Like all good games, the post-apocalyptic shooters in the Metro series have evolved with each iteration. But while Metro Exodus (Xbox One, Limited Edition Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Limited Edition PlayStation 4, PC) does so in some interesting (though not unexpected) ways, some of the new aspects of this sci-fi first-person shooter don’t work as well here as they do in other games.
With Rage 2 (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) only a few months away (May 14th, for those keeping score at home), the good people at Bethesda Softworks recently held an event at a loft in downtown Los Angeles where they gave game journalists a chance to play a bit of this open world first-person shooter. What follows are my impression of this game.
Suffice it to say, spoilers follow.
Released in 1998, the original Resident Evil 2 was, at the time, one of the better survival horror games ever made. But times change, and if 2015’s faithful remake of Resident Evil is any indication, the original Resident Evil 2 wouldn’t hold up today. Thankfully, the good people at Capcom have gone a different route with this new edition of Resident Evil 2 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), which not only boasts modern-style controls, but reworks other aspects to make this feel like…well, not a whole new game, but certainly a revived one.
It’s funny, 2018 wasn’t an especially great year for video games — not the games I like to play, anyway — but it also wasn’t an especially great year for terrible video games. Most of the bad games I played this year were more disappointing than outright disasters.
Regardless, here — in no particular order — are the worst video games I played in 2018.
While 2018 wasn’t an especially great year for video games, there were a bunch that I had a lot of fun playing.
Here, in no particular order, are the best games I played in 2018.
This past summer, when Bethesda announced Fallout 76 (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC), director Todd Howard made a point of noting that while the game was multiplayer focused, you could still play this post-apocalyptic adventure on your own. As someone who prefers to play games that way, I decided to put this assertion to the test, and what I found was that while you can go it alone in Fallout 76, you may not want to.
In anticipation of their motorcycle racing game Ride 3 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC) being released on November 30th, the good people of Milestone held an event at the W Hotel in Los Angeles — no, the other one — where they gave me the opportunity to pick the brain of Federico Spada, the game’s Level Designer.
Though he was a xenophobic racist, H.P. Lovecraft was also an inventive writer of occult horror stories that have inspired and influenced everything from the Hellboy comics and misspelled Metallica songs to episodes of South Park and, just recently, The Simpsons. And that’s not even counting all the books and comics by Alan Moore, Clive Barker, William S. Burroughs, and many, many others. And yet, attempts to translate his works into the medium of video games have largely fallen flat or just been superficial in their liberal use of tentacles. But in the new adventure game Call Of Cthulhu (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), Lovecraft’s unique aesthetics are well crafted into an interesting adventure game. Well, if you’re in the mood for observation over action.
At the risk of sounding like Homer Simpson, the term “arcade game” is thrown around a lot these days…. But while there are a lot of games that are arcade-esque, most of them wouldn’t actually work in an arcade, where you’d have to insert a quarter or two to start playing. And then there’s the turret shooter Heavy Fire: Red Shadow (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC), which really does feel like something you’d find in an arcade…and is all the better for it.