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.
Considering how much people fuss and fret over the quality of video game graphics and the visual fidelity of game consoles, it’s rather ironic how few games actually use their visual style as a gameplay mechanic. But in doing just that, the side-scrolling platformer Deadlight Director’s Cut (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC) — an augmented version of 2012’s Deadlight — turns something familiar into something far more compelling and fun.
Though platforming in first-person games can be problematic, the first-person platformer Mirror’s Edge managed to pull it off, and well. But while the same can be said for its sequel, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), the game has other problems that keep it from being anything more than just okay.
Considering that first-person shooters have been around since the early-’90s, you’d think any modern version would, at the very least, get the fundamental mechanics right. But that’s sadly not the case with Homefront The Revolution (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Mac), an open world first-person shooter that has some intriguing ideas, but is ultimately undermined by some rather basic but easily avoided problems.
In games, your objective may be to save the galaxy or rescue the princess, but the real goal, every time, is to just stay alive. After all, you can’t save the galaxy or rescue the princess if you’re dead. But in the clever puzzle game Life Goes On: Done To Death — an updated and expanded version of 2014’s Life Goes On that’s now available for PlayStation 4 as well as PC and Mac via Steam — the only way to complete your objective is to go against thousands of years of evolution and human nature and let yourself die. A lot.
By injecting new mechanics into an old school shooter — or maybe they injected old mechanics into a new school shooter — the good people at ID Software have done something interesting with the new Doom (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC). Though how much you’ll enjoy this sci-fi first-person shooter will depend more on how much you appreciate those old school mechanics more than the new ones.
Much like their Borderlands games, for which this is an obvious spiritual successor, Battleborn (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) is a sci-fi first-person that was designed by the good people of Gearbox Software to be a co-op game, but could be played solo if you really felt like it. But while some co-op games work well solo (The Division, Destiny), not all of them do (Rainbow Six Siege). And it’s somewhere in between, though leaning more towards the former, that we find Battleborn.