Video Game Review: Final Fantasy XIV

Combat is pretty straightforward, and the game does a good job of metering out new abilities and upgrades so that by the time you’ve got lots of them at your disposal you already have a pretty good handle on things. It’s not all chocobo feathers and moogle pom-poms, though, as the targeting system continues to give me trouble even after tons of battles. At issue is how easy it is to accidentally attack a second foe, which can lead to a quick death under the wrong circumstances. Along those same lines, during hectic encounters it can be nearly impossible to pick out a specific enemy from the pack.

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Video Game Review: rain

There are only a handful of moves at your disposal, and all three of them work as intended. Holding down square makes you run, “X” jumps and circle interacts with specific objects that glow brightly. That’s it. And outside of a moment here or there when it would have been nice to be able to control the camera, I never found myself at odds with the setup.

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Video Game Review: FIFA 14

The flip side to this is the new Pull And Hold feature on defense, which is essentially cheat-but-don’t-get-caught. As your defender is adjacent to an opposing player, using B/Circle causes your player to physically interfere by grabbing and jockeying for position. Just don’t do it too long or too blatantly, as it’s a surefire path to a foul.

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Video Game Review: PES 2014

What I can say is that the game’s new physics engine, which focuses heavily on weight and momentum, now factors into controls. For example, one-on-one situations offer right-stick weight balance controls. This should affect how quickly you can juke or how well you can protect the ball. In theory, this is a groundbreaking idea, one that could pass down to the next generation of sports games. However, I couldn’t pull this off regularly, and I couldn’t tell if I just never got the right feel for the timing or if the necessary finesse requires too much precision to be accessible.

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Video Game Review: Grand Theft Auto V

While I’ve never been the biggest fan of driving in the series — I often felt like speeds got so excessive that it became almost impossible to do more than hope you don’t have to change direction or avoid anything during high-speed chases — I have to say that this the best work Rockstar has done in that department. Cars seem to respond more favourably to subtle adjustments, and as a result I was able to pursue vehicles effectively whilst weaving through traffic. Vehicles also feel very different, and the ability to customize their attributes and boost your characters’ driving skill is a nice touch.

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Video Game Review: One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2

The controls are a little odd. The game plays very fluidly for the most part and enables the player to effortlessly chain attacks. That being said, most of the game can be completed by simply button mashing. Each character has a series of different attacks, though none of them matter much because mashing achieves virtually the same effect as precise play. Plus, since only two basic attack buttons exist, combos consist of long, seemingly random sequences of those two buttons.

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