IGN Game Reviews – Spoken Edition

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is a trap disguised as a free-to-play RPG, seemingly designed to prey on your sense of nostalgia and childlike wonder to squeeze as much money out of you as possible. Some Wizarding World-inspired window dressing and familiar music are used as a thin veil to mask what is an otherwise offensive collection of rampant microtransactions.

With a name like Super Mega Baseball 2, you might reasonably expect to see monster home runs, flaming fastballs, or superhuman feats of skill. Surprisingly, Super Mega Baseball 2 is closer to a true hardball simulation. If you look beyond the oddly stylized players and exaggerated stadiums, you’ll find an appealing, customizable, and authentic baseball game.

When we first reviewed Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on the Wii U in 2014, we gave it a 9.0, for Amazing. Here’s what we said about it then: “Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is a great platformer full of tense sequences and tough levels. Boss battles are a huge highlight, and it’s packed with hard-to-find secrets and collectibles. Multiplayer could use some improvement, but I found myself laughing whenever my teammate and I wiped out on some of these unforgiving setups.

It’s hard not to balk at the $80 price tag on a package that contains mostly cardboard, but the bigger and more elaborate Robot Kit is a step in the right direction for Nintendo’s new kid-aimed concoction. While the Variety Kit (review) is mostly a package of fun but limited ideas, the Robot Kit shows off the goofy potential of what Labo might do with future kits with a more elaborate toy that makes its simple game a whole-body experience.

Rocket boosting a 60-ton mech to the top of mountain then raining down missiles on your enemy will never not be cool. At the same time, seeing every single piece of that salvo miss the one body part you were actually aiming for is pretty much the polar opposite of satisfaction. Such are the highs and lows of BattleTech, a turn-based tactics game that has as much exciting flavor as it does an overreliance on infuriating random-number generation.

Nintendo’s new line of cardboard "build, play, and discover experiences" is aimed at "those who are young and young at heart." The $70 Labo Variety Kit definitely fulfills the first part of that promise: in the hands of a child, its five buildable toys take on an entirely new dimension that blends the digital and physical worlds of play.

Frostpunk combines the best elements of survival, city-building, and 4X games into one of the more captivating strategy games I’ve played in a while. Thanks to stellar presentation and storytelling, it seamlessly combines these different components into one interesting experience that never feels like a burden to play, even when the difficulty of maintaining a colony during an oppressive ice age ratchets up.

The first time I dropped into the Radical Heights map and began to skydive toward the ground, I wondered when exactly my parachute would go off. By the time it was already too late, I realized it wasn’t going to. Instead, my character hit the ground with a tuck and roll straight out of an action movie and the fight began. Unfortunately, that’s about where the excitement stops in Radical Heights.

Hunt: Showdown wants you to feel panic. There’s the panic that ensues when the echoes of your gunshots ring out in the forest around you, potentially attracting monsters and players. Then there’s the panic of trying to franticly escape a level with a prize before other players track you down.

The War Machine is Call of Duty: WW2's second multiplayer DLC, and among its four maps and a Zombies expansion, there are more winners than losers. Its new content ranges from an excellent new standard multiplayer map and Zombies Easter egg challenge all the way down to some maps prone to miserably unbalanced spawn camping and a dogfight without enough room to spread your wings, which makes this an inconsistent but overall worthwhile expansion.

The rebooted Planet of the Apes movies are a trilogy of thoughtful, morally complex blockbusters that pose serious questions about what it means to be human.

Some of the best films of all time are those whose different strengths all work in concert to create a unified, engrossing whole. The Shining, The Social Network, and Jaws are all excellent examples of films made up of strong individual parts complementing each other to form a fantastic work of art.

If you set out to pay homage to both Shadow of the Colossus and Attack On Titan, but never figured out how to truly capture what made either of them special, Extinction would be the result. That’s not to say there isn’t a decent amount of straightforward, excitingly-animated hack-and-slash enjoyment to be had – I just wish it had borrowed more of the atmosphere, variety, and sense of discovery from its muses.

The world of Adult Swim’s sociopathic mad scientist Rick Sanchez and his pubescent grandson Morty is full of ludicrous wonders and madcap danger, and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality gives fans a new way to put themselves right in the middle of it with a fun and funny - though short - Touch-enabled VR experience.

Detective Pikachu ignores the precedent set by Ash and his iconic Pikachu partner; its protagonist isn’t a trainer, its Pikachu is snarky, and it invites Pokemon from all generations to its city. But by doing so, developer Creatures has crafted an intriguing adventure game that, while not all that challenging, incorporates elements unique to Pokemon that ultimately make for a great whodunit experience.