Final Reviews
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Mirror’s Edge has a lot of heart. While never venturing towards the comedic or the juvenile, the game is characterized by a light-hearted playfulness, much of this playfulness manifest in the various cutscenes which punctuate the narrative. Animated in a cartoonish, stylistic fashion, these cinematics do much to distinguish the title from other games in…
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Battlefield 3 begins with a bang; Blackburn, one of the primary playable characters, is seen fleeing from some violent unknown pursuers, rushing through the dense New York City streets before promptly leaping atop a subway car, evading one group of pursuers only to meet with a greater hostility: the train is bustling with enemies, eager…
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The world-building of Metro 2033 marks its greatest strength, even as the precise history of that world is left rather vague. There is a brief cutscene on the title screen, which details a violent atomic bombing, devastating Russia and forcing its inhabitants to retreat underground, living in the tunnels of once-derelict train tunnels, now improved…
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Thief is an incredibly immersive title, with a near constant maintenance of the first-person perspective. The master thief and protagonist, Garret, navigates the game world with ease, deftly climbing boxes to reach rooftops, climbing ladders, and scaling predetermined walls and structures. All of these actions are accompanied by incredible animations, which bolster greatly the immersive…
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Faery: Legends of Avalon opens in a fairly routine fashion. The customizable player character is awakened from a period of protracted slumber and instructed by his king to traverse the varied lands, and right the varied ills that were then plaguing them. In efforts to this end, various worlds are visited, each distinctively different from…
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Gears of War at times seems like a soulless game. The mechanics are competent but uninspired, while the environments are totally lacking in diversity and imagination, characterized solely by bland, muted browns and greys; the color palette is uninviting, with very little emphasis upon the creative. The majority of the game is spent roaming through…
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Rage opens with a brief explanatory cutscene, detailing a world fallen and collapsed, the Earth turning into a desolate wasteland. The player character, an unnamed male, awakes from a state of stasis, seemingly frozen in time for hundreds of years. What was the point of his slumber? What precisely happened to Earth? These things aren’t…
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Titanfall 2 is an interesting, ambitious game. The developers ceaselessly sought to push forward traditional shooter controls, giving the player great mobility and freedom of movement, and mostly succeed. Despite the relative complexity which might typically accompany such systems, here everything is very intuitive; wall running, double jumping, sliding – combining these abilities is seamless…
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In terms of presentation, Borderlands 3 is incredible, particularly creatively. The various explorable planets are full of diversity, each having their own unique character; the starting area, Pandora, with its sandy, oppressive deserts and craggy mountains is decidedly different from, say, the planet of Promethea, with its impossibly tall skyscrapers and seemingly advanced technology. Neon…
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Tomb Raider is, for me, a very special title. It succeeds both narratively and in its multiple, varied gameplay systems. Beyond these two things, its greatest achievement is the crafting of our protagonist, Lara Croft, who undergoes throughout her journey a notable shift, a maturation, and maybe even a phase of disillusionment; the Lara…
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The Lost Chapters component of Fable Anniversary exists as a fairly straightforward expansion, though I am hesitant to even apply that term to the added content, which is rather slight; I was able to complete the entire thing in three or so hours, taking in most of the sights and deliberately and carefully exploring…
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Fable Anniversary’s gameworld is fantastic. The land of Albion, influenced strongly by Medieval England, is a beautiful land, one of great diversity in terms of locales; technically, it may be seen as unimpressive, or possibly just dated; the textures are not exactly mind-blowing, and the facial animations and character designs for the NPC’s are…
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There’s something completely refreshing about Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. The game is almost hyperlinear in terms of design, with very few branching pathways, proudly eschewing the considerable open world bloat, presenting overall a cinematic experience. Still, it can be basic at times, in terms of mechanics. Even other linear, straightforward games offer…
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Watch Dogs as a game is engaged in a fierce struggle to discover and assert its own distinct identity. In the end, it fails in ever achieving the much-desired uniqueness. It has taken the mechanics of other open world games, and while they have been transplanted here fairly accurately, the very fact that it…
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Assassin’s Creed IV: Freedom Cry manages to condense into one neat package much of what made the base game great. The naval aspects are present, though they receive noticeably less emphasis, as would be expected. The land-based gameplay is still there, and the stealth system is as solid as ever – not great, but…
Games With Grey 