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Feature: Install
Oh my, reviewing Globesweeper has proven to be one of the best things I've done of late. Because the tips in the comments for other puzzle games to try are making me such a ridiculously happy boy. After the really brilliant Tametsi, I've been playing last year's Delete, from LineWay creators Pony.
Feature: Hexcellent
After reviewing the pleasing puzzler Globesweeper, I was recommended a whole other pile of recent puzzle games I've missed. I'm working my way through them, and the first to report back on is 2017's Tametsi. A game that takes its lead from the best PC puzzle game of all, Hexcells, and then combines it with the core Minesweeper mechanic. Which is to say, bespoke, intricately…
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: Inspector Remorse
Ultimately, Rainswept has a good story to tell. A sad story, one of grief, loss, murder and small-town cruelty. It's a crime procedural, but its forensic examination is of a complicated and difficult relationship. It's a game that touches on difficult topics, including childhood abuse, domestic abuse, and suicide. And yet, perhaps quite extraordinarily, it's also ultimately a game about hope. I say "ultimately", because…
Feature: Armageddon ain't no biggie
Ghengis Khan keeps sending me charity donations. The Aztecs are increasingly angrily demanding that I give them an Edgar Allen Poe novel. A volcano just erupted over Dutch Disneyland. The World Congress is trying to stop climate change by running a gameshow. I used to fret that Civilization VI wasn't memorable. With the Gathering Storm expansion, for better or worse, it's unforgettable.
Feature: Arse Crack
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. What a horrible story there must be to tell of the last six or so years of Crackdown 3's development, if the result of all that time is this wet tissue of a game. A bland, woefully dated, aimless and deeply derivative open city, which somehow can't even be saved by the presence of Terry Crews.
Feature: A study in purple
In many ways, Far Cry New Dawn is the most Far Cry game the series has turned out. Sure, the apocalypse may have ushered in an era of goons with health bars and levels. But there’s also a bit where you take some drugs so you can survive a boat ride to a man who gives you more drugs, in order to punch a bear…
Feature: Off the rails
Danger: mild spoilers ahead. There’s a pile of bodies twitching under our flashlights. My god, what is it now? Mutant wolves? Crab freaks? Spiders? Please, not more spiders. In post-apocalyptic shooter Metro Exodus, when you walk through a web, there is a terrifying animation of a hand-sized muto-spider as it crawls across your arm, your gun, and your face. I’ve been enjoying the small touches…
Feature: BLOW UP THE MOON
Minesweeper is a terrible puzzle game. It's not a terrible game! But it's a terrible puzzle game. Because Minesweeper involves guessing, and that's fundamentally bad puzzle design. Whether you enjoy playing it comes down to how you approach it. If you're someone who enjoys methodically solving complicated puzzles using learned techniques (hello!) then Minesweeper is the worst. If you're someone who loves reaching a certain…
Feature: It's dad good
Yakuza Kiwami is a world of outlandish violence in which you play a kind of unmasked Batman in an out-of-date suit. Our hero, Kiryu, doesn’t kill. He helps people find their glasses, he gives coats to the homeless, and he beats up hundreds of bad people. That SEGA ever called this series “Yakuza” is a wondrous misnomer. It should be called “Helpful Strong Man Versus…
Feature: Eastshade And Up
There was a time when I wasn't quite sure about paint 'em up Eastshade. It's a slow starter, a little clumsy with its introductions, a little distant. But over time it won me over, really won me over. And now, as I idly sail a boat I've built through the twisting caverns on the coast, listening to the beautiful violin strains, discovering magical caves, I'm…
Feature: Monet for nothing
Oh, Art Sqool. A game that's somehow less than the sum of its parts. Beautiful art design by creator and artist Julian Glander, splendid scratchy ambient music, a surrealist world that realises the style of the artist, and a lovely conceit about being put through an art school by an AI. And yet... it's crumbling between my fingers as I think about it.
Feature: Not worth the trip
There is a frog in my loo. He's having a bath, and apologises for the intrusion. There he squats, an adorable, visually arresting creature. Splashing about in toilet water. A sadly convenient metaphor for Away: Journey To The Unexpected.
Feature: Skies up-blown
I expected to hear many sentences in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, the latest in the long-running series of jet fighter games. Radio call-outs that any good fighter pilot might recognise. “Bogey on your six” - yep. “Missiles away” - sure. “Hostile down” - uh huh. All the familiar phrases of aeronautic warfare, hissing through the high-altitude static, predictable and safe. “We need to make…
Feature: Adrift on a cosmic sea
Sunless Skies, the cosmic horror, spacefaring roguelite, splits my brain like a log beneath an axe. On the one hand, a certain ennui - I have seen all this before, I have made these long, fraught voyages before, many times, in its fine predecessor Sunless Sea. On the other, late at night my thoughts drift, unbidden, back to its dark places, its lonely ports and…
Feature: War! Huh! Yeah! What is it groove for?
The pikemen have us surrounded, lads. There are enemy trebuchets to the north, knights to the east, and alchemists to the west. I’ll be frank, men, this is not great optics. Let’s reflect as the battledogs charge in from the south. What could we have done to avoid this? No, I don’t know either. The battles of turn-based tactical throwback Wargroove can be tough, and…
Feature: Live free, craft hard
It’s hard to keep your eyes off the horizon in My Time At Portia. Its valleys live in the jagged shadow of broken high-rises, buildings draped with moss and towering factories splitting apart at the seams. I needed to concentrate on the group of adorable pastel coloured llamas ahead. My presence didn’t interrupt their frolicking for a second, but I wished they’d at least try…
Feature: Actually won't be at the gates for another 6 turns
"Winter is coming!” yell the tiny minions in At The Gates as they flee, incredibly slowly, back to the safety of their settlement. They don’t actually yell that, but in my head that’s what I imagine they’re shouting as their little health bars tick down underneath the message ‘SUPPLIES EXHAUSTED’. I also imagine them clutching frost-bitten hands to their chests as they trump miserably through…
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: Hanging up
Entering into its deeply peculiar world, Strange Telephone offered up so many things I love. A bizarre, bulky aesthetic, creepy undertones and surreal locations, and a unique mechanic that made exploration feel novel and interesting. Until it really, really didn't. In words I never thought I'd type, this is a game that's too strange.
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