
The open-world Dark Souls successor is staggering in breadth and challenge

Last reviewed: Zero Parades: For Dead Spies · 15 days ago

The open-world Dark Souls successor is staggering in breadth and challenge

A gripping finale can’t save a bland cast and shallow writing



Star Wars Battlefront 2 is made up of many different parts that are pretty good, but the whole is consistently undermined by poor choices in the game's multiplayer economy. No aspect of Battlefront 2 is beyond redemption, but it's hard to fall in love with any part of it, either. It's mostly a disjointed, sporadically fun collection of modes set in familiar Star Wars scenes. Because players have no idea what is really being sold to them, or when, you have a big-name launch that gets in the way of itself more than it creates fun.

What if Iron Chef had elves and orcs?

Don’t let Fire Emblem Warriors get lost among the many Switch releases

Need For Speed Payback doesn't do many favors for itself. It's a fun racing game whose flashy story would be fine if I felt like I was building a blinged-out career worthy of it. Instead, I felt driven toward pure stats upgrades, heedless of what the car was or what it looked like.

If you're excited about the prospect of playing first-person shooters on Switch, Doom is a good bell-weather. Personal physical limitations and hand size seem to be the biggest variable when it comes to enjoying the genre. But even if hands are perfectly built to slaughter demon hordes, you're still going to have to swallow some iffy visuals.

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds is a good excuse to revisit one of the year’s best games

When fan service doesn’t go far enough

Call of Duty returns to its roots with mixed results

This adaptation of a great cartoon would be near-perfect if it weren’t completely broken

A much-anticipated return for gaming’s leading historical fiction series

Nintendo’s most iconic character comes to the Switch in one of his best adventures ever

And that's the strength of this sequel. It balances a steady stream of suffering and hurt with exuberant humanity. It deals with our darkest impulses and our best, and plays them both up to a ridiculous degree. There's nothing subtle about Wolfenstein 2, but it's all affecting in a way that makes the game feel special and coherent. There are moments in the game that made my heart swell, while others were so grisly I had to look away.

Rogue Trooper Redux is a fun game, but after plowing through the campaign I'm left wondering why it exists. Why re-release a game that's perfectly adequate but doesn't do anything particularly noteworthy or special? What's even more puzzling is that it ends on a cliffhanger. Considering there has never been a sequel, I would have rather have seen how Rogue's next chapter played out than tread down a well-worn path once more.