Justin McElroy
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Writing For
PolygonLatest Reviews
Dead Cells
To be straight with you, I had to really plumb the depths of my critical mind to scrounge up those dings. They are problems, don't get me wrong. They just can't come close to dimming the pleasure of this fast, fluid experience. Dead Cells may be the most fun I've...
Night in the Woods
Night in the Woods isn’t perfect. I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. Life isn’t perfect. But as the game itself tries to espouse, if you’ve got the patience, you may find that there is true beauty in that revelation.
Then, just when you think you can't repeat this grueling slog yet again, Mutants in Manhattan decides to pad out the last of its six hours by ... making you fight every boss again. Six bosses, 42 health bars. Are we having fun yet?
Kathy Rain
That said, I could have done with just a little more frustration. There are couple of puzzles that reach beyond "use this with this," but I would have liked a few more to give me the sense that I was a cerebral detective cracking a case, as opposed to a...
Severed
The promise of the Vita was console-quality experiences on the go, but Severed isn't that. Rather, it's the sort of expertly executed cocktail of mechanics that would work as well on a comparatively diminutive smartphone screen. So while Severed may be something of a swan song for the Vita, it's...
Transformers: Devastation
"It's not great, but fans will love it" has become a deservedly maligned critical trope, so I'm sort of hesitant to employ it here. But I'm not sure I've come across a game that so perfectly fits the label as Transformers: Devastation. This is a love letter to Transformers G1,...
Escape Dead Island
Like I said, I could go on, but I'm gonna stop there. Frankly, Escape Dead Island doesn't deserve another second of my time, and I hope to all that is holy it doesn't get a single second of yours.
Even with that misstep, Crimes and Punishments is easy to recommend to fans of Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous creation or adventure game fans just looking for something different. It may not provide much in the way of deductive challenge, but it succeeded more than any mystery game I've played...
Tex Murphy has been fairly successfully transported to the modern era, and maybe that's enough for the established fans. It's just a shame he didn't pick up enough new tricks in his sixteen-year hiatus for everyone else to take notice.
It's a testament to The Stick of Truth that my enthusiasm for the game didn't dim in the face of those hiccups. Despite them — and the jokes that occasionally run out of steam — this is an experience that even the most casual fan of South Park is going...
Broken Age
Taken as a whole, Broken Age is still a easy-to-recommend, extremely charming game with some lovely messages about growing up. But it isn’t quite the landmark achievement in video game narrative I spent its year-long intermission hoping for. Some of Act 2’s puzzles are quite clever and there are some...
Crimson Dragon
But I could forgive all of these missteps, the weird microtransactions, the underwhelming graphics, the off-kilter systems, if, on a very basic level, it was fun. It’s not. Crimson Dragon manages to take riding on a sweet flying dragon and make it a bland, frustrating slog. In my book, that’s...