Kingdom Eighties: summer of Greed is part of the Kingdom series but set in the 1980's with very Stranger Things vibes. The graphics are cool pixel art and the vibe is brilliant. The story is simple enough and keeps you chugging along while not getting you too bogged down. The game is pretty short clocking in around five hours which is perfect for me too. Unfortunately, the gameplay didn't really grab me. You basically hire builders and fighters then clear trees to reclaim the map and open up new opportunities to earn money and push back the Greed. It is fun enough but it fails to develop from there and I was over it before I got to the finish line. Also, the movement is pretty slow and you get knackered and need to stop frequently which discouraged me from exploring. Overall, great vibe, cool graphics and sound but a bit basic on the gameplay for me.
Dispatch is the best game I've played this year hands down. The art style is superb the story is next level and the voice acting absolutely out of this world. Imagine the best of Telltale Games, but with a game engine that isn't falling to pieces and a super fun hero management sim to break things up. They better make more of this or I'm going to have to bust some heads!
Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster is a remake of the 1992 SNES classic. I can only imagine how amazing this felt to play thirty years ago. The world is huge, the music is great and there is a deep combat system. In this updated version the art is wonderful and there have been some quality of life updates like ability to level up faster, which is absolutely essential.However, without the nostalgia tinted glasses the games flaws standout more than the previous instalments. The lack of signposting where you need to go next remains a bugbear for me, but the biggest issue I have is with the difficulty spikes. Instant full party kills from random enemies, bosses which need specific builds to defeat and the less said about the last boss the better. I had to resort to walkthroughs in the end and I still didn't mess with optional bosses like ****'s mostly good fun with a random storyline and complex combat, but man those difficulty spikes... woof.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a mystery game packed with character. You play the titular duck detective, Eugene McQuacklin, a down-on-his-luck Private Investigator in the noir style who is out to solve the mystery of the missing salami. It is beautifully drawn, the characters are fun, and there are some genuinely funny moments, not least reading the duck 'facts' that pop up frequently as you play. Puzzles are solved by investigating the surroundings and speaking to suspects to identify keywords which can then be combined, a bit like Return of the Obra Dinn, but with a dedicated quack button. Best of all, for those of us with kids, it was over in a couple of hours, and I had a mighty fine time. No filler, all killer. The AAA industry could learn a lot from Happy Broccoli Games. I'm looking at you FFVII - Rebirth!
Tactical Breach Wizards is a fantastic turn-based tactics game, think fantasy Rainbow Six, only fun. I fell in love with the writing and characters from the first cutscene. It is smart and laugh-out-loud funny with some great banter and a fantastic world. Steve Clark, Traffic Warlock and Bori Kesh, the Less-Lethal Pyromancer, are two particular highlights for me. The gameplay is slick, fast and well thought out, the graphics are superb, and you even get to do a murder board with red string connecting things. What is not to like?
FFVII Rebirth is a game that I have very mixed feelings about. At its best, it is an enthralling story with thrilling combat and just the right amount of fan service to make it tickle the nostalgia bone. The voice acting is excellent, the graphics and gameplay are top notch, and when you're going through the story, it really drags you along by the scruff of the neck. At its worst, it is a slog of repetitive fetch quests and open-world busy work bloat where you do the bidding of a weird manchild and his digital trans alter ego. I'm a completionist, so it is my fault that I felt the need to tick every box on the bloated quest tracker, but it seriously hurts the pacing of the story when you get to a new area and 'need' to spend ten hours collecting flowers and flying a Chocobo through a bunch of hoops. That said, I'm not sure how you'd make it through some of the more challenging battles without all the levelling the side quests provide. Anyway, I still really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to the next entry. I just hope they tighten things up a bit more.
Spilled is a wonderful little cosy game where you clean up oil spills and litter from a series of waterways, turning them from gross, poisoned wastes into sparkling, lovely nature reserves. It is a perfect relaxing Steam Deck game, and I felt like I'd achieved something at the end of a hard day at work. It only lasts an hour or so, but it's very much an hour well spent. Well worth a few quid of anyone's money for a lovely cosy cleaning experience.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a fun action-adventure game with some light puzzling elements and big boss battles. You play the eponymous Turnip Boy forced to labour under the evil Mayor Onion after being convicted of committing tax evasion. The plot is silly and light, and it is exactly the kind of fun and quick experience I wish there were more of. No open-world maps filled with pointless, repetitive side quests, no endless collectables, just a few hours of silly fun ripping up documents and stabbing snails.
The Darkside Detective is a point-and-click-em-up packed with humour and puzzles that are both logical and fun, which can't be said for all games in this genre... It follows Detective Francis McQueen and his sidekick, Officer Patrick Dooley, as they solve mysteries in Twin Lakes. Nothing is groundbreaking here, but it is brilliantly written with genuine laugh-out-loud moments, some wild situations and Santa! What more could you ask for?
Steamworld Dig is a fun Steampunk Western Metrovanian with some mining thrown in for good measure. It's not a combination I would have thought of, but it works really well. The core loop is to dig, fight, and then return to the surface to sell your loot and buy new equipment, allowing you to delve deeper into the mysterious mine. It got its hooks into me immediately and didn't let go until I saw the credits roll. Also, its a perfect Steamdeck game if that is your jam.
Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster is a beautiful remake. The graphics are gorgeous, the music is terrific, and it feels great to play for a thirty-year-old game. To say it came out on the SNES, it feels deep and fun to play, well, mostly... It suffers from the same issues as the earlier games, and it's too easy to get lost and forget where you're trying to get to, especially when the game opens up into the three areas. But the ridiculous difficulty spike at the end took points away for me. The story is nonsense, but it doesn't hurt the game too much, and I enjoyed it overall. I'm looking forward to giving the next one a go.
Beatbuddy is a music rhythm puzzle game that has some fantastic music and fun puzzles. You bop around the screen bashing things in time to the beat to break open new paths, or dodge bullets so you can progress to the next section. It is generally fun to play but has an entirely forgettable story and it is plagued by game-killing bugs. I saw a few along the way, whole sections not spawning for example, but was able to get around them and then when I was right at the end the game lost a key item I needed to progress. I only had one save and so would have had to start again to get there and, well, the game wasn't really fun enough for that I'm afraid. If you can avoid the bugs you'll have some fun here but they killed it for me sadly.
Full disclosure I backed the Kickstarter because I thought this was a great-sounding game. And to be fair I liked this game to start with, It was a fun throwback some good humour, fun battles and cool art. Then I got relatively deep and all the levels I could do were stupid. Fight on a subway but don't hit the lawyers, funny I get it but they are everywhere and it's nigh on impossible not to hit them and get an instant game over. There's another level where you get to a boss and you slowly die and for some reason can barely do any damage to **** minute all is fun and the next you're stuck on multiple levels with stupid gimmicks. I had to quit before I threw my computer out of the window. Very frustrating because I was really enjoying it until then. If you're going to put stupid, needlessly hard levels in like that give an option to skip them so you can see the rest of the game.
Final Fantasy III is a product of its time but still stands up surprisingly well. The music is gorgeous, the pixel graphics are wonderful, and the gameplay is engaging. The addition of auto fighting is great, but it would have been nice to have some more quality-of-life features, like a quest pointer, so you don't get lost and wander aimlessly around the map for an hour. The job system was excellent but poorly explained, and I'm still not sure I knew what I was doing when I saw the credits roll. Overall, it is a fun game that is surprisingly deep, to say where it originally came from. It is well worth a look if you have the time.
Batman Arkham City is the follow-up to the fabulous Arkham Asylum. The world is bigger; there are more riddles, more randoms to fight and more baddies to beat down. The fighting system is still tight. It looks great, and the voice acting is second to **** why the 7? Well, Arkham City is bigger than Arkham Asylum, but it feels more sparse. It feels like someone just said, " Riddles? Moar! Baddies? Moar! People laughing at you when you die in an unskippable cutscene? Moar! Sometimes less is more people.Also, whoever decided to have the bad guys mock you when you die needs a kick in the nuts.
I have similar feelings about this as the first one. I'm amazed they managed to pack so much into an NES game in the first place. It is an expansive map with multiple companions, modes of transport, weapons and spells. It also looks beautiful and stands up remarkably well gameplay-wise after all these years. On the downside, getting lost and wandering onto the wrong part of the map is easy, and you'll get wiped out immediately. Also, how magic gets better through use gives me horrible flashbacks to the draw system in FFVIII. Like number 1, there is another mad difficulty spike at the end, but if you DuckDuckGo it, there is a simple way to even the battlefield.
BattleBlock Theater is a deviously hardcore platformer with a wacky sense of humour. It's wonderfully animated and packed with crazy weapons and cosmetics. The platforming is precise and almost always feels fair, although it can be punishing at times, especially the end of section levels that come with a time limit because of reasons... I loathe time limits in games, and it says a lot about how much I enjoyed the game that I stuck through it to the end. It is a perfect Steam Deck game where you can pick it up for a few levels and then take a break when you get frustrated.
I’d never played anything before FFVII, but I’ve loved most of the games since then, so when I saw they’d done a remaster of 1-6, I had to pick them up. They work great on my SteamDeck, and I had a lot of fun playing the first instalment. It is a little rudimentary, but in its defence, it is a 35-year-old NES game, and I still had a grand old time for most of it. It looks pretty, the music is great, and the gameplay holds up if you like turn-based combat. Be warned; there are some weird difficulty spikes. I had to use a guide to defeat the last boss after waltzing through most of the rest of the game, for example, but all in all, it is a fun time that doesn’t show its age too badly. I look forward to tackling the second in the series next.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a walking simulator in the vein of Gone Home, and like Gone Home, I thought it was bloody brilliant. You can play through it in one sitting, but still, it manages to pack more story and emotion into those few hours than any 100+ open-world game. You walk around a fantastic old house, looking at the belongings of the various inhabitants. However, unlike Gone Home, you dive into their world and relive a portion of their lives, including their final moments. They vary in tone, but all are fun, and some pack a real emotional punch; I'm looking at you, baby in the bath section. So yeah, light on action, but you can't fault the world, tone and story. First class.
A Plague Tale: Innocence is a very story-driven sneak-em-up that has a wonderful aesthetic and a great moody atmosphere. You play as Amicia de Rune and briefly as her little brother Hugo as they battle a plague of rats and a nuts religious order who are determined to murder them. You'll spend most of your time sneaking around and solving puzzles with light to scare away the rats, with the odd battle with some angry Inquisition folks thrown in for good measure. Oh, and some boss fights... I really hate boss fights. The gameplay is fun, and they do a good job of keeping things fresh by giving you new tools to navigate the environment. The graphics, music and acting are pretty decent too, but the story is where it really shines. You really come to care for your ragtag band of misfits, and the interaction between the big sister and her pain in the bum brother is a real highlight. So why the 8? Well, did I mention I hate boss fights? Especially ones where there is an unskippable talking bit before them, so when you die, you have to go through all that again? Also, one-hit kills. I totally get it, and they make sense for most of the game, and then archers appear, and, well, those guys can go *£&%*£$£^*^£ *grumbles* Anyway, it's a great game that is the perfect length and well worth the price of admission, but it does have its little **** that will make your teeth grind.
Watchdogs 2 hits a better tone than the first game, making you part of a hacking crew rather than being a random angry loner. This gives the whole game a much more fun and lighthearted vibe that I really loved. The cast of characters is diverse and interesting, and the story is pretty decent, and I had a lot of fun with it. Surprisingly for an Ubisoft game, it is not chock full of repetitive busywork, and the developers did a good job of making the side missions fun and varied, at least from a story perspective. That said I did have a couple of gripes. Man, the security guards, are nuts! There are no warnings stand in the wrong place, even if you're not doing anything wrong and they will blast you in the face with a shotgun. You also feel a little underpowered compared to the first game. Getting away from the police is much harder and if you get a chopper on your tail good luck! *Note I turned off the multiplayer because being invaded when you're just trying to get from one end of the city to the other and being forced to play a game of hide and seek is never, ever fun.
Titanfall 2 is a great game with a superb campaign, which I’ll admit took me completely by surprise. I’ve not played the first one but I heard the campaign felt like an afterthought to the development of a multiplayer game. Not so Titanfall 2. The campaign, while short is brilliantly well done. As you’d expect from a Respawn Entertainment game the basics are all there. The production values are excellent with good graphics, sound and acting. Moving around the world feels great and the shooting is meaty and satisfying. The story doesn’t have anything you’ve not seen before but it is well-delivered and doesn’t get in the way of the fun. They also do a great job of switching things up. One minute you’re wall running and shooting at little soldier guys and the next you’re piloting a giant sentient robot storming a base defended by other behemoths. The highlight for me though was the section with the time travel mechanic, that was brilliantly done and I would love to play a game that’s completely focused on that mechanic. If nothing else play the game for that section alone it is truly something wonderfully different. *I don't care about multiplayer so I can't tell you if that is any good or not.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered is a superb recreation of my favourite Call of Duty game. The story stands up well, with big action set-pieces and smaller, more character-driven moments blending well. The divisive No Russian mission is in there, but it can be skipped if you're not into that. The combat is brilliant with big meaty feeling weapons, interesting multi-level maps and a good mixture of run and gun, stealth and tower defence. Also, the drone is bloody good fun to use still after all these years. The combat is as good as ever, the weapons feel meaty and satisfying and there is a decent amount of variety in weapons to keep things interesting. The graphics are good, as you'd expect from a CoD game. The graphics look as good as you'd expect for a PS4 game, and all the usual high production values are on show with superb voice acting and smooth animations everything just feels super polished. Although, I played this after finishing the disappointingly janky We Happy Few so maybe it is just by comparison. *I don't care about multiplayer so I can't tell you if that is any good or not.
I have such mixed feelings around We Happy Few. The world is absolutely fantastic, the voice acting is top-notch, the story is great and some of the missions are gloriously insane. Unfortunately, despite being two years old the game is still a buggy mess. One mission is completely borked and if you don't do the right thing first time the item you need to progress vanishes and you're trapped forever and I lost count of the number of times the game just blue screen of deathed halfway through a mission losing me tons of progress. The criminally long load times, terrible pop-in and glitchy AI I could live with but come on guys you've had two years to make this stable enough to play! It's such a shame too because the game itself is brilliant fun when it is working, it just doesn't work enough to allow me to recommend it.
You can tell what Bad Bots is trying to do, jump on the retro style bandwagon helmed by the likes of The Binding of Issac, Flinthook and Celeste. Unfortunately, while those games offer something old with something new Bad Bots just offers some mildly diverting if shooting that outstays it's welcome well before you reach the finish. Play five minutes and you've basically played the whole thing there are no upgrades, no story to speak of and even the enemies don't change, the difficulty is ramped up by simply adding more of the same old robots.
Call of Duty: WWII is exactly what you'd expect from a Call of Duty game. Big production values, bombastic set-pieces and all the shooty shooting you can stomach. The combat is as good as ever, the weapons feel meaty and satisfying and there is a decent amount of variety in weapons to keep things interesting. The graphics are good, as you'd expect from a CoD game. The story is decent and brilliantly acted, if a little one dimensional and lacking in any really interesting twists and turns. So, yeah... it's a call of Duty game where you get to shoot ****. Nothing groundbreaking but a fun romp while it lasts. *I don't care about multiplayer so I can't tell you if that is any good or not.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is quite different than anything else I've played. Initially, the gameplay loop of finding symbols in the environment to unlock doors feels a little repetitive and dull but as you progress the puzzles get more complex and satisfying. It also gives you an excuse to explore the oppressive, creepy world which is no bad thing. The story is great, and the characters are brilliantly acted. Druth, in particular, is fantastic and stories of Norse mythology he goes through whenever Senua finds a rune are worth the price of admission alone. Man those Vikings must have been smoking something strong when they came up with those myths! The combat is fun and the game lasts long enough to be satisfying without outstaying it's welcome. The lack of open-world busywork is a great gift from the developers, which more companies should copy...
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is comfortably the best of the series. Everything is improved compared to it's predecessors from the combat to the story and graphics. It is a perfect end to an imperfect series. First the good: The acting is flawless (one slightly off kilter accent aside) as Troy Baker, Nolan North et al reprise their roles with aplomb. The story is easily the most entertaining with Drake's brother bringing a new depth to the story. The exploration is fun, with where to go well signposted with subtle clues and the locations well realised. In fact, the only sticking point for me, as with all Uncharted games, is the combat. It's just not fun. Don't get me wrong this is a big improvement on earlier instalments it just goes on so long. Get in cover, shoot and increasing bullet spongy bad guys. Run out of cover to avoid seemingly limitless grenades. Get in cover. Rinse and repeat. My heart dropped every time I went into an area filled with low walls and red barrels. Also, how on earth do these chumps keep rocking up to shoot at you in this super secret cave you had to solve puzzles and make death defying leaps to reach? Are there always fifty armed goons just following you at a nice distance swinging across collapsing masonry and leaping vast chasms!? They should reduce the number of enemies by at least 50%. Make them sneakier, tougher, whatever you want just make the fights shorter so I can get back to the good bits please!
Final Fantasy VII Remake is something of an enigma. For starters, it's not in any way shape or form a remake. It takes the first maybe five hours of the original and stretches it out to make something that is altogether different. This is both a blessing and a curse. It allows for the supporting cast to be fleshed out much more, especially the other members of Avalanche, which really adds something to the story. However, it also, means that there are quite a few filler side quests that probably didn't need to be in **** the whole though the game benefits from the extra time you get to spend in Midgar. The battle system takes some getting used to but on the whole is an improvement on the original, giving it a more immediate actiony feel. I was sceptical at first but doing some stabbing while you wait for your meter to fill up for the big attacks does work well. The only downside is that your AI companions ATB bars go up incredibly slowly when you're not controlling them so you have to switch constantly between characters to be effective. It goes without saying that the graphics, music and voice acting is exceptional. There are occasional texture issues but they are far enough apart that it didn't affect the game for me. Overall, this is a fantastic reimagining of arguably the best console game of all time. I only hope we don't have to wait twenty odd years for the next instalment.
The Devil's Kiss is a fun visual novel featuring everyone favourite adventuring/game development duo Ben and Dan. A fun diversion that you can finish it in half an hour it's great for fans of Ben and Dan. Their trademark humour is back and brilliant as ever and for those of us who have been looking forward to the next Ben and Dan game for literally years it just felt so good to dive in and for enjoy those characters again. As a bonus you get it free when you buy Lair of the Clockwork God, so for that price you can't argue!
Yakuza 0 is the antitheses of 99% of open world games today. It is packed full of content that isn't just mindless repetitive filler. You will run a hostess club, act in a music video, buy porn for a little kid, take part in underground fights against serial killers, perform job interviews and even go fishing. That is without mentioning the plethora of random mini games including bowling, dance battles and a fully stocked arcade with full versions of Outrun, Space Harrier and even those little teddy grabbing claw machines. To say the game is packed with things to do is an understatement. Leaving aside all the random fun there is a cracking single player focused game with an engaging story, wonderfully deep characters and a fun, accessible fighting system. The story will have you laughing and crying, in a weird organised crime soap opera kind of way. This was my first look at the Yakuza series and I cannot wait to try the next one to find out what Majima and Kazuma get up to next.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a mixed bag. The voice acting is excellent, the graphics are great and the dynamic between the two main protagonists adds a lot to the story. Gameplay wise the the parkour works generally very well the fighting is good and the AI an improvement on the last one I played. The actual assassinations are fun too, you can do your own thing or interact with the right people and you get a special death. However, this is an Ubisoft game so the map is absolutely packed with pointless collectables and boring side quests. I know you don't have to do them but I'm something of a completionist and also you need to do a certain amount to level up enough to be competitive. If Assassin's Creed Syndicate was more focused with a smaller map and less distractions this would have been a very good game. instead you spend 90% of your time clearing the map of random things and when you come back to the story you've forgotten who you're helping and why. Less is more Ubisoft!
Back in 2002 Medal of Honor Allied Assault was the best thing since, well the previous Medal of Honor game. We’re talking 9/10 across Metacritic, IGN and GameSpot. Well in 2018 it's a different story. I'm not talking graphics and sound, although they have aged badly I'm talking gameplay. Terrible signposting, flighty, weightless shooting and men you can empty a full clip into and only knock off their hat. This game is bloody terrible. Wobbling when you got shot is realistic, kinda but on a level full of crack shot snipers it just means you never get a shot in. Line it up, oh I got shot wait for the camera to reset, oh I got shot again, now I’m dead. Some people lament the days before Call of Duty but man are we treated today.
An engrossing experience from start to finish Her Story is a game like nothing you've ever played before. Fantastically acted and written once you sit in the detectives chair you won't be able to leave until you've solved the mystery.
Easily the best Final Fantasy title in a decade; FFXV comes with a great story, likable characters and a modern battle system. There's hundreds of hours of fun monster battling to be had in a beautiful open world and that would make it good; what makes it great is the relationships between the four main characters. Truly a Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers (to crib shamelessly from the opening spiel.
Machinarium is a brilliant puzzler set in a beautiful machine city filled with interesting inhabitants. It's worth playing for the art style and puzzles alone but when you factor in how much life they managed to breathe into mute robot characters it really does make it a must play for fans of the genre.
Beautiful, slick and stylish The Sexy Brutale is a fantastic time travelling puzzler from those fine folks at Tequila Works. The puzzles are fun and interesting, the deaths gruesome but it's the story that is the star of the show here and as you get closer to the secrets at the heart of the mystery you'll find this one impossible to put down.
Droidscape: Basilica is a beautiful and innovative puzzler that at just £1.49 for over 60 levels is well worth the price of admission. Things might get a little fiddly on smaller iThings but crack out an iPad and this will keep you happily puzzling away for hours.
This was as close to a perfect score as I've ever given it feels like Bioware has trimmed what little fat was left in Mass Effect 2 and what is left is as slick and focused as a RPG/Action cover shooter thingy is ever likely to get. The story is outstanding, the characters deep and real and the combat as good as anything that has come before it. On its own Mass Effect 3 is a superb game but played as a trilogy seeing the evolution from one game to the next it is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Gun Monkeys is a small but perfectly formed frantic multi-player blaster. Give it a couple of matches and you'll be wondering what all the fuss is about. Give it a few hours and you will be hooked. Also monkeys with guns; whats not to like?
Mass Effect 2 improves on the already impressive Mass Effect in almost every way. Space exploration feels deeper, the characters and missions more varied and even better your squad mates can take their guns from their holsters without shooting themselves in the face, an absolute must play.
Some interesting ideas, brain tickling puzzles and well fleshed out characters are let down somewhat by a game that feels a little too short to be ultimately satisfying. However, the Blackwell Legacy shows a lot of promise and with a bit more content and a bit of spit and polish it could be a really worthwhile series going forward and I look forward to seeing the series develop.
A super space romp with some interesting characters epic battles and a big chunk of space exploration thrown in. I can't wait to see how the story develops over the next couple of games.
An entertaining plot, interesting puzzles and absolutely bloody terrifying. Amnesia: The Dark Descent will have your heart pounding like nothing else out there, give it a go now... if you dare!
Far Cry 3 is probably the best FPS I've played. Some cool characters an vibrant and varied world to explore and the freedom to take down the enemy with guile and cunning or a **** load of C4; what's not to like?
A good story with interesting characters, a solid shooting mechanic and some quality boss fights Binary Domain is a very good game with one major flaw for a game designed with it in mind the voice controls are shocking.
Solid platforming, interesting puzzles and a great soundtrack make Thomas Was Alone a solid game; what makes it a great game is the story. Anthropomorphising jumping quadrilaterals is no mean feat and it is a testament to the fantastic writing and voice acting that you genuinely care what happens to them. Without the narration Thomas Was Alone would be a solid if unremarkable puzzle platformer with them this is a genuine indie classic.
Annoying, infuriating, addictive but above all else bloody good fun; Hotline Miami may cause you to hurl your pad across the room in frustration but you will almost certainly go scampering back after it seconds later to have another go.
Batman is back at his ass kicking best in this superb adventure. A tight fighting system, plethora of riddles and fantastic world all combine to make this a must play triple a. Bravo Rocksteady, bravo.
A really enjoyable, thought provoking game that will fly by before you know it. If you want a really different experience then check out Home and log on to the website and let everyone else know what you think happened.
