Final Reviews
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Bulletstorm’s narrative dangerously straddles the line between the endearing and the obnoxious, featuring highly juvenile writing and oftentimes bizarre – yet imaginative – phraseology. Fortunately, the endearing triumphs over the irritating – Bulletstorm has a considerable degree of heart, has its own distinct identity, embracing humor fiercely, and mostly departing from more mature, gritty themes,…
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Little Nightmares is frequently a very beautiful game, its environments deftly evoking sensations of anxiety and dread; tension abounds, eeriness is deliberately and fiercely sought. Much of this eeriness stems from the bold interplay of light and dark, an interplay most marked towards the narrative’s opening, where darkness is particularly abundant; dark, large, and sometimes…
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Rise of the Tomb Raider boasts a highly compelling narrative, abounding in mature themes, discussing such matters as dedication to the self, to family, to society. At the center of the narrative is the fabled Divine Source, said to contain the secrets of immortality, and thusly heavily desired, sought by those with altruistic motivations, and…
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Aesthetically, Bastion is a masterpiece, its environments often singular in their beauty, abounding in creativity and whimsicality. Much of this beauty stems from the bold usage of color, vibrant greens having a very prominent presence, resulting in an almost inviting atmosphere, suggesting tranquility, bliss. But the color palette is multi-faceted – it is not monopolized…
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Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts is painfully generic in all aspects of its design, and this genericness is most observable in the title’s narrative, wholly unoriginal and lacking in any real innovation or ambition. Worsening this genericness is the barebones nature of the narrative, merely existing as a framework for the gameplay, which is prioritized to…
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Battlefield 1 is terribly bleak tonally, its themes characterized by a certain unflinching maturity; difficult subjects are not skirted but are instead embraced – narratively, the title is a masterwork. In terms of construction, it is comprised of five distinct “war stories,” each one being totally unique, featuring different protagonists and secondary characters, showing a…
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When regarding the Dark Knight mythos, Batman: The Telltale Series expertly manages to fuse together the old and the new, taking existing characters and portraying them in a new, sometimes startling, light – the characters repeatedly upset expectations, while the strengths of these preexisting characters are supplemented by a whole suite of new characters, whose…
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Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons expertly manages to court player engagement and investment from its very opening, beginning with a well-animated cutscene, seeing the death of a still unidentified woman, the precise nature of her death being drowning. The cutscene, also, shows the futile attempts of a young boy to prevent that drowning; tossed…
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Splinter Cell: Conviction’s narrative shows no innovation, characterized by a dearth of ambition, embracing to the last the tropes of generic, uninspired spy fiction. Some intrigue is admittedly present, but it is fleeting – a few moments of narrative greatness, emotional heft, cannot salvage what is otherwise disastrous, unengaging. The intrigue which is present stems…
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Aesthetically, I Am Alive suffers from a near perpetual ugliness, the environments devoid of any real creativity – texture quality is poor, while an intrusive, unappealing fog lingers always, cutting down on visibility. This precise element of the presentation – the all-consuming, obstructing fog – only hampers potential joys of exploration, while exploration’s appeal is…
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The Darkness 2 boasts a highly ambitious narrative, setting out to communicate a very grounded, human tale, eagerly clutching at the psychological. At the core of this narrative is the protagonist, Jackie Estacado, a youthful hitman for the mob, and his deceased – murdered – lover, Jenny, a friend from the orphaned Jackie’s boyhood. Frequent…
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Fear 2 suffers from near perpetual genericness, never advancing anything original or innovative – everything here is derivative, the game mostly lifeless and uninspired. The environments, as illustration, are all characterized by blandness, with very poor texture quality and an overall poverty of creativity or imagination, as boring greys and browns dominate the color palette,…
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Creatively, Deadlight meets with repeated successes, displaying much visual inventiveness, innovative and arresting in its presentation. Much of this innovation stems from the game’s highly stylized cutscenes, boldly adopting a comic book aesthetic, with clever usage of color, an emphasis on the interplay between light and dark. In a stroke of creative mastery, and fostering…
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Inside is characterized by a striking sense of minimalism, the narrative totally devoid of formal exposition or even voice acting, the narrative instead advanced through clever environmental storytelling. Alongside this minimalism, ambiguity abounds, the game fostering and even encouraging vastly different interpretations; one player will walk away from the experience with decidedly different emotions than…
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Steam World Dig 2 possesses an abundance of charm, manifest in its various explorable environments, in the robotic NPC’s who inhabit them, each individually named, each possessive of a unique visual design, each accordingly possessing a distinct identity, almost all of them steeped in humor of some sort, humor marking a commonality. Furthering this commanding…
Games With Grey 