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OpinionImpressionsHivebusters Is A Great Gears DLC And A Fantastic Xbox Series X Showcase
Hivebusters is a new single-player DLC campaign released for Gears 5. It’s also one of the best-looking games on Xbox Series X and feels like a full Gears game compressed into a bite-size experience that has me excited for the future of Gears of War. This new $20 DLC campaign, which was released on December…
By Zack Zwiezen Published December 18, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsCall of Duty Season One Brings Much-Needed Maps To Cold War, But Warzone‘s ‘New’ Map Doesn’t Quite Work
Call of Duty’s Season One arrived earlier this week, bringing an ambitious number of new maps and modes to Black Ops Cold War and Warzone, as well as integrating the new level progression system into last year’s Modern Warfare. New maps were sorely needed and are appreciated, but the large rollout came with some problems On…
By S.E. Doster Published December 18, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsCall Of The Sea Is A Welcome Reprieve From All My Recent Video Game Murdering
There have been a lot of harsh, dour video games this fall. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla centered on conquest and amputation. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War featured history’s most cynical dirtbag. Cyberpunk 2077 is Cyberpunk 2077. If it’s all been a lot to stomach, consider a change of pace: the delightful Call of the…
By Ari Notis Published December 17, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsAssassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Yuletide Festival Is Off To A Buggy Start
‘Tis the season for snowy weather, holiday parties, and drunk vikings. The latest update for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla adds a new holiday-themed event to the game and covers your settlement in snow. But while the new free update is a bit of festive fun, adding new armor and decorations, it’s also got some annoying bugs.…
By Zack Zwiezen Published December 17, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsGTA Online’s New Island Is Boring
After weeks of teasing and trailers, Grand Theft Auto Online’s latest update, its biggest ever, was released today. The Cayo Perico Heist update adds a new island and heist to the game, as well as 250+ songs, new weapons, and the proverbial “more.” But the star of the update is that new island, Cayo Perico,…
By Zack Zwiezen Published December 15, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsCyberpunk 2077 Is Surprisingly Fine On Stadia
Cyberpunk 2077 is the biggest game of the year, but currently the game doesn’t look great or run well on consoles, especially the older base machines. But how does this big blockbuster game fair on Stadia? Surprisingly, the experience isn’t terrible and might even be better than playing on a console. Though it’s not perfect…
By Zack Zwiezen Published December 10, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsNew Flight Game Is Ace Combat’s Wingman
Project Wingman, an indie arcade dogfighting game for the PC, is a project I’ve had my eye on for years now, so it was cool this week to finally see it released on Steam. The work of a tiny development team—indeed most coding was handled by just one person, Aussie Abi Rahmani—Project Wingman has very…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 9, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsKate Bishop Makes Avengers Exciting Again, At Least For A Few Hours
The Kate Bishop version of Hawkeye has arrived as a new playable character for Marvel’s Avengers, bringing with her three or four hours of fresh single-player content to Square Enix’s stale co-op superhero game. To be fair, any new playable character would have had the same effect, but Kate is pretty damn great. Following the…
By Mike Fahey Published December 8, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsThe Original Fire Emblem Is A Weird Game For The Switch To End Its Year On
I’ve spent the last week, in odd moments here and there, helping Fire Emblem’s Prince Marth search for a legendary sword and defeat the forces of darkness to rescue his kingdom from an evil wizard. Throughout all of it, in good times and bad, one question kept bubbling up to the surface: why? Why did…
By Ethan Gach Published December 7, 2020 -
OpinionImpressions30 Hours With Cyberpunk 2077 Brings Mixed Feelings
Cyberpunk 2077, the most recent game from Witcher developer CD Projekt Red, was first announced in 2012. In the last couple years, it’s had an onslaught of hype and dripfed information, most of which I’ve ignored. The developers have promised unlimited freedom, unparalleled graphics, and cameos from celebrities like Grimes and Keanu Reeves. Much of…
By Riley MacLeod Published December 7, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsCake Bash Is A Deliciously Sweet Take On Mario Party
Everyone loves a good sugar rush. It’s why, no matter how big the backlog, we gravitate to games that could generously be qualified as comfort food. But the sweetest sugar-rush I’ve run into lately isn’t some paint-by-numbers first-person shooter you’ve played a hundred times or some formulaic open-world adventure you won’t even need a tutorial…
By Ari Notis Published December 4, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsNew Mars Game Isn’t A City-Builder, It’s A Planet-Builder
Per Aspera is a new PC game out this week that has you playing as an AI responsible for terraforming Mars. You’re tasked transforming it from a big cold rock into somewhere humans can walk their dogs outside in a grassy green park. It’s a city-builder in spirit, in so far as you build buildings…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 3, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsWorld Of Warcraft Shadowlands’ Alt-Leveling System Is A Refreshing Change
Unlike World of Warcraft’s Legion and Battle For Azeroth expansions, which gave players a choice on which zones to level up their characters, Shadowlands’ story campaign is very linear. Fortunately you only have to play through it once. With the new Threads of Fate mode, players who’ve reached max level can skip the story with…
By Mike Fahey Published December 3, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsImmortal‘s Version Of Assassin’s Creed‘s Leap Of Faith Is More Of A Panicked Plummet
There’s a moment at the beginning of Immortals Fenyx Rising, the new open-world adventure from the developers of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, where it feels like newly-forged hero Fenyx is going to go full-on assassin. She climbs a massive stature, surveys the land, and then prepares to leap gracefully to the ground. She would have done…
By Mike Fahey Published December 2, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsFallout 76‘s Steel Dawn Update Feels More Like An Old-School Fallout Adventure
Fallout 76’s latest free expansion brings the series’ fan-favorite fascists back to Appalachia with a new mini-campaign that made me briefly forget I was playing an MMO. Steel Dawn, which came out a week ahead of schedule after a patch accidentally went out early on Xbox, adds new building areas called Shelters, some more cosmetics…
By Ethan Gach Published December 1, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsRed Dead Online’s Latest, Disappointing Update Shows GTA Online Is Still Rockstar’s Favorite
Red Dead Online’s latest update isn’t much. While Rockstar plans on adding a big new island to GTA Online later this month, complete with a new heist and more, Red Dead Online’s end of the year update is far smaller. And while some small amount of this new update is good, including some new bounty…
By Zack Zwiezen Published December 1, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsEmpire Of Sin Is Not Great
Ahhh, I really wanted to like this game. But as hard as it tries, and as much fun as it has with the source material, Empire of Sin is a mess of ideas that just isn’t much fun to be around. Set in 1930s Chicago, it’s a game that tries to marry management, turn-based combat…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 30, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsThe Switch Version Of Immortals: Fenyx Rising Tries Real Hard
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is not on the Switch. Neither is Watch Dogs Legion. The only one of this fall’s three vast, open-world Ubisoft games to grace the Switch is Immortals: Fenyx Rising. It doesn’t look as good or run as well as it does on Xboxes and PlayStations, of course, but for a Switch game…
By Mike Fahey Published November 30, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsThat Night, Steeped By Blood River Looks Like Nothing Else You’ve Played
That Night, Steeped By Blood River is one of the most interesting-looking games I can remember This surrealist exploration game has an aesthetic so unique that I’m convinced I’ll dream like it tonight, and as such am somewhat put off going to sleep. Created by Taylor Swietanski, TNSBBR is on one level a fairly standard first-person…
By John Walker Published November 27, 2020
