never has an open video game setting been so expansive, so richly varied, so cohesive, and so utterly, vibrantly reactive.
Between naive nice-guy Franklin, aggressive family-man Michael and benevolent psychopath Trevor, suddenly all play-styles are catered for without breaking the integrity of the game's stunningly realized world.Īs for that world. Even better, it's now finally possible to play GTA any way you want to and have it make sense. The three-protagonist set-up does far, far more than simply mix up the characterization, building sophisticated dramatic irony as three separate storylines twist and conflict, all under the control of the player. Probably the biggest evolution Grand Theft Auto has enjoyed since it went 3D, GTA 5 takes the essence of what has always made the series great, dismantles it, and rebuilds it with a new, fresh, altogether more thoughtful, and entirely reinvigorated structure. Yakuza 5 is an exuberant abundance of gritty crime drama and abject silliness, and while it may not be the best place to hop in for newcomers, it's got more than enough goodies inside to entertain anyone. It's got baseball minigames, ramen cooking minigames, stand-up comedy minigames, an arcade with damn-near full versions of Virtua Fighter 2 and Taiko Drum Master, and so much more - and all of these pursuits are fun in their own unique ways. It's also a taxi driving sim a hunting game and a Japanese pop idol sim (complete with dance battles!). At its heart, Yakuza 5 is a deeply serious story of the Japanese criminal underworld, of evil men doing bad things and righteous men ripping their shirts off in one swift motion to stop them in hand-to-hand combat. Lots of games talk about how big they are, but few offer a wealth of wildly entertaining and bizarre things to do like the Yakuza games. That Arkham City also plays host to a Batman story dark, dramatic, and entirely epic enough to stand up in any medium is just the icing on the utility cake. The same mix of intelligent, creative sandbox stealth and taxing, thrilling, almost musical combat still underpins everything and is even better than it ever was before. Letting the empowering yet perfectly balanced mechanics of the first game really fly, literally and figuratively, Arkham Citys structure is an equally grand victory in both gameplay and aesthetic terms.īut just as importantly, it never dominates or detracts from what made Arkham Asylum great. Smartly choosing fidelity, personality, and meaningful design over sheer scale for scale's sake, Rocksteady's quarantined chunk of Gotham is one of the most striking, affecting, and most entirely purposeful environments seen in an entire generation. How do you make the best superhero game of all time better? You add a whole lot more of it and drop all of that into one of the best-realized open-world cities ever seen in a game.
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