Reviews Archives - Page 47 of 128

Scythe: The Wind Gambit: The Kotaku Review

Scythe is one of my favourite board games of the last few years, and having missed its first expansion I was super excited to drop back into the game to test out its second, the airship-based Wind Gambit Having begun as a game about mechs and workers stomping their boots around the grasslands of an…

By Luke Plunkett Published January 9, 2018

ReviewsBoard Games

Civilization: A New Dawn: The Kotaku Review

It’s hard work, turning a video game into a board game. Video games are big, sprawling pieces of audio-visual entertainment. They come packed with AI, can resolve battles in an instant and look fantastic while doing it all. It’s unfair to ask a board game, with its sedate pacing, books full of rules and cardboard…

By Luke Plunkett Published January 4, 2018

Reviews3DS

Style Savvy: Styling Star: The Kotaku Review

The best thing about the newest Style Savvy isn’t the cute outfits or the glamorous fantasy. It’s that it makes you feel good about helping people. Style Savvy is a series of games about running a boutique. In them, you have to stock a store and then sell clothing to customers. It’s your responsibility to…

By Gita Jackson Published January 3, 2018

ReviewsMultiplatform

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds: The Kotaku Review

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is straightforward. Dump 100 players onto a map, tell them that only one person can win, and watch them tear each other apart. It is brutal and base, violent and wonderful. It’s a game that could only be made in 2017, for better or worse. Battlegrounds, which officially launched on PC this week…

By Heather Alexandra Published December 22, 2017

ReviewsYear in Review

Fahey’s Top 10 Games Of 2017

Here are Fahey's favorite games from the year of our lord 2017

By Mike Fahey Published December 21, 2017

ReviewsBoard Games

Fallout: The Board Game: The Kotaku Review

Fallout: The Board Game is as faithful an adaptation of the source material as you could possibly hope for. There have been other good video-to-board games, sure—Doom most recently—but its similarities were merely thematic. Fantasy Flight’s Fallout game, on the other hand, has been built from the ground up to play the same on a…

By Luke Plunkett Published December 12, 2017

ReviewsSwitch

The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild: The Champions’ Ballad: The Kotaku Review

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s second piece of downloadable content, The Champions’ Ballad, is a distillation of everything the game does well. Its collection of puzzle shrines holds some of the most inspired moments of the series, culminating in a wonderfully complex final dungeon. It is a strong end to the DLC…

By Heather Alexandra Published December 12, 2017

ReviewsMultiplatform

Reigns: Her Majesty: The Kotaku Review

In my time as queen in Reigns: Her Majesty, I was torn apart by my subjects, eaten by wolves, and burned at the stake. I had affairs with pagan women, barbarian queens from other lands, and rakish explorers of new worlds. I was coronated again and again, born anew to rule once more. You’re always…

By Gita Jackson Published December 7, 2017

ReviewsMultiplatform

Nine Parchments: The Kotaku Review

When an explosion at the Astral Academy scatters nine magical parchments to the four winds, a group of irresponsible students sets off on an adventure to retrieve the lost magic for their own mischievous use. At least it should be a group. Action RPG Nine Parchments can be played alone, but where’s the fun in…

By Mike Fahey Published December 7, 2017

ReviewsMultiplatform

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp: The Kotaku Review

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, the new sequel of Nintendo’s cute neighborhood series for cellphones, is Animal Crossing but a bit more stressful. I love it and hate it at the same time. Pocket Camp takes elements from a few different Animal Crossing games and shoves them into a mobile app that’s surprisingly robust. It has…

By Gita Jackson Published December 1, 2017

ReviewsSwitch

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: The Kotaku Review

Inelegant and tedious, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the anti-Nintendo game. In a year full of triumphs for the spunky Switch, this massive role-playing game is a disappointment. I didn’t love the first Xenoblade Chronicles, a 2010 Wii game from veteran director Tetsuya Takahashi and his team at Monolith Soft. I hated the boring do-gooder Shulk…

By Jason Schreier Published December 1, 2017

ReviewsKeyboards

Vortex Vibe Keyboard Review: Smaller By The Numbers

Sleek mechanical keyboards that strip away lesser-used keys in favor of a smaller footprint are picking up, but some people just can’t do without that number pad. Vortex’s new Vibe keyboard is a nice compromise, with some outstanding keycaps on top. A full-size keyboard has all the keys. A tenkeyless, or TKL keyboard, slices the…

By Mike Fahey Published November 29, 2017

ReviewsBoard Games

Whitehall Mystery: The Kotaku Review

In 2011, the board game Letters from Whitechapel put detectives on the hunt for Jack the Ripper. In 2017, that game has been stripped down to all but its most essential systems, and has become better for it. Whitehall Mystery is the name of the new offering. Made for 2-4 players, it puts one person…

By Luke Plunkett Published November 27, 2017

ReviewsMultiplatform

Battle Chef Brigade: The Kotaku Review

Battle Chef Brigade asks: What if you had to kill a Hydra before competing in Iron Chef? It’s a winning premise, and one that scaffolds the many-headed cooking game’s endless charms. Out today on PC and Switch, Battle Chef Brigade is one-part puzzler, one-part platformer and one-part role-playing game. Its eat-what-you-kill world revolves around Mina…

By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published November 20, 2017

ReviewsMultiplatform

Hand of Fate 2: The Kotaku Review

Hand of Fate is a unique hybrid of deck-building card adventure and action role-playing game that came out of nowhere to become one of my favorite games of 2015. Hand of Fate 2 improves upon the original in every way. One minute you’re moving a game piece across a table covered with Tarot-like adventure cards,…

By Mike Fahey Published November 20, 2017

Reviews

Metroid Prime: The Kotaku Review

When she shoots, Samus Aran doesn’t miss. That’s one of the fundamental truths of the original Metroid Prime, the first-person sci-fi game that came out on the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. You lock her gun onto a target and fire. She hits it every time. (This post originally ran on March 10, 2016. We’re bumping…

By Stephen Totilo Published November 17, 2017

ReviewsMultiplatform

Star Wars: Battlefront II: The Kotaku Review

Star Wars: Battlefront II frustrates me in ways I never knew I could be frustrated. It is both a lovingly crafted companion to the films and a tangled mess of corporate meddling. There is a strong heart at the center but finding it means peeling back layers of unnecessary and infuriating nonsense. We’ve republished this…

By Heather Alexandra Published November 17, 2017

ReviewsPC

Crusader Kings II: The Kotaku Re-Review

Looking back at one of the greatest PC strategy games of all time

By Luke Plunkett Published November 16, 2017

ReviewsMultiplatform

Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2: The Kotaku Review

When we last left Lego Marvel Super Heroes, the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four had banded together to gather the cosmic doohickeys needed to finish story mode and get to the exciting free-roaming bits. Four years later, the X-Men and Fantastic Four are gone, but everything else is pretty much the same. Lego Marvel Super…

By Mike Fahey Published November 14, 2017

ReviewsMultiplatform

Sonic Forces: The Kotaku Review

Sonic Forces is a fever dream of fan-fiction that is awkward to play but still manages to be trashy fun. Set in a grim future where Sonic has been defeated by Doctor Robotnik and his mysterious new henchman Infinite, Sonic Forces follows the series’ cast of heroic animals as they fight a dire war to…

By Heather Alexandra Published November 8, 2017