One of the more disappointing games of 2015 was FAST Racing Neo, a futuristic racing game that had great potential, but squandered it by not including some important options. But while the sequel Fast RMX (Switch) doesn’t add all of the options it needs, it’s still a noticeable improvement over its predecessor.
When Nintendo first unveiled The Legend Of Zelda Breath Of The Wild (Switch, WiiU), many people looked at the game’s wide open world and wondered if it was going to be a Zelda version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It is with this in mind that I — as someone who’s more a fan of the latter than the former — present this assessment of the game.
Long before Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, or The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, fantasy fans who wanted to engage in epic adventures either had to play such table top games as Dungeons & Dragons or they had to read such Chose Your Own-esque interactive novels as The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain. Well, now you can do it all with The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain (iOS), a video game that recreates the titular interactive novel on your iPad by including mechanics from the pen and paper version of D&D.
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 yet another example of how old genres can still learn new tricks, I present Candleman (Xbox One), a puzzling platformer that has you, as the titular form of illumination, running and jumping his way through a complicated and dark world much like you have before and will undoubtedly do again.