Y’know, sometimes things don’t need to be so complicated. Bagels. Pizza. The instruction manual for your new TV. It’s something I thought about as I struggled my way through NieR Automata (PlayStation 4, PC), a third-person, action-oriented, cyberpunk adventure game that was a lot more fun before it got so complicated.
Given that one of the best games of 2015 was the third-person action game Rise Of The Tomb Raider, and that one of the best games of 2016 was the prehistoric open world action/adventure game Far Cry Primal, you’d expect big things from Horizon Zero Dawn (PlayStation 4), which basically combines them. But it’s actually the adding of post-apocalyptic sci-fi elements, as well as bits of gameplay from some other great games, that helps make Horizon Zero Dawn one of the best games of 2017.
So a Viking, a samurai, and a knight walk onto a battlefield…. While this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, it’s actually the loose premise of For Honor (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC), a third-person hack & slash action game that isn’t funny…but isn’t all that fun, either.
In anticipation of their adventurous sci-fi first-person shooter Prey being released May 5th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, the good people at Arkane Studios and Bethesda Softworks held an event at the Andaz Hotel in Los Angeles where they gave local game journalists, myself included, a chance to play the first thirty, forty minutes of the game, and an opportunity to interview Ricardo Bare, the game’s lead designer [which you can read here]. What follows is my assessment of my brief time with the beginning of the game.
Suffice it to say, spoilers follow.
Though it was originally going to be a sequel to the 2006 sci-fi first-person shooter of the same name, the version of Prey being released on May 5th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC is actually a totally new, unconnected game that, unlike the original or scrapped sequel, is being developed by Arkane Studios; the Austin, Texas one, not the Lyon, France one that made Dishonored 2. To promote its release, Lead Designer Ricard Bare recently brought the game to Los Angeles, where he gave local journalist a chance to try it out [my assessment of which you can read here] and to ask him questions about it.
One of the downsides to both stealth games and sniper games is that constantly having to be slow and cautious can get tiresome.
But while the sneaky sniper game Sniper Elite 4 (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Switch) avoids this pitfall by letting go all gun blazing when the situation arises, what really makes this such an exciting and addictive action game is where you do all your shooting.
In anticipation of the motorcycle racing game Ride 2 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC) coming to North America on February 14th, the good people at Square Enix (who are publishing it) invited journalists to their offices in Los Angeles to get some hands-on time with the game while chatting with lead programmer Michele Caletti from Italy’s Milestone S.r.l.
Whenever the good people at Zen Studios make a virtual pinball table based on a movie, TV show, comic, or even another video game, they do their best to capture the spirit of the original inspiration. And that’s exactly what they’ve done with Star Wars Rogue One Pinball for Zen Pinball 2 (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Vita), Pinball FX 2 (Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC), Zen Pinball (iOS), and Zen Pinball HD (Android, Amazon)…for better or worse.
While I’ve long been someone who doesn’t enjoy sports — playing them, watching them, seeing them on my TV when The Simpsons should be on instead — I’ve also long been someone who doesn’t enjoy sports video games. Unless, of course, the game takes a less serious, arcade-ish approach. Such is the case with 3on3 Freestyle, a PlayStation 4-exclusive street basketball from Joycity, who previously made the street ball games Freestyle and Freestyle2 for PC. Though to figure out if I’d actually like it as much as enjoyed such similar games as One On One: Dr. J Vs Larry Bird and NBA Jam, I spoke to Chan Hyun Kim, the game’s executive producer to get the lowdown on this free-to-play game.