Having learned survival skills in 2013’s Tomb Raider, and honed them in 2015’s Rise Of The Tomb Raider, Lara Croft is putting them to the test in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC), the final game in this prequel trilogy. But while this third-person action-packed adventure is as effortlessly fun as the other two, this isn’t just the same game in a new outfit.
It’s funny how all the talk of licensed games always being terrible goes right out the window when the thing being licensed is a comic book. Take the interactive adventures of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. While he’s had some terrible games, people mostly remember such good ones as Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows, Ultimate Spider-Man, and, of course, Spider-Man 2. Thankfully, it is the latter category that that we find Spider-Man (PlayStation 4, PS4 Collector’s Edition), the wall-crawler’s newest adventure, and first from the good people of Insomniac Games.
Like other people who’ve made co-op games, the good people at Rebellion have said that their third-person shooter Strange Brigade (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) was designed to be played with friends, but can still be fun for those who don’t play well with others. As one of those latter folk, I decided to put their words, and their game, to the test.
Here’s my review of Strange Brigade as a single-player game.
When I was thirteen, circa 1981, I spent many afternoons at the community center near my house, dropping quarter after quarter into the now classic arcade shooter Tempest. So it is with great sadness that I must tell you that the latest updated remake, Tempest 4000 (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC), failed to grab me in any way.
Science fiction has a long history of covertly (and not so covertly) tackling sensitive subjects of a social and political nature. Issues of race and racism, for instance, have been explored in everything from the original Star Trek and the movie District 9 to such novels as Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness Of Ghosts. And now it’s the driving force behind thethird-person cyberpunk video game Detroit: Become Human (PlayStation 4), the newest interactive movie from Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls developer Quantic Dream. It’s just too bad the game isn’t as fun as it is thoughtful.
In anticipation Shadow Of The Tomb Raider being released this September on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, the good people from Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics held an event at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles where they gave journalists an opportunity to play the opening level of the game. What follows are my impressions of it.
Suffice it to say, some spoilers follow. But only some.
Whether you thought it was triumph or a tragedy, there’s no denying that Star Wars: The Last Jedi was one of the most divisive movies in the Star Wars saga. Thankfully, the same cannot be said about the two tables that comprise the Star Wars Pinball The Last Jedi collection for Pinball FX3 (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) and Zen Pinball (iOS, Mac, Android), which will satisfy fans of pinball as well as people who both loved and loathed The Last Jedi.
In The Godfather III, Michael Corleone lamented, “Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in!” But while that’s also the situation that Kratos finds himself in at the beginning of the new God Of War (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Collector’s Edition), the game’s seamless mix of updated and classic mechanics into an epic and effortless third-person action extravaganza won’t have you making any similar complaints.
For the last few years, the bar against which I’ve judged all racing games is the high one set by the Forza games. So you know it’s a good thing when I say that the arcade-style, off-road racing game GRAVEL (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC) is rather Forza-esque.