IGN Game Reviews – Spoken Edition

Imagine sitting down in a concept car that has all kinds of awesome extras and amenities - things you’ve wished cars had for ages! But then you try to take it for a spin and a lot of the basic stuff that your beat-up sedan back home can do fine seem to be a challenge for this flashy wonder. Things like… brakes. That’s what At the Gates is to the 4X genre. Conceptually, there are so many reasons to be excited about it, but once you start playing it falls apart pretty fast.

How long has it been since we’ve had a chance to jump into a cool fighter jet, get into an intense dogfight, and just blow up stuff up without having to memorize a thick flight manual? Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown brings the welcome return of a series – and a genre – that’s been long absent from gaming’s mainstream. The exciting, arcadey flying and dogfighting gameplay that kept Ace Combat going from 1995 to 2014 is still present and a lot of fun.

In large part thanks to its dreadful imbalances and instability, setting sail in Atlas is, in its own way, extremely tense.

I felt a rush of excitement every time I booted up a new game in the Death Drive Mk II. The fictitious game console essentially acts as the level select in Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, and I was always curious to see what developer Grasshopper Manufacture had cooked up next. But after watching each of its seven games’ charmingly nonsensical opening cutscenes, the ensuing action rarely surprised and too frequently turned tedious.

If you've ever caught yourself wondering if PS2 games still hold up, I suggest picking up a copy of Onimusha: Warlords. For all intents and purposes, it's exactly the same as it was when it first released in 2001, but that’s not necessarily a good thing in 2019. Onimusha: Warlords is a classic take on the survival horror genre, set in feudal Japan. Think Resident Evil, but instead of zombies and biological horrors, you battle demons and undead abominations from Japanese mythology.

The second episode of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s Legacy of the First Blade DLC, Shadow Heritage faithfully follows the formula Ubisoft laid out in Episode 1: Hunted. Fortunately, that formula works just as well this time around, drip-feeding us small doses of faction backstory, while focusing on the drama of its characters.

Reviews for the hottest games of the year from IGN. A SpokenEdition transforms written content into human-read audio you can listen to anywhere. It's perfect for times when you can't read - while driving, at the gym, doing chores, etc. Find more at www.spokenedition.com

At face value, Borderlands 2 doesn’t sound like the kind of game that would translate to VR with success – but it only took a few hours with Borderlands 2 VR to prove my preconceived notions wrong. While it’s clearly not a ground-up, made-for-VR version of the shoot-and-loot bonanza, it’s yet another reminder that large, traditional console/PC games can work reasonably well when retrofitted for virtual reality.

The title of Last Year: The Nightmare may be short on inspiration, but its take on asymmetric survival horror multiplayer has plenty. Those who have played Friday the 13th or Dead by Daylight will be familiar with the premise of one powerful player hunting down several weak ones as they try to escape, but Last Year: The Nightmare introduces a couple new twists that make it among the best of this burgeoning sub-genre thus far.

Insurgency: Sandstorm is an excellent multiplayer shooter that successfully avoids the common pitfalls of military simulation, but still manages to deliver an immersive, at times disturbing, sense of realism to its modern, Middle Eastern setting. Its arsenal consists of some of the best-realized firearms in any video game to date thanks to stellar sound design, punchy animations, and obsessive attention to detail.

Forza Horizon 4’s first expansion may lack the unbridled madness of the previous game’s Hot Wheels expansion, and it’s not as immediately divergent as Blizzard Mountain was (which brought winter conditions and snow for the first time), but Forza Horizon 4: Fortune Island is a great add-on that features some of the most brilliant and fun stretches of road in the series to date.

Reviews for the hottest games of the year from IGN. A SpokenEdition transforms written content into human-read audio you can listen to anywhere. It's perfect for times when you can't read - while driving, at the gym, doing chores, etc. Find more at www.spokenedition.com

Now that battle royale games have become legion, the new arms race is to find clever ways for a new game to set itself apart from the Fortnites and PUBGs of the world.

I’d like to share a truth with you. And that truth is that even Time – that Great Devourer of early polygonal graphics, that beast which hath smote and sullied many a PSone and PS2 icon, that ravager of (gaming) worlds – is powerless against the might of Katamari Damacy. This joyous game’s deliberately low-poly art style has proven to be not just a great artistic choice in its era, but the key to ensuring it ages with grace.

Gris is a visual masterpiece. It’s a living watercolour illustration that explores the complex themes of loss and grief through a visually arresting world and affecting orchestral score. At first glance, Gris looks to be a fitting bookend to a year that started with Celeste - a game that married an exploration of mental illness with incredible platforming gameplay, but ultimately its basic level design and many minor frustrations make its exceptional qualities feel only skin deep.