In many top-down, twin-stick arcade games, you either shoot your enemies or smack them, but you usually don’t get to do both. And if you do, it’s just a quick slap because you’ve run out of ammo, but just you wait, when I get more, I’m gonna shoot you so bad. But Livelock (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC) largely throws that unwritten rule out the window and the results are game so nice you’ll want to play it twice.
Given how important graphics are to video games, it’s odd how infrequent the colors of those graphics are used as a mechanic. With the exception of puzzles games, colors are usually just used as visual clues; red means “this thing explodes,” and so on. But that’s not the case for the creative and adorable 2D, side-scrolling, puzzling platformer Hue (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Vita, PC via Steam), in which you change the world you’re in by changing its colors.
By mixing elements of role-playing games, first-person shooters, and stealth action games within the framework of a cyberpunk story, 2011’s Deus Ex Human Revolution was basically the Ghost In The Shell game that fans of that anime had been waiting for since the movie’s 1995 debut, myself included. And though we’re still waiting for the Ghost people to get it right, we can at least enjoy the next best thing with Deus Ex Mankind Divided (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC).
“Space…the final frontier.” And in a perfect world, the space exploration game No Man’s Sky (PlayStation 4, PC) would’ve been as fun and engaging as watching the crew of the Enterprise boldly go where no one has gone before. But thanks to some fundamental flaws and a lack of variety, No Man’s Sky is instead a dull and annoying voyage.
Last week, at their offices outside Los Angeles, the good people at Respawn held an event where, for the first time, they showed off footage from single-player campaign in their upcoming sci-fi shooter sequel, Titanfall 2, which will be available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 28th.
McFarlane Toys have announced that they’ve released a series of Five Nights At Freddy’s Construction toys inspired by the horror game for PC, iOS, and Android.
Having never been, I can’t tell you what it’s like to go scuba diving. But if the third-person, underwater exploration game Abzu (PlayStation 4, PC) is any indication, then I want to be like Sebastian in The Little Mermaid (or Homer Simpson in the episode “Homer Badman”) and live under the sea.
As someone who gets winded just walking up a flight of stairs, I know I will never ever climb Mt. Everest in real life. Which is why I’m glad I got to check out Everest VR for the HTC Vive, which kind of, sort of, but not really simulates what it would be like to climb the great mountain. And while it succeeds in some respects, and fails in others, it’s still an interesting experience.
It’s always frustrating when the core of a game is solid, but everything else about it is so flawed, sloppy, or extraneous that it ruins the whole thing. Such is the case with MXGP2 The Official Motocross Videogame (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), which is fun when you hit the track, but draining when you’re trying to get there.