Xbox One

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 …

The first Titanfall felt like a prototype: a great prototype, but a prototype nonetheless. It had a bizarre campaign carelessly thrown inside multiplayer battles and, despite building a solid gameplay foundation, presented nothing that came close to using it to its full potential. It was a barebones game that was bound to become outdated as soon as its sequel launched. …

Observer is a first-person cyberpunk game with a horror twist that quickly loses its appeal: the main horror scenes build an unbearable atmosphere but drag on for too long, repeating the same tricks over and over again. The game’s protagonist is a Polish police detective called Daniel Lazarski – played by Blade Runner’s Rutger Hauer – who, after receiving a mysterious …

After the series’ brief diversion in the high seas, Unity marks a return to what Assassin’s Creed has always excelled at: parkour inside famous churches. Building a new foundation for the series, based on more elaborate sidequests and freeform assassinations, the game mostly falters with its disappointing story that is too afraid to delve deep into the complicated politics of …

It’s great when things make sense. And it’s even greater when they also come together nicely, harmoniously. Charles, the snob, likes to call this a matter of “coherence” and “cohesion”, but you can call it whatever you want if you still stop and take the time to see if all elements in a piece of art are working together or …

Assassin’s Creed Rogue is Black Flag with a new coat of paint. Offering the same systems and overall structure, it shares similar problems to its predecessor: it’s shallow, bloated, and repetitive. Its story follows suit, showing some promise at the beginning, but quickly falling into similar pitfalls, packed with one-dimensional characters that have little to say about anything. The story …

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag builds on the foundations of its predecessor to set its story in the Caribbean and put the focus on pirates and naval warfare. Black Flag’s many mistakes are old ones in the franchise, with the game being dragged down by clunky stealth, weak combat, a repetitive mission structure, and an underdeveloped story. The main character …

Call of Duty WWII has the series returning to its roots but also once more playing too safe to be truly great. Offering a derivative campaign that fails at developing both its characters and themes, and a bunch of multiplayer modes that any series veteran will have already played hundreds of times, the game’s lack of ambition is the only …

Tails Noir (formerly known as Backbone) is a strange point-and-click adventure. Its story moves from one extreme to the other too fast, going from dabbling into complete cliché material to “holy hell, what’s going on” after a single twist. However, it never commits to both approaches, abandoning important elements for the twist while also not giving it time to breathe. The …

Here’s the thing about repetition: it’s an ambivalent element. On the one hand, it’s the ultimate learning tool, commonly used by tiny humans, called children, to mimic big humans, called adults, to discover how to act and behave in life. It’s how humans of all sizes learn how to speak a language, how to write, how to build objects and …