-
OpinionImpressionsApple Arcade Is Live In The iOS 13 Beta And It’s A Lot
While the $5-a-month Apple Arcade subscription doesn’t officially launch until Thursday, iOS 13 beta testers can sign up right now and dive into new games from some of the best indie studios on the planet. With nearly 60 games on the service so far, it’s an overwhelming amount of entertainment, all at once. Last week…
By Mike Fahey Published September 17, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsZero Escape Director’s New Game Is Another Twisty, Captivating Mystery
When you play a video game directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi, you know you’re always going to get a few things. There will be tangents about fascinating pieces of science and mythology. The characters will frequently make terrible lewd jokes. And the story will be a sprawling tapestry full of twists, emotional moments, and ruminations on…
By Jason Schreier Published September 16, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsSoccer Management Sim Is Surprisingly Artsy
I don’t know much about soccer, but I love how seriously its fans take it. I can’t count the number of Saturday mornings when I’ve been woken up by shouts coming from the English pub a block from my house when there’s a Premier League game. Football Drama, coming out Wednesday for PC and phones…
By Riley MacLeod Published September 16, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsExtra ‘Realism’ Makes For A Slow-Paced Modern Warfare Beta
Activision kicked off Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s multiplayer beta yesterday, letting PlayStation 4 players get hands-on with a softly rebooted Modern Warfare focused more on realism. Following up on last month’s alpha for Modern Warfare’s upcoming 2v2 Gunfight mode, the beta offers a taste of the standard multiplayer with 6v6 and 10v10 matches in…
By S.E. Doster Published September 13, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsSix Hours In, Borderlands 3 Just Feels Like More Borderlands (And It’s Kinda Busted)
Borderlands 3 is almost certainly the game that you think it is. Six hours in, a lot of my feelings remain the same as they were when I first played Borderlands 3 at an extended preview last month. In a lot of ways it’s a time capsule, in some ways embarrassingly retrograde in its sensibilities,…
By Joshua Rivera Published September 13, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsMy New Favorite Way To Play Pinball On Switch
Today’s release of Zen Studios’ Star Wars Pinball for the Nintendo Switch gave me an idea. I’ve been playing my Switch docked and connected to this cool little portable 15.6-inch Viotek monitor, and Zen’s Switch pinball games support vertical play, so what if we turn the portable monitor on its side? Perfection. There are plenty…
By Mike Fahey Published September 13, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsKind Words Is A Game Where You Send Confessional Letters To Online Strangers
“I always read the stuff people send me the wrong way,” a stranger on Kind Words, a new PC game where you write and receive confessional letters. “I read it as if they are upset with me and don’t want to talk to me. They’ve always told me this isn’t how they feel, but I…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published September 13, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsZelda: Link’s Awakening‘s Chamber Dungeons Are A Big Disappointment
The appeal of a Zelda dungeon is in its intricacy. A good dungeon starts off feeling overwhelming, full of buttons and doors and strange obstacles. As you make progress, solving puzzles and acquiring items, it all slowly begins to make sense. You get a complete understanding of how the passages flow and the rooms all…
By Jason Schreier Published September 12, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsFallout 76 Lets You Battle Royale In The ’Burbs
Fallout 76‘s Patch 13 is now live, and the update is great for fans of battle royales and bad for fans of not spending money on microtransactions. If both of those things describe you, well, there’s good news and bad news. First: The main attraction here is the new Morgantown map added to the Nuclear…
By Joshua Rivera Published September 11, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsSome Of Monster Hunter World‘s New Gear Sure Is Ugly
Monster Hunter World’s latest expansion, Iceborne, is a massive addition to the base game. It adds tons of new monsters and brings back old favorites. That also means new armor, and while plenty of it looks badass, a few pieces are bafflingly terrible. Iceborne offers a lot of good armor sets. The Master Rank Tobi-Kadachi…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 11, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsHaven Is A Sci-Fi RPG About Being In A Long-Term Relationship
Usually, video game romances are about hot and heavy beginnings or fiery ends. Even visual novels often focus on the new and novel, rather than relationships that are doing their best to withstand the test of time. Haven, set to release next year, is different. It’s a game about a long-term relationship—ups, downs, squabbles, awkward moments,…
By Nathan Grayson Published September 10, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsFarewell Is A Fitting Goodbye To The World Of Celeste
Celeste is as perfect a platformer as has ever been made. Its mixture of charming visuals, fantastic music, and challenging levels added up to one of 2018’s best games. That seemed to be the end of it; the story was over, the mountain was climbed. But a final epilogue chapter, added this week, brings a…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 10, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsGothic Platformer Offers Brutal Combat With A Side Of Religious Trauma
Blasphemous, the indie platformer that Spanish studio The Game Kitchen crowd-funded two years ago, is now available on every major gaming platform. While I wasn’t one of theKickstarter backers, I have been looking forward to this release for some time, both as a fan of difficult Souls-like games and someone who has long had a…
By Ian Walker Published September 10, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsThe New Plants Vs. Zombies Shooter Is Off To A Strong Start
Launched last week into a special Founder’s Edition early access period, Plants Vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville might not have a lot of content yet, but it’s already a blast to play. If you enjoyed the colorful cartoony competitive world Popcap Games built with Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare and its sequel, you’ll probably love…
By Mike Fahey Published September 10, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsGears 5’s Multiplayer Is Very Good, Too
In addition to its gripping, creatively risky campaign, Gears 5 also has a huge suite of multiplayer modes that also deliver. There are updates to old classics like Horde, as well as the new additions Escape and Arcade. Once again, widening the world of Gears pays off. Horde mode This co-operative multiplayer mode has been…
By Maddy Myers Published September 10, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsI Can’t See Myself Enjoying The New Kirby Game Much Longer
Launched following last week’s Nintendo Direct, Super Kirby Clash is a free-to-play multiplayer game pitting multicolored Kirbys in medieval cosplay against massive bosses. I love the battles, but the game’s economy and endless upgrade cycle have me wondering how long that love will last. Nintendo calls Super Kirby Clash a free-to-start game, which is a…
By Mike Fahey Published September 10, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsTen Hours In, Greedfall‘s Detailed Role-Playing Can’t Make Up For Its Unpleasant Setting
I have not enjoyed playing Greedfall, the latest role-playing game by Spiders. That’s not because it is a poor experience in terms of how it plays. Greedfall offers a BioWare-esque adventure with branching quests, companion characters, and exploration. Greedfall frustrates me because it’s a game of half-measures. In the nearly 10 hours that I have…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 9, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsThe Sims 4 Gets Goddamn Wizards
Meet Lucretia Sand, witch. She’s the Sim I made for The Sims 4’s latest magic-centric expansion. Puns aside, she’s the perfect character to explore the latest game pack, Realm of Magic. Realm of Magic, which comes out tomorrow, is the latest game pack for The Sims 4. It adds a new area, new clothes, and…
By Gita Jackson Published September 9, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsFire Emblem‘s ‘Lost Items’ Mechanic Is So Annoying
Even in the fantasy world of Fire Emblem, there is no way the students of Garreg Mach Monastery are so forgetful that I, as their teacher, need to ferry 100 of their lost items around a school campus at all times in hopes of finding their owners. Fire Emblem: Three Houses has a mechanic for that,…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published September 9, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsFallout 76 Player Builds A Corn Maze To Welcome In Fall
Nothing says fall to me like a good fair. Something about fried foods and prized hogs just makes me want to roll in a pile of falling leaves and, best of all, wander in a corn maze. We’re not quite up to fall fair season in real life, but if you have Fallout 76, one…
By Gita Jackson Published September 6, 2019