With special powers, first-person gunplay, and a damaged art-deco setting, some have wondered if the sci-fi shooter Prey (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) was going to be like BioShock in space. And in many ways, it is. But thanks to a lot of little things that collectively numbed my enthusiasm, this action game just never grabbed me as much as BioShock.
Some people really don’t like it when you compare one game to another, even if they’re remarkably similar and are released around the same time. And that goes double if the comparison isn’t entirely favorable. Such will inevitably be the case with Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), a sneaky first-person shooter that has a lot in common with the stealthy, third-person gun game Sniper Elite 4 that came out just two months prior. But while Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 isn’t as good as Sniper Elite 4, it’s still a solid game in its own right for those who enjoy shooting virtual people from far, far away.
As the critical and commercial success of last year’s Doom showed, fans of sci-fi first-person shooters still enjoy gun games that don’t take themselves too seriously. It is to those people that I’d like to introduce Bulletstorm Full Clip Edition (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), a uniquely over-the-top sci-fi first-person shooter. Well, assuming they didn’t already meet this game when it originally came out in 2011. But while this version doesn’t add enough to make it worth buying if you’ve played it already, those who missed the original are in luck because this is one ridiculous and ridiculously fun shooter.
It could be argued that it a sequel should be judged on its own, and not against previous installments in that series. And that assertion carries extra weight with such games as Mass Effect Andromeda (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC), a third-person sci-fi adventure that’s a sequel to a self-contained trilogy. It’s too bad the world, and my critical lizard brain, doesn’t work that way because while Mass Effect Andromeda is a solid adventure, it’s no Mass Effect.
Video games can make you feel like you’re a soldier, a racecar driver, even a limber archeologist. But in the upcoming game What Remains Of Edith Finch, which will be out April 25th for PlayStation 4 and PC, the developers are trying to make you feel like you’re both reading a sad book, and the subject of the sad book. How exactly does that work? To find out, I played a small part of the game while peppering Giant Sparrow’s Ian Dallas, the game’s Creative Director, with some questions great and small.
As an old fool who likes to kick it old school (well, sometimes), I always appreciate when someone makes a side-scrolling shooter that brings me back to the days of Defender, Gradius, and R-Type. Which is why I spent the last couple days playing Shoot The Dragons (iOS), a simple but addictive free-to-play shoot-’em-up that made me want to stick quarters into my iPad.
Y’know, sometimes things don’t need to be so complicated. Bagels. Pizza. The instruction manual for your new TV. It’s something I thought about as I struggled my way through NieR Automata (PlayStation 4, PC), a third-person, action-oriented, cyberpunk adventure game that was a lot more fun before it got so complicated.
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.