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As far as I'm concerned, Doom is a perfect game. There is never a point from the moment you bust out of your rune-etched sarcophagus to the last frame of the end credits sequence that doesn't make me smile. I only had a passing familiarity with the series prior to this entry, and now I can't wait to go back and play the first two games (Doom 3 not so much).
This game oozes confidence. It never second guesses itself as it throws you headfirst into the carnage and trusts you to be along for the ride. It never hedges its bet. Doom is what it is from minute one to hour twelve. That purity of vision is so rare in games these days it feels like it stands apart from the rest of the games industry entirely.
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Overwatch is one of "my games". It has quickly joined the family of games that i feel a great affinity toward. Games like Street Fighter, Metal Gear, and Tetris Battle Gaiden.
Like Street Fighter, Overwatch is a game that I'm not very good at, but I can still enjoy playing. This game also gives me insight into a lot of the reasons that people love DOTA 2. It feels great being able to take a quick look at the skirmish around a payload or a control point and in an instant have an understanding of what is happening and what needs to be done. At its best, it can feel like Neo seeing the Matrix code.
I also dont know if its a good thing or a bad thing, but I must've spent well over half of what I payed for the game itself on loot boxes. I think that speaks so highly of what Blizzard has done in this game with the art and character design. Blizzard hopefully has proven that offering free maps, modes, and characters is a viable strategy, and helps a game stay relevant for months and years after its release. Contrast that with something like Rainbow Six: Siege, which felt like it left me behind once it started pumping out new characters that it expected me to pay for. It looks like perhaps Titanfall 2 is taking its cues from Overwatch and has announced that all its new maps will be free going forward.
It's impressive how much personality oozes out of almost every part of this game when it has so little actual story and lore. They do a brilliant job giving out tidbits about the characters in unusual ways, such as skins that portray the character at a different poin in their life, or voice lines when two characters are together that hint at their relationship to each other and the world at large. Even things like the maps having movie posters starring D.Va and things like that are great insight into the larger context that these characters exist in. Its colorful and loud, but that doesn't limit what kinds of characters fit in their world. It's malleable enough to support both a murderer with a skull for a face and a talking gorilla who loves peanut butter without making either feel out of place.
Overwatch just produces joy. The fan community for this game also has been, for the most part, very positive and fun. It connects with people and makes them want to create stories and jokes and lives for these characters for no other reason than to make other people smile. That is so rare for a competitive game, and even more so for a shooter.
No other game this year has dominated my thoughts the way Overwatch has. Its magnetic. No matter how many new and amazing games come along (and 2016 has been an excellent year), I always come back to Overwatch. It feels like home.
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An excellent end to the Nathan Drake story. This is the best looking console game i have ever seen. Of all the games that try to ape movies, this game and others in the series are the best at it. Naughty Dog's performance capture technology is unrivaled, and they get the best out of their actors.
This game finds Nathan out of the treasure hunting game, living in a small port city with Elena, working on a salvage ship. When Nathan's long lost brother Sam appears out of nowhere, he finds himself set against his old partner Rafe and his hired mercenaries in a race to find the hidden horde of the legendary pirate Henry Avery. Rafe and the mercenary leader Nadine are good villains. Rafe in particular is slimy and entitled, serving as the exact opposite of the scrappy do-gooder treasure hunters in Drake's crew.
I really enjoyed how this game wasnt afraid to have long stretches of time where you arent shooting anything. they give the characters room to breathe. we get to see Nathan have pretty lengthy scenes with his wife, his partner, and his brother at various points that are basically just character building as opposed to strict exposition and mission talk. Theres an excellent market scene in the Madagascar section of the game that has the crew just sort of wandering through, taking in the sights of the city. the sequence early in the game of Nathan and his life at home with Elena is easily one of my favorites of the year. The game addresses the question of what do these action heroes do between adventures? For Drake, the answer is he works a mundane salvage diving job, and has a quiet home life with Elena. While he enjoys dinner and video games on the couch with his wife, he hangs out in the attic and daydreams about his past adventures. They pay this scene off so brilliantly over the course of the game. I just cant say enough good things about the story.
The gameplay is also super tight. The addition of the grappling hook adds a great speed and verticality to the combat encounters. frequently the game will have you fighting in areas with multi-level buildings, cliffs, canyons, zip lines, and plenty of other things to climb and jump off of. Uncharted thankfully doesn't get bogged down with customizable weapons, which means you never feel invested in any particular gun, so you feel free to try stuff out, and just grab whatever is lying around. I also like how the stealth is good, and its totally possible to stealth most encounters, but the game feels just as good (if not better) running and gunning, so being discovered never feels like a pentalty, but an opportunity to let loose.
There are some sequences that are a little long in the tooth. parts that are just climbing occasionally outstay their welcome, but overall the majority of the games length feels well spent.
While The Last Of Us is more critically acclaimed these days, I think Uncharted's rollicking, swashbuckling world is much more impressive. I've played through so many post-apocalypses, but there's really only two series that deliver this kind of adventure. These games are just a treat to play. I think the Indiana Jones comparison is a little too surface level. I think this series feels more like the radio serials that inspired Indy. This series is dime store pulp adventure novels. Its daily comic strips. I think that Uncharted does the globe trotting adventure thing better than any movie. They should say Indiana Jones is like Nathan Drake, not the other way around.
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This might be my favorite racing game. I never got the chance to play any of the previous Horizon games, so this game was a breath of fresh air. The driving model strikes the perfect balance between arcade and sim, allowing me to pull sick drifts as well as carefully measured turns where im dancing on the knifes edge of my tires ability to grip both in the same race, depending on mood and circumstance. The open world has so many great roads and diverse locales that i never feel like im retreading old ground, even when doing the tenth or fifteenth race in a given area. thats a testament as much to the race designers as it is to the environment artists. The showcase races that break up the flow of the game that have you racing against increasingly extreme vehicles were always welcome when they appeared on the map.
The car selection, while not as extensive as one of the Forza Motorsport games or a Gran Turismo, still felt pretty overwhelming. there was plenty of attention payed to the million dollar hypercars and classic American and Australian muscle that you would expect, but as someone with a love for 80s and 90s rally cars i felt more than catered to as well.
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This is one of the most beautiful games i have ever played.
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I like how the game uses repetitive tasks and a relatively small environment to really give the player the feeling of learning the forest. The cuts and time jumps not only help condense the events of an entire summer into a game that lasts about 2 hours, but they also are used narratively to stunning effect. they ratchet up the tension or leave moments and conversations hanging, giving the game a kinetic pace that is often missing from most other "walking simulators"
The performances and writing is so strong that with very minimal editing they could be put up as a podcast that could dominate the itunes charts and compete with something like Limetown or any other radio drama.
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not remarkable from a gameplay perspective, but this is the pinnacle of fanservice for a Gundam person.
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One note characters and a thin premise aren't enough to detract from one of the most unique shooter campaigns to ever come out of a company not called Valve.
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This game often falls flat with lackluster mission structure and less than innovative gameplay, but its tone, world, and characters all more than make up for it.
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I hope other war themed shooters steal the structure of this games campaign. The way it splits its time among multiple protagonists isnt new (Call of Duty has done this several times), but the fact that each character has his or her own mini campaign completely separate from the others is a revelation. In doing this, Dice allowed each one to have a different flavor, tone, and set of characters and moments that all felt equally important.
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We will never get a game based on the 1994 Johnny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie classic "Hackers", but this is pretty damn close.
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