Inspired by the recent Nickelodeon cartoon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutants In Manhattan (Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PC) is a fun third-person hack & slash action game that will engage fans of that kid-friendly animated series. But for older gamers who instead grew up on the ’80s cartoon or the original comic books — in which they were as big on Metallica as they were pizza — this game probably won’t hold your attention.
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.
With Shadow Of The Beast (PlayStation 4), the good people at Heavy Spectrum Entertainment Labs have resurrected a cult favorite that dates back to the era of the Commodore Amiga. Even cooler, they’ve made an compelling and addictive 2D side-scrolling hack & slash action game that doesn’t require you to be familiar with the original, or even the Commode Amiga, to get a kick out of. Or slice out of, as the case may be.
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.
With Uncharted 4 A Thief’s End (PlayStation 4), Naughty Dog are saying good bye to the third-person action-packed adventure series they first launched in 2007 with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. But while it’s not the best game in this series (it’s no Uncharted 2) nor the best game of its kind in recent years (it’s no Rise Of The Tomb Raider), it’s still an epic adventure and an equally compelling workout for your reflexes. Well, once it gets going, anyway.
With a name like Alienation (PlayStation 4), and a release date of 4-26, you might think Housemarque’s new shooter might not be serious. Or that it’s connected to the Alien movies. Turns out that neither are true. Instead, Alienation is a new, and rather interesting arcade shooter that layers the genre’s classic and still viable tenets with some creative mechanics not normally associated with this kind of game.
Because most video game remakes only improve the graphics, and even then only slightly, they’re usually pointless for anyone who’s already played the original. But the good people at Insomniac have thankfully bucked this trend, and in a big way, with this upgraded and (more importantly) updated version of Ratchet & Clank (PlayStation 4).