Best PC games New PC games 2020 Best free PC games Best graphics cards Best Minecraft shaders Best Warzone loadout Cyberpunk 2077 guides
Feature: Speed demon
I've logged many, many hours in Nioh 2 on the PS4, so I was excited to get hands on Nioh 2: The Complete Edition for PC, a preview build missing some technical features like HDR support and ultra wide resolutions that will be in the full build. It includes everything that's in the base version of the action-RPG, of course, alongside all three DLCs. But…
Feature: No, not that murder, the other one
Hitman 3’s murder mystery parody level is the most fun I’ve had playing Hitman
Ian Hitman is imminently to return in Hitman 3 and, like Bourne off of Bourne, he faces near insurmountable odds in his struggle against a giant secret society that controls the world. Except who cares about that, really, because with all due respect to the writers, the overarching plot of the Hitman series was never the most fun or interesting bit. Hitman is about exploring…
Feature: *That's* how mafia works
Preview: Empire Of Sin is a seamless blend of four different gangster games
There are two, pretty obvious, factors by which I judge strategy games: how immediately satisfying they are to play, and how well that satisfaction holds up in the long run. Success in the first respect is often a trade-off for success in the second, as the things that dazzle on day one become dulled by the cumulative effect of small design problems. It's hard, then,…
Feature: Snow big deal
This year for my holidays I was going to go on a road trip around a European country before it became too late, but then this summer became a bit of a write off. Enter the latest DLC for EA's blockbuster life sim The Sims 4, a combined winter wonderland and chill hiking holiday. Snowy Escape is set in the "Japanese inspired" Mt. Komorebi, and…
Feature: New map? Delightful. New character? I love her. New vehicle? A recipe for disaster
Apex Legends Season 7’s vehicles lets us make noxious deathtraps
A lush city in the sky, a time-travelling Scottish scientist and vehicles you can turn into gassy death machines. These headline the cool new additions coming to Apex Legends' seventh season, Ascension, and I got to play it ahead of Wednesday's launch.There's a lot I like about this season. The new map, Olympus, is gorgeous and interesting to traverse. This is largely thanks to the…
Feature: We've gone too far this time
The latest chunk of DLC for The Sims 4 is arriving on November 13th. Entitled Snowy Escape, it's a wintery-themed one this time, so is very seasonal, and I got to play a bunch of a preview build. Snowy Escape adds a new world, Mt. Komorebi, with three neighbourhoods - one of which is the mountain itself where your Sims can ski and snowboard and…
Feature: It's better to run around with a torch than curse the darkness
Little Nightmares 2 asks ‘what if weeping angels, but mannequins?’ and you will not like the answer
The original Little Nightmares is one of my favourite horror games ever. I admire a horror game that doesn't rely on the first-person perspective. Little Nightmares is scary in the same way it was scary to hide in your parents' wardrobe because you were planning to jump out at them, but then you sort of fell over your dad's shoes and you weren't sure what…
Feature: Markedly different
Hot take: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s map needs more quest markers
“Less is more”. A classic advertising slogan isn’t it? I imagine a minimalist house with shelves that fold away discreetly and a glass coffee table that sits in an expanse of glossy white. They’re often marketed as an economic use of space that cuts out any unnecessary noise. I don’t disagree! If anything, I can see the appeal. But I prefer homes with a bit…
Feature: Party time
Yakuza: Like A Dragon crashes into RPG territory, but is all the better for it
It was when I drank baby milk with a bunch of half-naked yakuza in diapers that I really knew I was back in a Yakuza game. I noted an edge of disbelief in my voice as my laughter echoed across the room. But mixed in with my cackle was genuine warmth, too. It was good to be back.As a long time fan of Sega's action…
Feature: Feeling a bit queasy
Preview: Bugsnax isn’t a horror game, but it’s still unsettling
I don’t watch much horror myself, so forgive me. But you know those trailers? The ones where there’s a cabin in the woods and a group of smiling high schoolers descend upon it? They flip up the trunk of their car, eagerly fling their suitcases on the wooden decking, and chortle about how they are going to have a rad time. Tropicana in the morning,…
Feature: More like palace of WestMONSTER eh?
Watch Dogs Legion has a mission where you make Big Ben bong again
Watch Dogs Legion, aka Watch Dogs London, is nearly upon us. See its release, there, squatting at the end of October 2020 like a big cockernee pumpkin smoking a cigar. I am broadly looking forward to Ubisoft's hacktion adventure where you can play as anyone by recruiting any NPC you see into your gang of hacktivists with undercuts, because from the hands on previews I've…
Feature: Print the myth
Immortals Fenyx Rising is like if Assassin’s Creed had a Zelda baby and Ubi got custody
I'm going to get this out of the way, because every outlet with a hands on preview of Ubisoft's action-adventure Immortals Fenyx Rising (which used to be called Gods & Monsters) is going to say it somewhere. Immortals Fenyx Rising is a proper Breath-Of-The-Wildalike. It's one themed around Ancient Greek myths, yes, but you've got yer horses you can tame, yer open world to explore…
Feature: Factional distillation
PlanetSide 2 is getting a story and side quests in the Shattered Warpgate update
Three-way mega-battle FPS MMO PlanetSide 2 is about to unveil another big update. The Shattered Warpgate will introduce hazardous storms to one of its maps and some new equipment, but most importantly, a campaign.Its big update back in March, Escalation, bought thousands of players back, but where that was focused largely on organised groups of experienced players, Rogue Games' Andy Sites declared that "our goal…
Feature: He's going through a lot right now
I Am Dead is a puzzle game about a ghost who can look inside fruit
"If you're a ghost, and you walk through a wall..." asks Richard Hogg, in the tone of a man confronted with a real head-scratcher, "...do you get to see the inside of the wall?"It's a good question. The kind which, for most people, might fuel a good half hour in a pub, or a 2am chat with a partner who can't sleep. But for Hogg…
Feature: If only it were that easy to make perfect fries
Spiritfarer is about death, but also the cosy business of living
Spiritfarer, the "cosy management game about dying", is full of many little acts of kindness. "You can hug anyone, by the way," Nicolas Guérin tells me, during my recent hands-on preview. Guérin is creative director at Thunder Lotus Games, and Spiritfarer is a slight shift from their action games Sundered and Jotun. Death is a common theme, perhaps, but Spiritfarer is a much more gentle…
Feature: I'LL DESTROY YOU AT WRESTLEMANIA
Halo Infinite’s reveal ended with a gorilla losing its mind on camera
So, as of this evening's Xbox Games Showcase, we've finally seen footage of Halo Infinite, and it looks good! There was indeed a grappling hook, more mobility in general from the Chief (he can climb on boxes now!), and a couple of new guns. There was also some classic Warthog action, some dependably stirring music, and a couple of genuinely sublime moments of looking-out-across-a-halo-at-sunset beauty.…
Feature: It's a feature
If you'd told me before today that it's possible to make an upbeat and friendly 3D platformer based on the works of Franz Kafka without undermining the nature of either, I would have found it hard to believe. And yet here we are.I'll confess that it's been a long while since I've read The Metamorphosis, and I never had particularly strong feelings about it (save…
Feature: The face that sold a thousand units of stone
I sold loads of rocks during A Total War Saga: Troy’s campaign
If you see the name "Menelaus" and find yourself scratching your head over how to pronounce it, then have no fear: play any more than eight seconds of A Total War Saga: Troy, and you will never forget. That's because the extremely bellowy king of Sparta can't seem to take a breath without hollering his own name on the exhalation. He's like an incredibly angry…
Feature: Eivor? I hardly know her!
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla isn’t really an AC game, but it’s still great
Playing a big ol' chunk of Assassin's Creed Valhalla made me realise how much the series has changed since the first game in 2007. If you played Altaïr's first adventure and then skipped straight to Valhalla, where big buff blonde viking Eivor is running around 9th century England, you probably wouldn't realise they were in the same series. Assassin's Creed Valhalla doesn't feel like an…
Feature: A-hoo! Hackers of London!
Preview: a year on, Watch Dogs Legion’s “play as anyone” is so crazy it might just work
I don't go round singing "Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner!" or anything, but out of all the places I've lived so far, London is the one I think of as home. And this so happens to be the setting for hacktion-adventure game Watch Dogs Legion, which is definitely not called Watch Dogs London despite how often I accidentally say that. It's a dystopian near-future…
Page 1 of 33
Older posts