IGN Game Reviews – Spoken Edition

Spoiler Note: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics follows the same plot as its Netflix TV series counterpart. While this review is spoiler-free and the gameplay and screenshots shown were picked to avoid giving anything away, keep that in mind if you haven’t seen the show and want to go in completely fresh. [poilib element="accentDivider"] It’s 2020, but Netflix is still banging the drum for licensed tie-in games.

Did you catch that just a couple of weeks ago, Valve came out and said that in no uncertain terms that there will absolutely not be a Left 4 Dead 3 anytime soon? Well, what’s terrible news for many is awesome for Zombie Army 4: Dead War, which couldn’t have hoped for better timing. It’s here to follow in those four-player co-op footsteps – except its zombies are also Nazis, and sometimes when you kill them you get a super-gross slow-mo kill.

Kentucky Route Zero’s fifth and final act launches on PC on January 28 alongside its TV Edition, which brings the entire story to PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. This review is taking a fresh look at Kentucky Route Zero as a whole now that all five acts are complete. [poilib element="accentDivider"] I couldn’t stop taking screenshots as I played Kentucky Route Zero.

After the impressive and surprising list of DLC characters Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s first Fighter’s Pass has brought so far, the most recent and final addition, Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, feels like an incredibly safe pick – in more ways than one. They’re not as mechanically complex as the likes of Hero or Terry Bogard, and not as fan-servingly exciting as Joker or Banjo & Kazooie.

Imagine what would happen if you took a half-season of The Walking Dead TV show, mashed it together with a Deus Ex or System Shock style of exploration and decision-making, and then drizzled it with the best aspects of a modern VR game. What you might end up with is a survival horror game that’s oppressively tense and brutal, but also tugs on you relentlessly to explore every corner of its post-apocalyptic world for hidden loot and nuggets of lore.

Kingdom Hearts 3’s Re Mind DLC is oddly jumbled. It’s a pack of weirdly separated content that is simultaneously far less interesting than it could have been story-wise and frustratingly difficult at times combat-wise unless you’ve essentially maxed out Sora’s abilities. And even when you have, the Grand Canyon-sized valley between the challenge of its bosses and everything else that comes before them is so wide that they feel entirely out of place.

It’s not a surprise to learn that Journey to the Savage Planet’s creative director last worked on Far Cry 4. The two games are made broadly out of the same pieces: a lush explorable map, some light looting and crafting, and a satirical story as the backbone to hold it all up.

Battle Royale games can often have you spend an immense amount of time looting and preparing for an ultimate showdown that never actually happens. Instead of getting into an intense firefight against another squad, you may just get sniped by someone you didn’t see, or do the sniping yourself. Darwin Project tries to fix that, managing to reverse the traditional balance of looting vs. fighting with electric results.

With more than 30 games to its name, some dating back as early as the 1980s and most only available in Japan, Dragon Ball Z is no stranger to having its story adapted to video game form. But rarely has it been done in such a way that the story has been the star, as opposed to taking a back seat to the action.

I doubt that, when Nintendo was developing the Switch, its designers were thinking, “This thing will be great for retro arcade shooters!” But thanks to its built-in screen and detachable Joy-Cons, this thing is absolutely great for retro arcade shooters, and Psikyo Shooting Stars Alpha happens to be a no-frills collection of six ‘90s and early 2000s (mostly) classics of that genre.

Good news: Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is coming out this Thursday, January 16! Bad news: we only just got review copies today, less than 48 hours ahead of time. Considering this is a beefy game with dozens of hours of content, that means the odds of us having a review up on the site by launch are... not great. Don't worry, we'll get it done ASAP, and we'll aim to have it finished early next week.

2018’s AO Tennis may have been a limp first swing that pinged off the frame and dropped well short of the net, but its second attempt at landing in the service box has been delivered with substantially more power and precision. It’s a better-looking, smoother-playing, and more fully-featured simulation of the sport, one that eradicates the bulk – though not the entirety – of the unforced errors made by its undercooked predecessor.

Each expedition in GTFO begins with a startling descent into a labyrinth of subterranean rooms called The Complex. Navigating its creepy industrial corridors using an interactive map and computer terminals with a team of four total players is a lot of fun thanks to the tense atmosphere and puzzling stealth encounters.

This DLC campaign starts off a little bumpy, but when it goes all-in, it hits the jackpot.

Almost since the beginning, Star Wars has been a story of redemption from darkness. So, in an ironic sort of way, Battlefront 2 Shortly before Battlefront 2 officially launched in 2017 it was filled with egregious microtransactions that were not only greedy, but disruptive to the game as a whole. If you didn’t want to grind for hours to unlock playable heroes then you had to pay actual money.