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4 days ago
Feature: Death becomes her
If the humor of Psychonauts, the mechanics of Paper Mario, and the wacky, noodly designs of Dr. Seuss had a love child, I think it’d look a lot like Flipping Death. A platformer, puzzle, and adventure game all in one (to various success), the developers have been so inspired by Tim Schafer's work over the years that Double Fine Productions are thanked in its credits.…
5 days ago
Feature: Cyberpunk is so hot right now
For me, cyberpunk fiction has two tropes which shape pretty much everything about its stories. Firstly, the protagonist is always on some kind of fake quest, trying to discover something about their world; they then instead end up discovering their own values, history, past; their very self. Secondly, robots, AIs, cybernetic hybrids etc are almost always revealed to have some fundamental humanity that none of…
6 days ago
Feature: Sir You Are Being Stunted
We Happy Few has an enormous amount of ambition, a game that sets out to join the pantheon of sneak-based grandchildren of Looking Glass, but in a more open world. And while it keeps looking like it's going to deliver, it really serves to demonstrate just how astonishingly good the games on whose shoulders it wobbles really are.
7 days ago
Feature: Welcome to the baby factory
Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which we explore the wilds of early access. This week, Fraser’s been placed in charge of a tiny prehistoric tribe in deadly Stone Age survival management game, Cro Magnon. Manhome isn’t much of a village, just a ring of knackered tents that provides shelter for a small tribe of hunter-gatherers. The latest fad is fire, and a small…
Feature: Stinker tailor soldier spy
Everything I'd read about Phantom Doctrine excited me. Unravelling Cold War conspiracies in a spy-flavoured XCOM was an enthralling elevator pitch, and the details seemed to back up that promise. Yes, you can brainwash enemy agents and yes, your enemy can do the same. Yes, there's an emphasis on stealth and deception, employed on both a strategic management layer and through tactical turn-based missions that…
2 weeks ago
Feature: Spice kills - quit now
Star Traders: Frontiers is a huge stellar sandbox with an evolving galaxy that moves forward with or without you. It’s liberating, not being on the hook for every little problem. As a free-wheeling captain, you can ingratiate yourself with the most important galactic players, becoming embroiled in the highest level of politics, or you can just enjoy the life of a scoundrel, smuggling and stealing…
Feature: Possessing
Unavowed is unquestionably one of the most impressive point and click adventures made in many, many years. It's of a scale I wasn't at all expecting, with layer upon layer of complexity and variety in a way the genre has genuinely never seen before. It's also a darned fine yarn of demonic battling across the streets of New York, that tells its story in a…
Feature: More ore
MoonQuest was definitely lying to me. It assured me that what I was looking at was a horse, but I’ve seen a few horses before and I’m pretty sure none of them looked like alien llama-giraffe-monsters. The name tag hung there, daring me to question it. OK, I thought, I’ll suspend my disbelief. I jumped on the supposed horse, wondering if I might be able…
Feature: It caught on in a flash
“The plural of ‘monster’ is ‘monst’.” Nietzsche, probably. Welcome hunter. If you’ve already got a decent idea of what the hunting of monst is all about, and you’re just here to make sure the rescue from the darkest recesses of console exclusivity went smoothly, you’ll want to head over to Katharine’s rundowns. For the record, my own experience has been largely positive since the latest…
Feature: Fast food
Co-op chef-‘em-up Overcooked 2, much like its predecessor, is less about cooking and more about chaos management. The sequel builds on the solid foundation of the first game, bringing in new recipes, hazardous levels, and online multiplayer for maximum pandemonium. Oh, and you can throw ingredients now, which can be incredibly slick if you sling them across the kitchen and directly into a pan, but…
Feature: What a handsome rogue
Dead Cells gets into your nervous system like a wonderful toxin. If it wasn’t so fast-paced, you could almost feel the electro-chemical effects pulsing through your body, from hand to eye to screen to brain, as your panicked flurry of knife strikes eviscerates another sewer worm. The game began as a “roguevania”, and it was strong even in its early days. But the final version…
3 weeks ago
Feature: Aliens like Plunkbat too
Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which we explore the wilds of early access. This week, Fraser’s getting hunted down by streamers in Islands of Nyne: Battle Royale. It's a sci-fi FPS in a lovely alien theme park that also happens to be a massive murder arena full of angry supersoldiers. Islands of Nyne bills itself as a battle royale for the competitive crowd…
Feature: Whip it good
This might just be the strangest game I've played in years. A peculiar mix that, while frustrating in plenty of areas, managed to charm me with its sheer absurdity. Like any good archaeologist though, let's start at the surface and work our way down (I think that's how it works anyway; everything I know about archaeology I learned from Dr Grant* in Jurassic Park).
4 weeks ago
Feature: Yakety yak, Heat attack.
Many games are defined by the amassing of wealth but few take such an unseemly, predatory relish in the idea as Yakuza 0. The first of Sega's Japanese crime epics to appear on PC, it's an orgy of late 80s materialism in which you don't merely earn cash by defeating opponents but punch it out of their bodies - banknotes blasting from collars and shirt…
Feature: I'm going to need a Saga holiday after this
After waiting two long years for the final instalment of Stoic's fantastical strategy trilogy, The Banner Saga 3 begins in the best possible way. It picks up where the second The Banner Saga 2 left off, and one of the first things you get to do is punch your scheming arch nemesis - who probably made your last moments of that second game a right…
Feature: Never start with a mage
Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which we explore the wilds of early access. This week, Fraser’s back on the roguelikes with Wayward Souls. It looks like Secret of Mana, but it’s meaner. It might have been a mistake to play as the mage. Wayward Souls’ dungeons promise death at the hands, claws and slimey appendages of countless beasties, but my first killer was…
Feature: Appears to be good
It must be such a marvellous moment when you realise you've struck upon a great idea for a game. It must be sublime when you realise you also have the technical ability to realise it. That applies for Semblance, a cute-n-complicated puzzle platformer in which your character can bish and bosh and bash into the platforms to reshape them.
Feature: Check out is at never
The Spectrum Retreat is a game that really wants to be the new Portal, and I can respect that. It’s good to be ambitious. But raw ideas matter less than their implementation, and when it comes to execution, The Spectrum Retreat doesn’t quite manage to reach the level of polish and elegance it aspires to.
1 month ago
Feature: Early access review
Clicker Heroes 2 wants to be so much more than a clicker game – and that’s the problem
Clicker Heroes 2 marks the point that clicker games - y'know, the ones all about making numbers go ever-higher with a minimum of interaction - encroach so far into action-RPG territory that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to play a Diablolike again. The illusion is shattered; the pretence that I play hacker-slashers for any reason beyond numerical embiggening ripped away. Clicker Heroes 2…
Feature: Partial Recall
Far Cry 5 continues Ubisoft's on-paper rather charming habit of adding DLC to its games that completely transforms them into something else. Vietnam-themed Hours Of Darkness rather passed us by, but Lost On Mars joined us last week so I thought I'd take a look. It's... it's really bloody awful.
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