Puzzle & Dragons is an odd beast. The game taps into my love of puzzle games and an appreciation for awesome artwork. Still, the mobile original’s never-ending grind and constant prompting to spend to build a better team makes playing less of a delight and more of a chore. Without the pressure of stamina and with a definitive beginning and end, Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition avoids those pitfalls and plays into the concept’s strengths. Still, is it worth investing $30 in an experience so similar to a free-to-play phone game? READ MORE
Despite not being as prolific or revered as Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire, Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher novels have maintained a significant following in Europe since the early 1990s. Thanks to developer CD Projekt Red, The Witcher has begun to rise in popularity in the past decade, and with the release of the third game in the series, Wild Hunt, its ever-expanding audience continues to grow. Thanks to a healthy mix of BioWare’s conversation choices and Bethesda’s open-world sensibilities, The Witcher games have always managed to feel both familiar and distinct. Thankfully, Wild Hunt upholds this tradition.
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Why Am I Dead At Sea is a full-release follow up to the small-but-popular flash game Why Am I Dead. This game, like its predecessor, places you in the role of the spirit of someone recently dead. Your task is to possess others and use different abilities to investigate and deduce the answer to the game’s titular question: “why am I dead?” Why Am I Dead At Sea takes place entirely on a cruise ship with a diverse cast of nine characters, and while it is a little rough around the edges, the adventure has enough twists to continually pull the player forward in the quest for answers. READ MORE
Invisible, Inc. is a perfect storm of a game. The tactical grid-based gameplay has a lot of depth and allows for a ton of strategic decisions, the spy-vs.-spy aesthetic transports you to a world of espionage and the roguelike randomness keeps you coming back over and over again to achieve that elusive “perfect” run. Every action has weight, and one wrong move can doom an entire mission. With numerous difficulty sliders to tune the experience, though, Invisible, Inc. is also an extremely accessible title that succeeds in training the player to tackle its more difficult challenges gradually without being frustrating. READ MORE
Wolfenstein: The New Order was refreshingly nostalgic. Everything looked amazing but acted like a classic shooter. It was up to me to pick up health packs and ammo, and I could carry every gun I found. There was absolutely no gray area: B.J. is the good guy, Nazis are the bad guys and you have to kill every one of them to win. Layered atop that were characters that I cared about and weapons that were all a joy to use. There’s nothing quite like swapping over to a double-barreled shotgun and laying waste to a room of pure, concentrated evil. The Old Blood falls short of its big brother in its characters and story, but the mechanics are sound and I had fun all the way through. READ MORE
