Sifu is built on parrying and timing to a degree that can feel brutally difficult, if not outright inaccessible.
When the game settles into straightforward action, it comes across as a retread of past Uncharted entries.
Throughout, Troll and I often raises the question of just how much testing was done to spot and correct mistakes.
Nathan Drake’s quest in Uncharted 4 successfully bridges the uncanny valley between adventure game, action movie, and real-world exploration.
The game’s stronger than expected writing and decent cast more than make up for its conceptual banalities.
Whether or not you’re a fan of the series, the game will have the piano wire around your neck before you know it.
This is the best kind of remaster: a lovingly crafted technical update that’s also a master class on how a developer can evolve ideas.
The game is our best example that we can play a movie. The fact that the movie in question is a leaden, unimaginative waste is almost incidental.
It very much tries to reach perfection with the tools Naughty Dog and the industry as a whole, really, are all very well aware of.
The game still tells a beautiful, gripping tale, thanks in part to the voice and motion-capture performances of Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe, making 2011’s L.A. Noire, acclaimed for its facial graphics, seem decades old.
The Combo Lab allows for beneficial augmentation of attacks, adding instrumental bonuses like health boosts to certain strike patterns.
Defense isn’t nearly as important as a strong and constant offense, through which you can accumulate the AP necessary to trigger those killing moves.
Ultimately, the main selling point here is wielding Shadow as a weapon, and it’s a gimmick whose implementation is frustratingly rudimentary.