Jeremy Winslow

Velvet Crowe, Berseria‘s scantily-clad-revenge-seeking protagonist, is as one-dimensional as protagonists come, and though Bandai Namco attempt to humanize her toward the latter third of the game, teen angst and heavy black eyeliner only goes so far before you start to wonder when she’ll ever grow the hell up. (Thank God most of us have grown out of this phase. Most of us.)

Fire Face Corporation understands the teetering of emotions captive elicits and crafts a beautifully mesmerizing game about the oscillation between the analog and the digital; however, Small Radios Big Televisions is both compelling and disappointing in the same breadth, and this dissonance is palpable throughout its short runtime.

Denzel Washington captures that grit, that raw emotion of a play perfectly in his rendition of August Wilson’s Fences, even if the film still feels like a play.

While tantalizing as a thought, the anime began to drag, and the games continued to reinforce the same narrative told in season one of the anime, never bold enough to venture to new territory. Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, unfortunately, is just that: a hollow fragment of an otherwise excellent series that needs to be more daring in its idea. (A criticism of both the anime and the myriad of games to come out.)

Though the presentation of these themes is tantalizingly sinister at times, the ultimate impact of confronting them is dulled by pervasive storytelling issues and tedious mechanics, making this less an examination of heartbreak and more a tale of monotony.

Tarsier Studios’ Little Nightmares presents us with the third circle of Hell, wrapped into a Tim Burton-esque package comparable to PlayDead’s Limbo or Inside. In Little Nightmares, these nightmares are grotesque and terrifying.

Though Mr. Shifty makes its influences unabashedly apparent, it blends the two so cleverly that is both tantalizing and addictive in a weird, perverse, lemme-punch-one-more-guy-out-the-window kind of way.The result feeds upon our instinctual desire for rabid, frenetic violence.

In a bold move for the family-friendly Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild forgoes handholding in favor of emergent gameplay and player agency, placing Link in an open-world where discovery and mystery are pillars of the experience. While this move harkens back to the NES-era’s The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Breath of the Wild has far too many similarities to modern games to feel truly unique, as well as too many obtuse design decisions to be truly satisfying.

Knights, Samurai, and Vikings would have never met. Though existing in approximately the same period, because of boring geographical considerations, these three legendary warriors never had the opportunity to cross blades. Still, that didn’t prevent adolescent minds from pondering the age-old question: Who would win in a battle, Knights, Samurai, or Vikings? This debate pervaded middle school and elementary school history classes, intensified during recess and lunch periods, and exacerbated after school when every youngster acquired a stick to zealously impersonate their favorite faction. (Perhaps this is my own projection of what my formative years looked like, but I’d like to think every child had a similar upbringing.) Ubisoft must have been contemplating this infuriating and intoxicating question as well: For Honor seeks to find the answer, even if there’s no definitive answer and the answer you walk away with may disappoint or excite you.

For Honor — Ubisoft’s forthcoming action, hack-and-slash, multiplatform title — puts you in the armor of ancient, legendary warriors: Knights, Samurai, and Vikings. With several multiplayer betas between its original announcement nearly two years ago and its release in February — and me never getting into a single beta until the final one, thanks to a code provided by a fellow staff member — I’ve gotten the chance to get much needed hands-on experience with the game and its lauded “Art of Battle,” as pitched by the game’s director, Jason VandenBerghe. As the one in charge of the review, and with its imminent release, I want to briefly talk about what it does right and some of my concerns. So, let’s discuss honor in For Honor.

Remember the days when your friend could pick up the controller and play with you on the same system, in the same room? It seems Playtonic Games, composed of former Rare developers who had hands on Nintendo 64-era titles, is fond of those days, too, as the age of local co-op is yet behind us. Publisher Team17 announced today that the 3D character-platformer Yooka-Laylee, developed by Playtonic Games, will feature multiplayer in the form of mini arcade games found in Rextro’s Arcade. These eight multiplayer modes can be played in either single player for the top spot on the leaderboards or in local couch co-op with up to four players and will include modes such as arena-brawler Glaciators, kart-racer Kartos Karting, capture the flag-esque Blag the Flag, shoot-em-up Gun-let Run, and more.

Scalebound has been scaled down as PlatinumGames and Microsoft Studios part ways. The Xbox One exclusive, pegged for a nebulous “2017” release, has been unceremoniously canceled on January 9. Xbox head Phil Spencer delivered an official statement on the decision, stating the team is “working hard to deliver an amazing lineup of games.”

In an off-decision, Sony has decided to discontinue their Live Events Viewer app on both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. In an email sent out to North American PSN users, the app will be terminated on January 10. If you are a PS4 owner, however, this isn’t too much of a problem, as you can simply purchase the app from the PlayStation Store if you so desperately need it. If you’re a PS3 owner, though, there is no replacement: Once the app is gone, it’s gone, and it doesn’t seem Sony has any plans to substitute it with another one for the decade old console.

After years of setbacks and copious changes to both directors and writing teams, it seems the Uncharted film that was announced back in 2009 finally has a script. And it’s completed.

On January 5, Nintendo of America took to Twitter to announce an announcement: Friday, January 13 the company will broadcast a Treehouse Live event with the Nintendo Switch.