IGN Game Reviews – Spoken Edition

[Editor’s Note: This review zeroes in exclusively on the multiplayer modes for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. For our thoughts on the single-player campaign, check out this in-depth review. We’ll have the overall review coming up soon.] Giving the latest Call of Duty effectively the same name as one of the most revered multiplayer shooters of all time is a bold move. Right out of the gate, it creates sky-high expectations that are challenging to actually fulfill.

You can tell that a lot of great Lovecraftian games are crafted with love for the 20th century writer’s vision of horror, but Moons of Madness often feels more like an interactive movie than a video game. And I can’t help but wonder if it could have been more successful if it were. The story is decent though unfocused, but it suffers from the presence of gameplay that’s rarely more than busywork and often left me feeling as cold as the planet it’s set on.

WWE 2K20 is a mess. The pro wrestling series has never been known for its polish, but this year, just about every issue that has plagued WWE 2K is even worse.

Whether you’re listening to a tiny Acorn yodel as it transforms into a mighty Oak tree or watching a wannabe superhero zombie hold his arms aloft like Superman when he sprints, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville's roster pops with personality.

It’s downright impressive that, even after more than 20 years, the bulk of MediEvil’s DNA hasn’t lost an ounce of its charm. That’s due in part to the fact that the original hack-and-slash adventure was ahead of the times for 1998 in many ways, and it’s deserving of its cult classic status.

In some ways it’s nice that the story doesn’t put a face on the evil corporate Board that rules over this isolated colony until around two thirds of the way through the roughly 30-hour campaign – and even when they do they’re not all that menacing.

In preparation for playing John Wick Hex I rented John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum . That was… probably a mistake. Going directly from its artful action choreography to the distractingly janky animations of this simultaneous turn-based tactics game made it harder to enjoy what it does well. Adapting John Wick to this slow and deliberate genre of game instead of the predictable shooter was an admirably bold move, but some of the risks taken did not pay off.

The Grid games have been through a couple of moderate reinventions since the TOCA spin-off franchise first debuted just over a decade ago. For this fourth instalment – simply titled Grid – Codemasters has instead hit the reset button, opting for an overt return to this series’ 2008 roots rather than yet another metamorphosis.

Nintendo’s latest weird game-fitness-thing, Ring Fit Adventure, has been a lot more difficult than I expected. Not because its attempt at integrating fitness into an RPG is too complicated or obtuse, but because its honest-to-goodness workout is kicking my butt. For the past two weeks I’ve spent a daily session not much longer than my regular gym time with it, and it almost always leaves me sweating.

Like all good detective stories, what appears simple at first becomes so much more than that in Disco Elysium – and here it gets so, so much weirder, too. It takes the age-old mechanics of tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons and twists them in strange ways around a macabre tale of violence, poverty, and a society on the brink of collapse.

When CD Projekt Red’s massive fantasy RPG was first released on Xbox One, PC, and PS4 in 2015 our reviewer said its massive, intricately detailed world, compelling cast, and optional questlines “elevated The Witcher 3: The Witcher 3 is such a demanding game that even in handheld mode it has to run at a mere 540p instead of the Switch screen’s native 720p.

When I purchased my Oculus Rift over two years ago, my first great adventures in the headset consisted mainly of instant classics like Superhot VR, Robo Recall, and Lone Echo. Immediately, I saw the potential in experiencing games from true first-person perspective rather than just controlling your character remotely. But I wanted more.

Taken at face value, Ghost Recon Breakpoint has been assembled from all the pieces it needs to be a success. And that’s its biggest problem. Ubisoft’s entire open-world playbook has been dumped in, alongside many of the games-as-service elements you’d expect to find in a game you’re intended to play for a long time.

If Shadowkeep makes anything crystal clear, it’s that it was built for the hardcore audience that’s stuck with Destiny 2 for years through good times and bad, even if its new features run the risk of confusing and alienating new players.

The Call of Duty franchise is no stranger to mobile gaming, but the succinctly titled Call of Duty: Mobile is different.