Developed by Platinum Games, Bayonetta is an action game with an unusual heroine and a very engaging combat system. Its tone is bonkers all around, and the action is appropriately over-the-top and insane: it’s high octane madness in videogame form… that’s being constantly interrupted by long cutscenes that tell a boring, barebones story. The main character, Bayonetta, is one of …
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Gone Home
Gone Home is a narrative-adventure game that focuses on exploration and environmental storytelling but relies too much on red herrings to fully work: its attempts to build suspense – and even horror – fall flat, serving only to distract us from the important themes being discussed. We control Kaitlin Greenbriar, a young woman who has just returned home from a …
Read More »Abzû
Abzû is an adventure game very similar to the last title directed by Matt Nava, Journey, which also they aimed to tell a touching story almost exclusively through exploration, traversal, and interactions with the environment. In Abzû, the player controls a mysterious diver (their face is hidden in shadows inside a mask) who is alone in the open sea, right …
Read More »Octopath Traveler
If Octopath Traveler were a book, it wouldn’t be a novel but a collection of short stories. The game is not your typical epic JRPG, ambitious and epic, but is very modest in scope, telling stories that never intertwine to form a big narrative. Nevertheless, it excels in what it sets out to do, presenting a beautiful world while discussing …
Read More »Assassin’s Creed Revelations
After the Assassin’s Creed franchise became very successful, its producer Ubisoft adopted the strategy of releasing one title per year: they must make money while the iron is hot. It was inevitable, then, that the games would eventually show clear signs of a rushed development cycle, being devoid of any creative reason to exist. Assassin’s Creed Revelations is the first …
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