biteho.com

Do you like going on grand adventures? Do you like to jump over perilous obstacles, race against the clock, and test your instincts in the heat of battle? If you answered yes, my friend, it sounds like you are into action-adventure games!

Less a specific genre than a broad category, action-adventure is a bit of a catch-all, but it definitely doesn’t include games focused on puzzles, sports, or narrative alone. If you’re after games that put twitch gameplay front and center, usually alongside a compelling story to inspire you, then the list of games below is sure to contain a lot of options for you to consider as you head into the holiday season and the new year. These games were all reviewed by GameSpot in 2018, and earned high-scores, 8 and above; we’ve organized them by score and in alphabetical order.

While reviews are the opinion of a single writer, the GameSpot team at large has also come up with a list of what the group agrees are the year’s ten best games. It’s no surprise that there are plenty of action-adventure games among the group, including two remarkable PS4 exclusives: God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man.

When God of War arrived, everyone agreed that it was a momentous revival of an aging action-adventure series. As much as it bucked the trends we all grew to expect from the series, it also owned them to fuel the plot. It’s one of the smartest sequels in memory, and a fantastic game that was executed remarkably well.

The same can be said of Spider-Man, which, in the hands of Insomniac Games, was driven by a near pitch-perfect swinging system that made the open-world structure of NYC a blast to zip through. As a character, Peter Parker also felt relatable, and by skipping the oft-told origin story, we were allowed to dive right into his day-to-day struggles as both a teenager and a superhero in disguise.

2018 also saw the release of Dead Cells. This 2D side-scrolling adventure is punishingly difficult at first, but the more you play the more clear your character’s potential and the world’s threats become. Not a game to let you get too comfortable, the randomized aspect of level layouts and equipment drops during repeat attempts to beat the game ensure that you’re always on your toes, no matter your experience level.

For a look at all of the games that made our top-10 list for 2018, head on over to the Game of the Year 2018 hub. If you want to jump straight to our Game of the Year, don’t expect us to spoil it here! Open this page for the big reveal, and a special message from the team behind the game.

With the end of December drawing near, Microsoft has announced the Xbox Games With Gold for January 2019. It’s a solid lineup of Xbox One and Xbox 360 games that anyone with an Xbox Live Gold membership will be able to download for free during various times throughout the month. Let’s take a look at the first games that will be available in the new year.

Between January 1-31, Xbox One owners can download Celeste. This pixelated platformer is all about jumping and dashing through expertly designed (but seriously challenging) obstacles as you make your way to the peak of a mountain. It has simple, tight controls that you’ll need to master in order to make it through terrain riddled with things like pits, spikes, bounce pads, and toxic black goo. Thankfully, the checkpoint system is forgiving enough that you’re never put too far back after your many inevitable deaths.

The other Xbox One freebie is the racing game WRC 6 FIA World Rally Championship. This realistic rally game puts you face to face with all manner of challenges, including mud, fog, darkness, and ice, plus car troubles like engine breakdowns and punctured tires. If you’re up for it, you can grab WRC 6 between January 16 and February 15.

The Xbox 360 Games with Gold for January are acclaimed titles as well, and thanks to backwards compatibility, you can play them both on Xbox One. You can pick up the two-player action/puzzle game Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light from January 1-15. And between January 16-31 you can grab Far Cry 2, an open-world shooter some fans consider superior to its numerous sequels.

That’s what’s coming in January. Right now it’s not too late to download some of December’s Games with Gold, including QUBE 2, Never Alone, and Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.

Games With Gold January 2019

Xbox One

Xbox 360

Remedy Entertainment’s next game, Control, has no shortage of science fiction weirdness and supernatural creepiness. A lot of that revolves around the Oldest House, a strange building where alternate dimensions and realities converge. It’s where a government agency called the Bureau of Control, tasked with understanding and managing all the weirdness, sets up its headquarters.

The latest trailer for Control endeavors to fill players in a little bit more about the Oldest House and what exactly the Bureau of Control is all about. It’s narrated by James McCaffrey, who Remedy fans will recognize as the voice of Max Payne from the first two games in that franchise. In the trailer, McCaffrey plays Zachariah Trench, the director of the Bureau of Control. We know that Trench dies before he’s replaced by Jesse Faden, Control’s player character, but it seems Trench will be a presence throughout the story.

As Trench explains, the Oldest House was discovered in the 1960s by Control agents, and while on the outside it looked like a normal skyscraper, on the inside, it was anything but. The trailer fills in a bit of story as relates to what might be supernatural events in our world, suggesting that things like haunted houses are actually places where other dimensions seep into our own. The Oldest House has rooms and rooms of such places.

The trailer also gives glimpses of the Hiss–the supernatural force that invades the Oldest House and can possess Bureau agents–and drips with oppressive atmosphere and horror leanings. At E3 2018, Remedy boss Sam Lake discussed how Control invokes the dark sci-fi genre known as the new weird, which encompasses stories like Annihilation, and this trailer definitely gets that across. Now we have to wait for Control’s release sometime in 2019 to find out just how weird the Oldest House can get.

Bethesda has closed out the year by laying out a roadmap of what we can expect the beginning of 2019 to bring to Fallout 76. The studio outlined a few details of patches coming in January, and promised more info to come early next year.

In the blog post, the studio noted that a mid-January patch will fix the lever-action rifle reload animation, some perk cards, and the crowds at Whitespring. The studio promised that going forward in 2019, patch notes will be accompanied by a brief explanation from developers detailing the rationale behind balance changes and adjustments. It’s also working on a new mode without PVP restrictions, allowing you a little more flexibility in how you play. That will be coming in the first quarter of 2019.

It’s fair to say that Fallout 76 has had a rocky launch. The game itself released in a buggy state, leading to a poor reception including in GameSpot’s own review, which scored it a 4/10. It’s been a series of mishaps since then, from an investigation into a PC refund policy to a bait-and-switch with canvas bags in the Collector’s Edition, and finally a personal data leak. For its part Bethesda has continued to support the game with patches and has promised to listen to community feedback going forward.

“Bethesda has stated it intends to continue supporting the game for a long time, but at launch, Fallout 76 is a poor experience,” wrote critic Edmond Tran. “There are echoes of the series’ admirable qualities, but look past that facade, past the cute Vault Boy animations, past the familiar radio tracks, and you’ll find no heart–just an inconsequential wasteland doomed to be nuked over and over again.”

Despite its issues, it seems to have had a solid launch, selling decently well in physical copies according to data tracking firm NPD.