Reviews
514
Hellraiser: Revival wants to make you squirm. It lives in discomfort, it thrives in fear. Moments in this game will send chills to your very core.
Now, this is podra-- (Ed. note: I killed the reviewer before he could finish this)
Overall, Halo Infinite is great but something of a mixed bag. Fans of the genre will certainly enjoy the additional mobility granted by the grappling hook while the rest of the gameplay delivers that well-polished Halo experience that shooter-heads have come to know and love over the decades. It's a bit of a shame that the story doesn't quite stick the landing, but add in the fantastic (and free) multiplayer and you've got a really solid foundation for whatever comes next, be that a story expansion or an eventual full-on sequel.
Instead they included an enormous roster of new ideas both obvious and unexpected, and took these additions and enhancements to over-the-top extremes. Eternal may not have quite the same purity of focus as its predecessor, but it's so relentless about throwing everything in its toolbox at you at a thousand miles an hour that it's often hard to stop and notice.
But the whole of the game never achieves that balance. There's a deep thread of insecurity that runs through it, one that manifests in its unwillingness to commit all the way to the arduousness of its main character's task, that's too willing to break that quietness with mediocre action, and that never trusts the player to understand even its most basic ideas without hitting them over the head with them. There is a weirdo, avant spirit to Death Stranding that I do admire, but that spirit fails to carry the game anywhere worthwhile.
While Modern Warfare certainly has its issues, I’m having a really terrific time with it. The audiovisual aspects of the game have received significant upgrades. It’s a great-looking game with really strong sound design. That stuff helped make the campaign worth seeing, and it’s part of why I keep coming back to the competitive multiplayer, too. The meaningful tweaks to the leveling process matched up with some solid map design and great modes certainly don’t hurt, either. It’s a real shame that the co-op is pretty much dead on arrival, but the rest of the game is still absolutely worth looking at.
Great performances, strong action, and a solid sense of design all come together to make Control one of my favorite games so far in 2019. Control feels like Remedy finally making all of its different interests play well together, better than they've ever done it before.
A lot of work needs to be done on a wide variety of the game's fundamental elements before it can join the ranks of other redeemed loot games like Diablo III, Destiny, and The Division. Whether EA will give BioWare the latitude to overhaul the parts of the game that need it--and whether it's even technically feasible for them to do that in the first place--are questions with uncertain answers.
The developer's uncertain future under Square Enix made a fair number of headlines a while back, before IO went independent and became the sole master of Agent 47's destiny. The fact that Hitman 2 turned out as well as it did in spite of that business turmoil is a great sign for the future of the franchise, and we should all be fortunate enough to get to play another one of these games a couple of years from now.
Tetris Effect will also have weekend challenges, where players must come together and clear a certain number of lines to unlock new avatars for players to use on their profiles, adding a reason to come back to the game frequently. Tetris Effect, from top to bottom, is my favorite iteration of Tetris yet. The music and visuals work together to create a truly unique Tetris experience, that is only enhanced by VR.