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.
For the first time since the series began fifteen years ago, the new Call Of Duty does not have a story-driven single-player campaign. And yet, the good people at Treyach who made Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC) have repeatedly said that it still has something for people who prefer to play solo.
As one of those people, I decided to put their assertion to the test, and found that while you can play this on your own, it may not be for very long.
For years, the video game Pinball Arcade offered faithful recreations of real pinball tables, while Zen Studios’ Zen Pinball, Pinball FX, and their sequels featured original tables that paired realistic physics with unrealistic mechanics. But that’s no longer the case now that Zen Studios have secured the rights to tables by the iconic pinball company Williams. The first three of which — 1992’s The Getaway: High Speed II, 1996’s Junk Yard; and 1997’s Medieval Madness — are now available for Pinball FX3 (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) as Williams Pinball: Volume 1. (A fourth, 1992’s Fish Tales, will also be available, but will be free, and wasn’t sent with the other three, hence it’s not included in this review). But while they are almost as authentic as the versions made for Pinball Arcade counterparts, there are some differences that will delight pinball fans but annoy purists.
Like every installment of this open world racing game series, Forza Horizon 4 (Xbox One, Xbox One Ultimate Edition, PC, PC Delxue Edition) has new gameplay mechanics that add depth and variety. But it’s the tweaking of an established system that changes the most about this year’s model, and not for entirely for the better.
At its core, Shadows: Awakening (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC) is an isometric, third-person, action-centric role-playing game in the vein of Diablo III. But what sets it apart, and helps make it one of the more engaging games of the year, is how it not only lets you switch between parallel dimensions, but also how it has you using this mechanic in clever ways.
While it’s silly to speculate about what Han Solo would eat if he was in our galaxy, or what TV shows he would binge, it’s a safe bet that he’d probably enjoy pinball. Maybe not obsessively, but when Chewie’s not around to play darts and Lando is off flirting with some waitress, it’s easy to image Han dropping a couple quarters into a pinball machine. But what makes me think he’d like the three tables included in the Star Wars Pinball: Solo pack for Zen Pinball 3 (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) — well, two out of three of them, anyway — is that they honor him and his recent biopic, Solo: A Star Wars Story, as well as his friends, in a way that’s fun for fans of pinball, the Star Wars saga, and smooth criminals alike.