Luke Addison 's Reviews
The entire package of The Alters is incredible from start to finish. Be it the immersive soundtrack that delivers a gut-punch time after time, the incredible blending of new crew members with the philosophical questions posited around the right to create life, and the performances given by Alex Jordan and the smaller roles by the rest of the cast. When I wasn’t playing The Alters, I was thinking about The Alters. The decisions were difficult, and the choices matter. 2025 seems jam-packed with incredible, Game of the Year contenders, and for the last five months, mine was easily Split Fiction. Now, however, there’s only one choice for me. The Alters is Game of the Year.
Doom: The Dark Ages may be my favorite Doom experience throughout the years. Whilst it may be 'slower' than previous Doom's. feeling the weight of Doomguy as I cut my way through waves of demons, using the shield as a weapon as much, if not more than a defense, and some glorious level design that never got boring, I just can't wait to get back into the fight and really give it my all on all the difficulty levels. It's a blast, and any FPS fan should be looking at this. The only drawback is the thin and at times boring story getting in the way of more slaughter, but you can't blame iD for trying something new.
Empyreal is one of those AA games that come along once in a while. They’re good fun, great to look at and you come away wanting more. From unrelenting combat to ‘one more go’ at another Cartogram, another level and another attempt at getting the best loot, Silent Games didn’t do much wrong.
A lacklustre story is propped up by fun, if unoriginal, stealth gameplay, with some fun nods back to the ‘good old days’ of action platformers. A few glitches and crashes here and there didn’t help, but it hits the intended points and doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not.
For fans of Five Nights at Freddy’s, Alien: Isolation, or even Nicholas Cage’s Willy’s Wonderland, Finding Frankie will be a hoot, if not a short adventure. The parkour is more than serviceable, and the atmosphere is outstanding, enough that I immediately wondered if we’ll see a Finding Frankie 2.
A beginner’s introduction to difficult games, The First Berserker: Khazan has many of the accessibility options Soulslikes/Action RPG fans have cried out for, and it does it all with an excellent combat system, interesting lore and story, and some fine visuals.
Hazelight Studios has crafted an adventure that almost transcends what it is, a video game, and goes a long way to prove that games are as much art as books and films. Split Fiction is one of the best games of the year, this generation of gaming ,and potentially ever, with equal measures of finesse in its execution and brass balls to take some big risks. It’s one of those games you don’t want to miss.
À La Mode Games have crafted a great indie experience here, and the transition to consoles from PC has been a successful one. With extra modes available, the experience is even bigger now, and with a unique premise and execution, Sorry We’re Closed is now just the beginning of a fruitful future for the studio. Don’t miss out on this, especially if you’re a survival horror fan!
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has crafted a thing of beauty here. Managing to send the already finely balanced franchise into the land of absurdity with the pirate theme, the studio still pulled together a tight enough experience that’ll have you laughing, shouting, crying, and enjoying every single moment. More Majima moving forward, please.
Don’t Nod has taken what they learned with Life is Strange and made something different, yet impressively better. It’ll make you think, both about your in-game actions and out of game life, and will stick with you long after you switch off. Most importantly, it goes to show games are an art form that can have a message, be fun and also still be unique and different to what we’ve seen before.
Odd Bug Studio has managed to build on the first game in some great ways, with deeper combat, even better visuals, and the magnanimous Doug Cockle narrating throughout, but a boring story and some lackluster additions make it fall just short of being perfect.
Rebellion gives us another go-round with the arcade sniping sim with Sniper Elite: Resistance, and all-in-all it's an enjoyable one. A few post-launch patches from the devs could go a long way to fixing some issues, but a stronger story and more interesting characters are much needed next time. That said, shooting Nazis was an absolute riot, which is the most important thing.
Aspyr has done enough with Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles to warrant the remaster, giving it a fresh lick of paint, tighter controls, accessibility through the wazoo, and a bit more besides, but performance problems, lacking story and audio that keeps cutting out do tarnish the experience somewhat.
Dreamcore may not be the longest game, nor one full of features, but what it aims to do, it does incredibly well. Spend your time walking through seemingly never-ending mazes of desperate environments you never feel safe in, and do your best to escape. And then play the level again.
Infinity Nikki is a cozy game aimed at gamers who want a carefree exploration, simple mechanics and a gameplay experience that’ll make you unreasonably relaxed and cheery come the time you switch off. A lackluster narrative, poor and congested menus and hollow characters will make some parts of Infinity Nikki feel like it’s dragging though.
Aged combat can prove repetitive, with some rinse-and-repeat combos, but an incredible facelift both in graphics and audio proves enough to keep the experience as good as we remember it. Add some basic quality-of-life additions like the compass, and Aspyr has succeeded in making this a more than serviceable remaster, but also a genuinely fun one.
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 isn't just the game of the summer, it's the Game of the Year. Offering unmatched quality from gameplay to graphics, performance, and overall package, there's no better game so far, and no weak spot to try and pick apart. Diehard fans will love it, new fans will adore it.
Sand Land has a lot to offer everyone, even those (like myself) that didn’t know the source material before hand. The standard RPG fare of unlocking new skills is there, as is the general structure of a good RPG, but what Sand Land does differently is the world it inhabits, the combat present (slow and sluggish at first, but a joy once you unlock everything for Beezlebub and the vehicles) and the atmosphere it allows. There’s always room for improvement, but as an Manga adaptation goes, I can now add Sand Land to Pokemon and Dragon Ball as games I’ll be keeping an eye out for.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden oozes class, with a 20 to 30-hour story and plenty of off-the-beaten paths to explore – most with a reward at the end. You’ll be pitted with some disgusting and distressful story moments, some out-of-the-book thinking, and some genuinely hard decisions. The combat and accompanying skill trees will keep you invested and satisfied, whilst allowing enough different combinations you’ll feel each playthrough is different enough to warrant another one, and at the center of it all is a love story between two lovers who want nothing more than to be together forever, but the forces at play seem intent on stopping that. My only hope is that the game sells as well as the lasting memories it has left me with deserve, and we get a new, genuinely unique franchise from this.
The amount of content, time, and thought that has been put into Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is staggering, and it's inarguable that it is worth every penny for both fans of the franchise, but also those wanting to try it out for the first time. Even though I was lucky enough to have my copy of the game three weeks before this review went live, I can say there are still huge amounts of gameplay left for me to play, with the multiple mini-games, substories, and activities keeping me entertained. If I had to put a number on it, there are easily triple-digit hours worth of game here, and nearly all of it is incredible. There are a few bugbears to put up with, with the odd bug here and there, some character models do look poor - reserved for the infrequently seen side-characters or the NPCs on the streets -, and some parts of the city do feel empty, and not lived in. That said, not only are these all relatively minimal and inconsequential to the larger experience, but you'll quickly realize that the good way outweighs the small amounts of bad, and you'll have an absolute blast in what could be the studio's best game yet.