![]() ![]() Much like Firewatch and Inside, Oxenfree is a short game that will take just a couple of evenings to finish for the first time but unlike those games, you will feel an immediate urge to do it over again, differently, in the hope of a better fate for any unfortunate friends. All of the teens can survive, or not, leading to multiple endings, more of which were added through a new game plus mode in a May-released "director's cut" version. The slang that the teens exchange can grate, much as comparable language did in Life Is Strange but just like Dontnod's excellent time-travel tale of 2015, Oxenfree's characters are each drawn with such believe-ability that their stylized looks can't stand in the way of establishing a meaningful connection with them. This is a wickedly unsettling game, in which creepy sound design digs under the skin to a far greater degree than the somewhat cutesy visuals could ever imply. A lot of bad shit has gone down here, and the game's gang of teenage visitors soon enough tap into a residual malevolence through the medium of radio waves. Probably not one to play when your grandma's over.Īnother debut from a new stateside studio, in this case LA's Night School, Oxenfree is a point-and-click ghost story set on an island that was previously a military installation. (Also: this is how they did it back in the day, and new DOOM pays homage to that.) But there's no doubt that this game can, and will, turn more sensitive stomachs than mine. Does it go too far? I don't personally think so: these are demons you're laying waste to, after all, so splash the crimson around as abundantly as you like. DOOM is the least serious of all this generation's very-serious-actually Guys With Guns shooty bangs, just a ball of ultra-violent abandonment that rollicks along like a mega-budget Hollywood blockbuster with the script of a cat food commercial. The story's utter bobbins, but everything moves so smoothly, every skull shatters with a just-right crispness, and every up-close-and-deadly "glory kill" just sings itself hoarse with feverous glee for carnage and chaos. But fucking hell, what a glorious go-it-alone mode DOOM has. Multiplayer, and player-made maps, was their primary focus. And it's not like publishers Bethesda were really making the greatest deal over its solo campaign. A cacophony of gory deaths and a buffet of impressive weaponry, naturally, but not a lot more than stylish violence in place of memorable substance. I wasn't expecting much from this heavily advertised but, come on now, rather under-hyped in the press reboot of id's seminal shooter of 1993. Visually it's a treat, too, made for the PS4's share button. It's not a horror game, per se, but there's great tension in Firewatch, a build-up of nervousness over what comes next that few recent games can come close to. It's a relatable connection between two very three-dimensional-feeling humans that grows in confidence across four hours of game-play, before becoming incredibly fraught in the game's later stages, where real horrors begin to impose themselves on the pair's comfy solitude. The two excellently voiced characters share stories, sure up their long-distance relationship, and tease each other flirtatiously. He escapes for a summer watching out for fires in Wyoming, where he "meets"-over a radio, never once in person-Delilah. ![]() You are Henry, and Henry's been on a rough ride lately. It suffered from a few performance hiccups on release, but Firewatch, the debut from San Fran studio Campo Santo, possesses the most absorbing novella-length gaming narrative of the year so far. ![]() For two-thirds of its slightly-too-long run time, this is as good as triple-A action games get these days, and it's absolutely the best-looking video game yet on the PS4. Certainly A Thief's End features some of the series' most breathless set pieces-that crane-grappling-hook-bridge-race-drag part, right? But it also delivers affectingly intimate, quiet scenes of no-guns-necessary character interaction that showcase makers Naughty Dog's talent for great casting. The best Uncharted, ever? Possibly, though I'll happily hear your argument for Among Thieves. PlayStation's big, shiny exclusive of the first half of 2016 delivered a lot of what the already-familiar expected-clambering up quite-probably-listed buildings before watching them fall down, shooting nameless goons in their dumb mugs, Nate getting snarky with NPCs-while standing alone enough from its predecessors to represent a perfect jumping-on point for anyone who only moved over to Sony this console generation. ![]()
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