are. My final form consisted of a stocking cap and plastic surgeon gloves.

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The most telling moment in Breakpoint came during the final mission. My team successfully took down the final boss, and then hacked a computer to end a crisis. My character nodded approvingly and smiled awkwardly, and then, just when it seemed like the credits would roll, my squad reappeared in the world, and the boss was back. This time around, he was invincible, and ended up wiping us out with ease. When we respawned, the mission had reset to its first step. It was an unfortunate bug that wiped out a good hour of work.

This final moment with Breakpoint sums up the game perfectly. There was a sense of victory, and then it all fell apart and became a maddening mess. I had some fun playing with friends, but constantly found myself wondering how this follow-up could go so wrong.

Score: 6

Summary: Ubisoft’s newest open-world experience struggles to deliver reliable combat and interesting things to do.

Concept: A sloppy open-world experience that offers plenty to do, but hardly any of it is executed in clever or stable ways

Graphics: Auroa is the best part of the game – an island filled with beautiful forests, mountains, and cleverly designed near-future settlements

Sound: The noisy pop of the guns is satisfying, but isn’t enough to compensate for the awful dialogue

Playability: The guns feel great and allow players to line up shots from great distances. Enemy A.I. is hilariously bad and can be exploited for easy victories. Your character can’t walk on most inclines without falling, which is odd

Entertainment: Playing with friends can be fun, especially when stealth is working. But whether the game “works” is the key question at all times

Replay: Moderate

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