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Feature: With a little help from Ghoastus the Roman ghost
For me, one of the perennial pleasures in PC gaming is clicking ‘new game’ on a fresh Paradox grand strategy game, and having that big ol’ map unrolled before me, freighted with promise and overwhelming complexity. If you’ve not played one of these before - and for all its glories, Imperator: Rome is very much an iteration of the formula established by Europa Universalis in…
Feature: Supra hella alchemistic exceptionally creative
I had already decided Supraland was my favourite game of 2019 so far before I noticed it was almost entirely made by one man. If you'd asked me to guess, as I played this 20-hour vast, ingenious, hugely entertaining first-person puzzle game, I'd have said it needed to be a team of at least twenty. The art alone is a squad's job, before you get…
Feature: Can he do it? Shuriken
Sekiro hurts. It is a painful, graceful game about being a sword-swinging barbarian who must learn how to dance. Even more than its Dark Souls predecessors, it forces you to play on its terms: learn the steps or die. Fools sometimes say suffering leads to wisdom or insight. Well, you won’t gain enlightenment through the hundred deaths of this ninja follow-up. But you will learn…
Feature: RPS IS YAY
I first saw Baba Is You a year ago during the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC, and was -- like everyone else in the crowd -- absolutely blown away. But, of course, with these big novel ideas always comes the fear that it might not translate into a coherent game. Some of the stars of the EGW have gone on to be somewhat flat, their…
Feature: Y2K Hun?
Hypnospace Outlaw, if it can be described at all, is a game about policing an alternate-world dream-based internet browsing system in 1999. Oh yes. Accessed by wearing a brain-scanning headband, users can create their own Geocities-like web spaces, interact via a chat app, and share music and images with one another, all via the HypnOS operating system. Think Compuserve, but you're asleep. And, because it's…
Feature: Current trends say apes are in, actually
Once I went to the zoo in San Diego, and a load of people were banging on the glass at an orangutan and its baby instead of just being appropriately (quietly) awed. One man in particular was hollering at what was a very sad looking ape, and honestly if there was justice in the world the orangutan would have smashed free and liquified that man’s…
Feature: Top dog
Apex Legends is a dumb name. There. There goes the hat of criticism, back into its box. On goes the hat of unreserved praise. That name is just about the only foot the Titanfall devs have set wrong here, and I expect to be stretching my Apelegs every evening for the foreseeable future. This is the best battle royale game we’re going to see for…
Feature: A miracle of design
It’s not often I get to play a game for 187 hours before reviewing it. Hell, it's not often I play a game for 187 hours. Deck-building, singleplayer roguelite Slay The Spire, which gets a full release today after just over a year in early access, has me on its hook. Traditionally, I look at a number like that and hate myself – so much…
Feature: Armless fun
Do you remember those jelly-like toy octopuses you had when you were a kid, which you throw at a window or wall? They'd half-stick/half-walk their way down the surface, their legs glooping on and off as they rolled in a semi-controlled fall. That's what the character in the ridiculously delightful Pikuniku most immediately reminds me of. It's just the way he walks. It's the most…
Feature: For it is in gibbing that we receive
DUSK rather undersells itself when it declares it's "straight outta the '90s". While absolutely going for that Doom/Hexen vibe, with outstandingly fast movement, gorgeous chunky pixel enemies, and big meaty guns that pack a punch, it also has a really quite fantastic amount of good sense where not to be faithful to those mid-90s gibby times. If anything, DUSK feels like the FPS that id,…
Feature: Everything and nothing
I could, I suspect, dash myself against Kenshi's wind-bleached rocks for a full year and still feel ill-qualified to pass judgement upon it. You might as well ask me to review atmospheric pressure, or continental drift. Kenshi is everything. Kenshi is nothing. Kenshi just is.
Feature: Turn-based Stalker, with ducks
There are at least 99 ways this could have gone horribly wrong. XCOM-ish turn-based action in an apparently shameless borrow from STALKER’s setting, but starring a talking pig and duck? An overwhelmingly nihilistic tone, but also endless use of the ‘duck sounds a bit like another, naughtier word’ gag? Even the name, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, has that algorithmically-generated SEO jank vibe to…
Feature: Sing me to life
You can jump on your bed in Wandersong. You start the game by waking up after a revelation: the end is nigh, and you can’t do anything about it because you’re just a bard, the most useless class ever. The situation doesn’t look good. But before getting out of your house, you can jump on your bed. And in that moment I understood that, despite…
Feature: Be a weapon
As you sneak through an underground tunnel that you’ve just discovered, taking out cameras and hiding dead bodies that should just be unconscious (but you’re bad at this), it’s easy to forget how clever Hitman 2 is. Discovery begets invention, paving the way for the kill, and although IO’s latest take on their murder-sim doesn’t veer too far from the previous game's reinvention, it spends…
Feature: Worse things happen at sea
Return of the Obra Dinn is a terrible advert for sea travel and a great recruitment tool for the insurance industry. A boat arrives in port, absent a living crew and with too few remains to represent the 60 passengers in the ship’s log. You’re an investigator who has to fill in the gaps by studying this vaguest of crime scenes. I always thought insurance…
Feature: Funky fresh beats
Lethal League Blaze is a springy, frenetic future-sport played by an underground league of robots, skaters, mercenaries and a sentient boombox. Imagine baseball, but then strip away all the parts that don’t involve whacking a ball, replacing them with violent duels between two to four brawlers. In these duels, the baseball is the sole weapon. That might be underselling it. The ball is a relentless,…
Feature: No free-to-play, just free.
The best free games are on PC, and if you want to know what the best 50 are then you've come to the right place.
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: 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…
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