Simon Ordell’s journey through the Scottish town of St. Amelia in 1996 is not without its shortcomings, but the experience is an affecting one buoyed by the first-person perspective.
Simon Ordell’s journey through the Scottish town of St. Amelia in 1996 is not without its shortcomings, but the experience is an affecting one buoyed by the first-person perspective.
Building on the already-great remake of the first game, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter masterfully updates the gameplay and timeless story, adding up to what is now the Trails series’ defining entry, and one of the best RPGs of the year.
It’s evident NHL 27 is a leap year for the franchise as it doesn’t innovate on the modes and immersion already present. Instead, it soft-launches patches that barely pass as a winter update.
While far from a one-to-one remake, Contra: Operation Galuga effectively captures the spirit of the original game while modernizing just enough to make for an exciting, albeit short, adventure.
For all the inspirations the game wears on its sleeve, it never rises above them, and thus feels like a title in search of an identity and desperate for a specific kind of player.
2K's yearly WWE offering may not bowl over diehard players in the broad sense, but its incremental updates and continued polish make it the strongest contender since the franchise's comeback.
Skull and Bones impresses with the breadth of its world, opportunities for illicit trade, and explosive naval battles, but several features wear thin over time.
Helldivers 2 swaps the top-down perspective for third-person while maintaining the frenetic, ballistic loop of crash-landing on hostile planets, completing difficult missions, and extracting against all odds.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink should be lauded for getting most of the way to being a memorable title, but it needed a little more ambition and unique content to reach that goal.
Even with some outdated and repetitive elements inherited through the 18-year-old structure of the original, Persona 3 Reload is one of the best entries in one of the most acclaimed modern role-playing franchises in video games.
As a package, Tekken 8 doesn’t reach the heights of recent rivals, but when the match begins, and you’re exploiting openings to unleash flashy combo strings and air juggles, it remains a thrilling, if very familiar, one-on-one experience.
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy succeeds with everything it sets out to do, bringing three great games to modern consoles in their most approachable forms to date.
