Reviews Archives - Page 44 of 128

The World Ends With You: Final Remix: The Kotaku Review

If you have never played The World Ends With You before, the Nintendo Switch version released on Thursday night is not a bad way to get into it. Final Remix retains the game’s great sense of humor, its fantastic music, and Tetsuya Nomura’s most restrained character designs. But if you have played it before—say, if…

By Gita Jackson Published October 12, 2018

ReviewsSwitch

Super Mario Party: The Kotaku Review

“Who are you rooting for?” I asked my housemate, a non-player heckler watching a full-up game of Super Mario Party. Without missing a beat, he responded gleefully: “Chaos!” Mario Party is a video board game series that’s all about swing. You get a star. You move a few spaces. You lose a star. You steal…

By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published October 5, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: The Kotaku Review

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is huge. Each new boundary is broken down the moment you reach it, the game world spilling out and expanding further and further than you can possibly imagine. It is big in the same way the Great Pyramids or Empire State Building are big, the result of untold amounts of labor and…

By Heather Alexandra Published October 5, 2018

Reviews

NBA 2K19 MyCareer: The Kotaku Review

Oh no, not this again. For the longest time, if you wanted to play a proper singleplayer sports game, the NBA 2K series was your only option. Its MyCareer mode, which lets you create a fictional player then live through their career in the NBA, helped (along with Fight Night) pioneer the idea that a…

By Luke Plunkett Published October 4, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Mega Man 11: The Kotaku Review

Mega Man 11 is a fine game, and a worthy eleventh entry in a series that once set the bar for tricky platformers. It also feels oddly shallow, the latest iteration of a formula that has gone largely unchanged for decades. Mega Man 11 is great at being a Mega Man game. Maybe that’s why…

By Jason Schreier Published October 2, 2018

ReviewsETC

Moving: The Kotaku Review

I recently left my apartment in northern California and drove a U-Haul full of my belongings to a new place in southern California. Although it’s a game that’s played by millions every day, I cannot recommend Moving Moving is a musty, moth-devoured sweater of half-completed game concepts and narrative threads. It is a lengthy experience…

By Nathan Grayson Published September 28, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Dragon Ball FighterZ: The Kotaku Review

Dragon Ball games are for Dragon Ball fans. Fighting games are for fighting game fans. Dragon Ball FighterZ is both of those things, and it’s for everybody. This piece originally appeared 1/30/18. We’re bumping it today for the game’s release on Switch. Combining a beloved series spanning 34 years of manga volumes and anime episodes…

By Mike Fahey Published September 28, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Valkyria Chronicles 4: The Kotaku Review

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a game of extremes. Its romantic attitude towards soldiers clashes with a desire to tell a tale of mass violence and corpse-laden battlefields. It is as intimate as it is loud, and each moment captivates even if the parts are often greater than the whole. This post originally appeared 9/10/18. We’ve…

By Heather Alexandra Published September 25, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Destiny 2: Forsaken: The Kotaku Review

Destiny 2’s new expansion, Forsaken, turns the game into something that people can play as much as they want without running out of things to do. If anything, its tantalizing new pursuits, designed to satisfy the appetites of the series’ most voracious players, may be too life-consuming. Viewed from the outside, Destiny 2 looks largely…

By Kirk Hamilton Published September 21, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: The Kotaku Review

The new Tomb Raider’s freshest idea is the floating of a question: What if all this tomb raiding that Lara Croft does indicates that she is a treasure-plundering jerk who wrecks other people’s cultures and, worse, their lives? This piece originally appeared 9/10/18. We’re bumping it today for the game’s release. Despite the navel-gazing self-reflection…

By Stephen Totilo Published September 14, 2018

ReviewsPS4

Spider-Man: The Kotaku Review

Insomniac Games’ new Spider-Man adventure on the PS4 is a fun comic book brawler with some good story beats elevated by a system of acrobatics that features some of the most intuitive and exhilarating movement I’ve ever experienced in a game. It’s extremely fun, if you’re okay with a version of New York City that…

By Ethan Gach Published September 7, 2018

ReviewsPC

World Of Warcraft Battle For Azeroth: The Kotaku Review

“Well, it’s more of the same” is generally my answer when people ask me how I’m enjoying World of Warcraft’s seventh paid expansion, Battle for Azeroth. Then I spend several minutes explaining why that’s not a bad thing. Blizzard has spent the past six years transforming World of Warcraft from a tired massively multiplayer online…

By Mike Fahey Published September 4, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Dragon Quest XI: The Kotaku Review

Dragon Quest XI is the best game in the 32-year-old series. It wasn’t until watching a rough cut of my 36-minute video review of the game on my television at midnight on Sunday night that I decided to make this declaration. I had grappled with saying it in the script I wrote for the purpose…

By Tim Rogers Published September 4, 2018

ReviewsBoard Games

Captain Sonar: The Kotaku Review

Captain Sonar is a board game about submarines, but it’s also so much more than that. There are boards (several, in fact), and rules and competition and cooperation, but to call Captain Sonar a board game would be to massively undersell the experience. It’s a crucible for friendships. It’s a drunk gamer’s worst nightmare. It’s…

By Luke Plunkett Published August 27, 2018

ReviewsBoard Games

Flamme Rouge: The Kotaku Review

Flamme Rouge is a game about early 20th- century bicycle races, and I promise you, it is a lot more fun than that sounds. While unable to actually use the words, since it doesn’t have the license, Flamme Rouge—a “Red Flag”, waved when a race is one kilometre from the finish—is based on early Tour…

By Luke Plunkett Published August 22, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Guacamelee 2: The Kotaku Review

Guacamelee 2 feels great to play. It’s a demanding platformer with elements drawn from the beat ‘em ups of old but executed with such precision they feel modern. The way throwing a punch can be intertwined with hoping over a pit of lava transforms every obstacle into a puzzle. Despite surface similarities and homages to…

By Ethan Gach Published August 21, 2018

Reviews

Halo 5: The Kotaku Re-Review

Each new Halo game since 2007’s Halo 3 gets some praise, then fades, and then is pointed to as a sign that the Xbox’s once-unstoppable franchise is hitting a wall. Halo 5, released in 2015, deserves a different reputation. The first new Halo game on Xbox One got the accolades three years ago, then faded as…

By Ethan Gach Published August 16, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Monster Hunter: World: The Kotaku Review

Video games often deal in illusions, proffering the fantasy of control and power even when your meaningful influence is minimal. Monster Hunter: World, the new third-person action game from Capcom, absolutely deals in fantasy. It plucks you from reality and sets you in the domains of exotically imposing monsters that you must hunt. In this…

By Keza MacDonald Published August 9, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

Dead Cells: The Kotaku Review

In my first game of Dead Cells, I died after about four minutes. In my most recent one, I lasted almost an hour. The time difference between those two attempts says a lot about how Dead Cells evolves as you play it, and how you evolve alongside it. That first game went something like this:…

By Kirk Hamilton Published August 6, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

The Banner Saga 3: The Kotaku Review

The Banner Saga 3 is the final entry in a Kickstarted trilogy of strategy games. It’s the culmination of four years of fantasy adventuring, in which the decisions you make on the battlefield are almost as important as those you make in the middle of a conversation. It’s a series that divides its design between…

By Luke Plunkett Published August 2, 2018