Best Game Review

  Forza Horizon 4 retains almost everything that made Forza Horizon 3 the best racer in its class and bakes it into a game that doesn’t ever want you to stop playing. The stunning visual quality and sound design, the massive array of automobiles, and the extensive and completely customisable career mode that have become hallmarks of the Horizon series are all here. What’s new is just how much more effectively Forza Horizon 4 encourages us to return thanks to its shifting seasons, regularly refreshed challenges, and steady stream of rewards. Every real-time week the in-game season will change and bring a whole new look to the world, alongside a bunch of season-specific challenges. Every day there are still more new Forzathon challenges to complete, and every hour there is a live, online event to participate in alongside up to 11 other drivers who we work with cooperatively in order to chip away at a shared goal. Whether the piles of emotes, ...

  There’s something about being dropped into a brand new game world and finding it to be dense with deeply considered lore, terrifyingly aggressive creatures, and tantalizing questions that leaves an indelible mark on the memory. Horizon: Zero Dawn is one of those games, and it carves out a unique identity within the popular action-roleplaying genre. Coupled with wonderfully flexible combat and a story that touches on unexpectedly profound themes, I found it hard to tear myself away from Horizon even after I’d finished its main campaign some 40 odd hours later. Horizon's premise is a big mystery that begs to be solved. A sense of urgency is established from the get-go, as Horizon’s premise is a big mystery that begs to be solved. The questions raised by protagonist Aloy and the primitive, feral machine-infested open world she inhabits kept me guessing throughout: what’s at the centre of it all? Although Horizon suffers from occasionally corny...

  No game has been as anticipated for as much or as long as Half Life 3. So, as gamers will have to wait a little longer for it, Valve has graced us with what may be the most compelling reason to get a VR headset with Half-Life: Alyx . Half-Life: Alyx is set 5 years before Half-Life 2. What starts as a rescue mission for the protagonist’s father evolves into attempting to steal a superweapon from the alien overlords. From the interactive puzzles, the well-thought out combat and the fantastic story, this prequel is a welcome dive back into the Half-Life world that has been universally praised for its quality. If you’re looking for an excuse to get into VR gaming, this might be the one for you. Half-Life: Alyx’s attention to detail shows what can be done with VR when taken seriously.

  Doom: Eternal takes everything from the remastered Doom of 2016 and turns it up to 11. The game is intense, visually and sonically overwhelming, and is exactly what you would expect a fever dream inspired by Doom would feel like. The gameplay is a seamless first-person shooter where you trek into hell to battle an assortment of never-ending demons and reclaim an overrun earth. Refilling your health sometimes requires quite literally tearing monsters apart, and there is some need to be creative with your weapon choice, depending on what demon you’re facing. However, this game is all about creating havoc and rushing into battle as loud and as brash as possible. Not only is Doom: Eternal a hell of a ride (pun intended). It’s also a gorgeous looking game that takes advantage of the newest hardware. And, it’s a 2v1 multiplayer mode where one player takes control of the “slayer” and faces off against two more player-controlled demons.

  The newest release from Rockstar Games was an instant hit upon release. Red Dead Redemption 2 is an engrossing western following Arthur Morgan and his gang as they try to survive a fictionalized Wild West as outlaws on the run. However, the game is much more than just that. Whether it’s getting lost in the story, following through on every side quest to its conclusion, or just bonding with your horse, RDR2 is one of those games where you can easily sink 50+ hours into and still have something to do. The gameplay is stellar, and the graphics are gorgeous. You can even run the game in 8K , if you have the hardware. Definitely give this a look if you haven’t already.   We're on round two of growing the recursive corpse pile. My posse got the idea to jump in front of the train after a few rounds of Lasso Your Friends And Toss Them Into The Sea with a couple friendly strangers. Red Dead Redemption 2, like GTA 5, has its own bowling minigame, we explain to Chen in a ro...

  Death Stranding , your character Sam carries a small baby in an orange bottle strapped to his chest. It stays with him at all times. The child, called a BB, is essentially a tool: it alerts Sam to ghostly apparitions called BTs, which dot the post-apocalyptic landscape he must traverse. The whole situation is unsettling. BB cries when it gets scared — whether it’s because of imminent danger or because you keep falling down a slippery mountain — and the haunting sound is piped through the speaker on the PS4 controller. This makes it even more unsettling. Over the course of the game, which lasts upwards of 50 hours, my feelings toward BB changed. At first, it was an uncomfortable nuisance, but eventually, I became attached to the kid. When it cried, I’d find a safe space to rock it until it calmed down, and I always made sure to check on it when we’d bunk for the night. During the few moments in the game when Sam and BB were separated, it felt like something important...

  Monster Hunter is one of the biggest gaming franchises you’ve probably never heard of for years now. With Monster Hunter: World, the series broke into the mainstream and came to the PC (much to many gamers’ relief), and now, it’s one of the best PC games you can play to date.  Monster Hunter: World puts you in the shoes of a monster hunter, and you’ll hunt increasingly bigger and meaner monsters, strip them for parts, and craft bigger, badder armor. It’s a deviously simple gameplay loop that ends up being one of the most compelling and rewarding PC games you can play right now.  There’s an incessant onslaught of content in this game, and Capcom, the developers of this monster hunting hit, are committed to bringing a wealth of free DLC to the game – as well as a new frosty expansion in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. If you’re looking for an addictive, immersive and most importantly, fun game to play on your own or with all your closest friends cooperativel...

  Microsoft Flight Simulator is one of the longest-running series in PC gaming , a franchise particularly beloved and supported by an audience of simulation and aviation enthusiasts. The 2020 edition, brought to life by developer Asobo Studio in tandem with Microsoft, is sure to bring a whole new generation and fanbase into the fold. The obvious inclusion of improved visuals aside, the near-magic addition of a fully re-created and explorable Earth, built and populated with Microsoft’s Bing satellite imagery and Azure cloud computing service, elevates the series to new heights.  The dedication to realistic simulation remains, but flying over real cities, mountains, and landmarks you know is an experience unlike anything else in gaming, and arguably transcends what you can do in any other medium. Qualms with performance and the hardware barrier to entry aside, Flight Simulator's feel of real-world flight with more iterative upgrades, smart features that go beyond th...

  Dark Souls III ($59.99) is developer From Software's return to the Souls series after the eldritch madness that was Bloodborne ($13.00 at Amazon) . In fact, the newest Souls game incorporates gameplay and design elements from virtually all of the team's recent titles. As a result, the gorgeous and action-packed Dark Souls III feels highly familiar, yet fresh and content-rich at the same time. Like all of From Software's launches, however, this PC game is in need of a few patches to adjust weapon balance. Nonetheless, Dark Souls III is easily one of the best games in the series, and one of the year's most outstanding titles thus far. I played Dark Souls III on a gaming desktop , but the action-RPG is also available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Teaching an Old Demon New Tricks Dark Souls III incorporates story elements from both of its predecessors to tell of the cyclical struggle between fire and darkness. You play as a lone, undead warrior, and venture ...