Hideo Kojima's farewell to Metal Gear Solid is a dream: the best ever stealth game, and the high point of a remarkable series.
Devil's Third is caught between genres it never quite brings together, and despite fun multiplayer never gets over its shaky foundations.
Everything adds up to a game with good ideas that is sorely lacking in refinement – the punitive flaws of The Swindle's meta-structure and procedural generation could have been ameliorated with minor tweaks. This feels 80% of the way to a great game, but that missing 20% soon comes to dominate the rest.
Rocket League is simply a joy to play, win or lose. And with friends? Wow. This is the most fun you'll ever have behind the wheel of a rocket powered football playing car.
When playing DMC4: SE you can see how certain parts of the design had grown archaic.
Put like that it almost sounds sinister, like this was made by a committee of scientists in lab conditions. Really it's been made by people who understand the joy of play and, much more crucially, that it's not just about the numbers. In the end it doesn't matter that Heroes of the Storm has 37 heroes, and the competition has hundreds. It doesn't matter that it has more maps, or no items, or shorter games. It doesn't even matter how many players it has. All that matters is it's more fun.
Chroma Squad is a decent game but, far more importantly, it is a little time capsule, a big tribute, and a perfect period piece for big kids.
Not a Hero isn't perfect, but it does enough to confirm that Roll7 is a developer to watch. This is a game where the design principles shine through in every second of the action, foregrounded by a winning combination of clever visual tricks and slick production values. At times everything comes together and this is a delicious, feedback-heavy and flowing system - at others you'll be chewing the analogue stick in anger. Bunnylord, in other words, is a candidate with flaws. But still worth your support.
We may have to wait for the revolution, but Blackrock Mountain is business as usual for Hearthstone. And business is good.
The Assignment and The Consequence are dark, they're frightening, they get the blood pumping, and there's nothing else quite like them around. You'll know when you've been Tango'd.
The structure underlying Bloodborne is not just original but coherent, and because of this the impact of everything it does is commensurately greater. This is total design. It feels wonderful to have a world like this and, over a week of solid play later, feel that there's so much more to discover. And it's awful to know that, in all likelihood, it will be a painfully long time until I play anything else that matches up to Bloodborne's breadth of vision, generosity of content, and - yes - genius.
Revelations 2 is a great spin-off title, and manages the uncommon balancing act of making series fans happy while offering something new.
With the ability to play as a monster against a human team, Evolve offers something unique – and surely one of gaming's best-ever tribute acts. When you're fleeing from the hunters and get trapped in their containment field, swatting desperately while looking for an out, you think back to those Power Pills and how far we've come.
[I]f you like games about getting better, where you're mastering deep systems and having your skills progressively tested, then Ground Zeroes is the best 50-hour demo you'll ever play.
With that said, don't take away too negative an impression of GW3:D. Though what it adds doesn't do much for me, what it brings from GW2 is simply brilliant, looks better than ever, and has never been on PC before – and everyone should try Pacifism mode at least once in their life. Parts of GW3:D are wonderful. But the most telling thing is that they're all contained in 2D rectangles.
I said Valkyria Chronicles wasn't just a brilliant game, but a brilliant Sega game. There's an element of wishful thinking to that, but for me Sega has always been one of those developers that occasionally touches perfection – and with unexpected, original games. The mechanics Valkyria Chronicles uses are potentially dissonant, but the game is a unified whole as well as a work of real craftsmanship.
There is apparently a 5GB patch incoming for Lords of the Fallen, which may make a difference, but at this point I'd advise steering well clear unless you're rocking an absolutely monster rig. Even then, is it worth it? From the not-inconsiderable amount I've played of LotF it feels like a game that lacks the finesse and precision of its inspiration, lacking any kind of multiplayer element and offering only a Diablo-esque quantity of loot to keep you coming back. Presuming that the game is patched to a workable state RPS will return to take another look in a week or so's time – but until then, you'd be better-served replaying the Souls games.
Japan's Platinum Games has done it again, applying style and flourish to a control system of immense depth and assurance
Intuitive controls, beautiful circuits, and a perfectly realigned power-up system – Mario Kart 8 has set out to top the 1992 original
The latest internet craze lets you experience life as a goat. It's the gaming equivalent of a novelty single