Ian Dransfield


26 games reviewed
73.8 average score
80 median score
52.0% of games recommended
Nov 9, 2015

Fallout 4 is a good game, no doubt, but it's hard not to feel let down after six months of solid hype, and high expectations on the side of the players. It hasn't learned any lessons from predecessor New Vegas, and aside from smaller tweaks and decent gunplay, there's very little to the core game that wasn't in Fallout 3. Building your settlements is fun and the main campaign missions (after a time) are engaging and entertaining. However, for a near-20-year-old series to take two huge steps forward in 2008 and 2010, only to hardly make any progress in 2015, is galling. Go in with that in mind and you'll have a lot of fun. Expect a nuclear revolution and you'll be left wanting.

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Confusingly good fun at first, Dragon Quest Heroes soon falls into a familiar, inane rhythm. Dynasty Warriors' audience will at least get something out of it.

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Jan 30, 2016

With the involvement of Jonathan Blow, there's been a lot of chin-stroking and borderline pretentious articles going up about The Witness - understandably, given it's such an arthouse project. But there's no need for that here: the game is very good, and if you've even an inkling you might enjoy solving 600-plus puzzles in a gorgeous island setting, we'd heartily recommend The Witness.

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Feb 29, 2016

It would be difficult to call Far Cry Primal a bad game, but it would be just as hard to recommend it with anything other than a thousand and one caveats attached. While it presents itself as something new, different and vital, the truth behind this absurdly shallow veneer is that you've played this game before − at least if you've touched a Far Cry game since its third instalment.The amount of traction you get from that fact will vary, just as the enjoyment of Ubisoft's other big series, Assassin's Creed, wavers from person to person. A victim of Ubisoft's mass homogenisation techniques it might be, but Far Cry Primal is still fun, solid and the kind of thing you can lose hours to, given half a chance. Problem is, that half-chance is getting harder to come by. Why give it that amount of the day when you've already given nearly exactly the same thing your time before?

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If The Division was without its Dark Zone, it would be an ignorable, banal experience - a soulless grind in a game created by committee. It's to the credit of the game that this one additional section elevates the experience from this, to something actively great. Contrary to advice The Division might give you, stay out of the Dark Zone at your peril.

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Mar 21, 2016

Assessed solely as a Zelda game, Hyrule Warriors probably isn’t good enough to lure in non-Dynasty Warriors fans, but it is passable enough to offer Musou lovers something different to play between their usual battles for dynastic superiority.

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