Twenty minutes. No cost. You'll laugh. Bargain.
It just adds to that sense that Hard West is a turn-based strategy game with a strong core surrounded by a fragmented, uncertain exterior. I'd say it's definitely worth picking up if your XCOM and Jagged Alliance itches currently feel unscratched, but expect something to dip in and out of, not some grand timesink opus. The best times with it will come from playing it on maxed-out difficulty in Iron Man mode, and its wounds system – whereby the injured are weaker in the short term but even stronger in the long term – turned on. Make the central battles as long as involved as possible, because that's where Hard West has the surest footing.
While the destructive potential of weapons and cards alike in some cases increases as you level up, it's much more about finding the ones you like best rather than having a de facto edge. Sadly, this in turn means that unlocks can be quite underwhelming, especially as weapons are all bound to obey the movies' pew-pew and dead behaviour. A new pistol or rifle might look different, but bar a few explicitly short-range/higher damage variants, it feels broadly the same as anything else. You don't feel empowered by your new toy, but instead have to get on back out there and keep doing the same thing.
Right now I feel there is still tons to mine from the game; if nothing else, despite hitting level 28 after 50 hours, I can see skill unlocks which require me to be almost level 50, and most of the in-game map remains unexplored. If I want it to, this is going to keep me busy for at least the rest of the year.
It's absolutely true to say that you get out of Sword Coast Legends what you put in, but right now there just aren't enough reasons to put much in.
It still comes up short on character compared to the best Civs and, of course, Alpha Centauri, but it's without doubt less anodyne than before. Diplomacy, however, seems to me like a significant misfire even without the bugs – the question of your place in this new world, and in relation to your rivals, remains unresolved. I suspect Beyond Earth's road to recovery has only just begun.
As well as being the most unabashed Transformers fan-service games have given us yet, it's also a slick, exciting, hyper-fast punchy-shooty game in its own right. It's dumb as a box of Dinobots of course, but it's not even trying to be otherwise – and that's why its simple, colourful enthusiasm for robot-bashing is so infectious.
After Dark is, I think, the best possible outcome for Skylines: successfully sticking its hand out for more cash but doing nothing to puncture goodwill in the process. Cue more swearing at EA HQ, perhaps.
I enjoyed Bedlam, without a doubt: it looks great, it motors along and the fights are thoughtful as well as punishing. I don't necessarily feel like I'm going to go back to it though. While it looks lovelier than FTL, it doesn't have the drama and tension which keeps me committed to that game of endless space danger.
Despite some characterisation wobbles and a somewhat perfunctory final mile, STASIS is the best adventure game I've played in years. It's also one of the most impressive horror games I've played lately. The tiny team behind it have done remarkable things, far in excess of what many, much larger studios seem capable of. Those studios should be afraid – be very afraid.
If you've been round the neon block a few times already, then Hong Kong's going to feel pretty familiar, despite being perfectly solid and having a few new toys plus a wider, more ostentatious stage than ever before.
In many of the later [missions], bigger and more multi-path, I was reacting instinctively, taking risks and having them pay off, finding a groove. There was flow and joyfulness. The good game at the heart of all the frequently irritating bluster and padding shines through.
Rite Of the Shrouded Moon is a quiet, careful joy, spinning an impressive tapestry out of relatively few threads.
I have no interest in finding out where the plot goes, because so far it's Arbitrary Events In The Lives Of Wooden Characters, but I do want to find out which dramatic places it will show me next.
Card Hunter feels as though, with a few technical tweaks and a neatening-out of the biz model, it can be a perennial. I really hope that proves to be true.
The Magic Circle has a very clear understanding of how games can be laid low, especially when high-minded ambition rather than practicality is in charge, but whether because of budgetary limitations or because it's too determined to convey its message first and foremost, it seems to then make some of those same mistakes.
There are many good things within Massive Chalice, but they're frustratingly kept at arm's length from me.
It's extremely rare to come across a game in which all of the details of that design intertwine so effectively. And then you realise it lets you redefine a lot of the parameters individually instead of having monolithic difficulty levels and, wow.
NEON STRUCT is a game about hide'n'seek as paranoid fear, not superthief glamour. It gives you large, heavily-guarded maze-like spaces and asks you to find your own way around them, whether it's by roof or street, by stolen keycard or opened vent, by planned strikes or pure evasion, by gadget or by wits alone. Welcome back to Liberty Island. You're not safe here.
[F]ifteen quid, lots of bullets, lots of steampunk Nazis and some monsters too. If that's (still) your poison, you can't go far wrong with this.