Hatred is a subpar twin stick shooter whose only claim to fame is its Adults Only rating from the ESRB. The novelty of the rating and some good destruction tech does not make up for the coated-in-molasses control, idiotic AI, and feeling of unease the game puts forth. Worse yet, the game is boring, repetitive, and simply not fun. Save your money for something with more substance.
While I applaud taking a chance on a crazy idea, Fallout 76 would undoubtedly have been a better and more engaging experience as a traditional open world RPG. As it stands, this is a broken, unfun, and repetitive title that I can’t recommend. And that hurts me to say.
So is this a good game? Yes, sometimes, but only if they manage to sufficiently patch it.
Although there's a very competent core loop and entertaining resource management sim somewhere within State of Decay 2, it's really, really, broken. Unacceptably so. It frustrated me mightily to see a flash of a game I wanted to play, only to be immediately reminded that it's not ready for release.
Sadly, Pulse is a linear experience, with a critical route that must be followed. Curiosity sapped.
The whole experience frustrates me. Driving at insane speeds on a wise cracking sentient motorcycle should be gaming nirvana, but the writing, mechanics, and design of Loc0Cycle are subpar. It's not worth the price of admission, and is one of the Xbox One's weaker launch titles.
the ability to make the gun point at the right spot is the difference between gaming nirvana and controller chucking rage. Go ahead and ask my controller where this experience leaned.
Cities XXL is a reasonably good city building game in a vacuum. It offers a decent creative experience, with flexible building options, while looking quite nice. Unfortunately, it performs extremely poorly. Then there's the elephant in the room – the other Cities games. They look the same, they perform the same, and save minor changes they ARE the same. Cities XXL even appears in the taskbar as Cities XL. For that reason, I cannot recommend Cities XXL. Instead, consider picking up a previous entry in the series for far less money to feed your creative self with some city building goodness.
Crimson Dragon isn't the worst Xbox One launch game, but it's far from good. The RPG elements have promise but lack the polish, while the gameplay and visuals fail to resonate on any level. It's a title that feels devoid of passion, and not even the great soundtrack can save the game's flying 18 wheelers from utter mediocrity.
Though it packs plenty of nostalgia and a lovely art style, Open Roads lacks the most important part of a narrative adventure – at least for me – a memorable and impactful story. Genre regulars may want to take a chance as the time investment is low, but for my money I’d much rather replay What Remains of Edith Finch or even one of this team’s prior efforts like Tacoma.
Gears Tactics tries some new things, but ultimately results in a game that’s less tactics oriented than the name suggests. It’s a competent experience, but completely whiffs on character with a lackluster story and every tool is a hammer class design.
_____________________________ “The game doesn't manage to create anything resembling tension as you play
The translation is unbelievably, hilariously bad.
All in all, Shiftlings is a passable entry into the platform puzzle genre. The gas shifting mechanic is certainly a novel one, but is relied on almost exclusively in puzzle solving where some more creativity would have been appreciated. If you're itching to bounce around and solve puzzles, you could do worse than Shiftlings – just don't expect a mind altering experience.
At about 5 hours long The Thin Silence isn't a huge time investment, but a big chunk of that time is the mechanical segments that only distracted from the more interesting and important story.
[F]ans of the anime might find something of value here provided they can tolerate game design that was bad 10 years ago. Equally, fans of Dynasty Warriors will probably go nuts for this title as it rehashes the same old ideas with new characters. For my money, I'd steer entirely clear unless you have a borderline unhealthy obsession with One Piece or Dynasty Warriors, or just really want to wipe out thousands of brainless enemies (which is cool – everybody has their vices).
_____________________ “I expected some microtransactions, but it's an exceptionally greasy implementation.
If you have a solid group of five you can count on to play with at all times, Evolve might be worth a look. With some balancing, I could even see Evolve becoming quite popular among the hardcore e-sports types. For the rest of us who just want to jump in and have some fun, I'd recommend looking elsewhere.
Fort Solis is a moderately successful first effort from Fallen Leaf. It scores points for atmosphere and good voice work, but suffers from clashing tonality. Tension is often severed before it takes hold, and the experience wraps up before exploring threads sufficiently. I understand why the scope is limited mostly to the critical path, but there were numerous threads along the way I wanted desperately to be able to tug at. Fort Solis isn’t exactly blazing any new trails, but there’s an entertaining few hours to be had here for fans of narrative adventures.
It’s hokey and drawn out, but taps into nostalgia for the series admirably