Developed by Starbreeze Studios, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a poignant adventure that combines dramatic and fantastical elements to tell a captivating story. With a simple control scheme that’s brilliant in the way it reflects the relationship between the main characters, A Tale of Two Sons fails only at one precise moment: the twist that leads to the …
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Batman: The Telltale Series
This review contains some general spoilers. Batman: The Telltale Series offers a great take on the Batman mythos, focusing its attention on Gotham and the role the Wayne family has in shaping it as a hopelessly corrupt and violent city. Despite following Telltale’s uninspired formula, the game’s story shines by framing politics and wealth disparity as the core reasons for …
Read More »Kingdom Hearts 2
The following review comments heavily on the events of 358/2 Days. Beware of spoilers, for they’re coming. Kingdom Hearts 2 is a bigger, bolder sequel that goes all out in everything it does, delivering a more complex story and an action-focused combat system. It has its obvious share of faults – at this point, it wouldn’t be Kingdom Hearts without …
Read More »Watch Dogs
No one develops underbaked, bloated, and poorly written open-world games quite like Ubisoft. But even among many illustrious peers, such as * checks notes * most Assassin’s Creed games, Watch Dogs is special: taking place in a modern setting, focusing on the use of technology, the game is an even bigger mess than usual. The story follows the quest for …
Read More »The Last of Us
This review contains spoilers. The Last of Us is a competent post-apocalyptic zombie game about a troubled, violent man making troubled, violent decisions. It may never quite manage to successfully integrate its gameplay systems into the story, which leans too heavily on the clichés of the genre, but still offers a carefully built nihilist narrative and a couple of memorable …
Read More »Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s most famous work, although greatly diverging from it in tone and message, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a game that fails to harness its own potential. While its main story is shallow, repetitive, and contrived (hopeless both in its suffocating atmosphere and overall quality), when it comes to gameplay, the game actually presents a …
Read More »Dragon Age II
“When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor” – Paulo Freire. Dragon Age II is a rare breed of RPG: instead of offering an epic, episodic adventure, filled with exotic people and wondrous locales to explore, it has a single, almost barren location and a thematically focused story. Its reused assets and simple …
Read More »Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories
Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, the 3D remake of the GBA title Chain of Memories, is a strange, disjointed, complex beast. It continues the story of Sora directly from where the first game left off, but with even more bizarre characters and plotlines, while introducing a new combat system that is as cumbersome as it is unbalanced. The story starts …
Read More »God of War: Ascension
Narrative-wise, God of War: Ascension is as redundant a prequel as the PSP games, bringing a story that adds absolutely no new layer to its protagonist’s struggles. It follows the series’ formula closely, maintaining a sense of scope and epicness by providing exciting and grandiose set pieces, but ultimately falls short on purpose: Kratos will do incredible things once again, …
Read More »God of War: Ghost of Sparta
The first attempt at bringing the God of War series into a portable system was not very successful. Chains of Olympus suffered with a shallow story that only became interesting near the finish line and an equally shallow combat system that further reduced the complexity of mechanics that were never originally complicated to begin with. Ghost of Sparta, then, represents …
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