Last week, at their offices outside Los Angeles, the good people at Respawn held an event where, for the first time, they showed off footage from single-player campaign in their upcoming sci-fi shooter sequel, Titanfall 2, which will be available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 28th.
For more than a hundred and fifty years, it’s been illegal to judge a book by its cover, and similar snap judgements about other forms of entertainment are equally discouraged.
But while you wouldn’t be wrong to temper your expectations about the top-down, twin-stick shooter #KILLALLZOMBIES because it has an all-caps hashtag for a name, the game’s low-rent cheesiness is just one of this game’s many fundamental problems.
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.
Some games are so bad that you don’t play them, you endure them. Which is how I feel after suffering through the combative, arcade-style racing game Carmageddon Max Damage (PlayStation 4, Xbox One), a game so infuriating and fundamentally flawed that it’s nearly unplayable.
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.
As someone who played miniature golf all through high school and college, let me assure the last word you should ever associate with mini golf is “dangerous.” But by adding such words as “bouncy,” “destructive,” and “ridiculous” to the things you can say about the physics-based arcade game Dangerous Golf (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), the good people at Three Fields Entertainment have made a mini golf game that’s, well, okay, not dangerous — it’s still just a video game — but it is a lot more fun than most golf video games, mini or otherwise.
In anticipation of Dead Island 2 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One) possibly coming out this year, Deep Silver are releasing the Dead Island Definitive Collection (PlayStation 4, Xbox One) which includes 2011’s Dead Island and its 2013’s stand-alone expansion Dead Island Riptide, their respective add-ons, and a new side-scrolling arcade game called Dead Island Retro Revenge (digital versions of Dead Island: Definitive Edition and Dead Island Riptide: Definitive Edition are being also sold separately, but Dead Island Retro Revenge is only available in the Dead Island Definitive Collection).
And while neither this compilation nor these updated games are worth buying if you already own them, obviously, for those who’ve fallen behind on their zombie hunting, the Dead Island Definitive Collection is a solid though not perfect compilation.