It's the sustained snacking aspect of Defense Grid 2's many modes and weapon options, rather than the intended banquet that is its campaign, that'll keep your belly full.
As much as the awkwardness, the wobbly writing and the ghastly attitudes often pushed me away from Risen, I'd still take its offbeat ambition and clumsy ambition over a slick, impersonal Diablo or a focus grouped Bioware effort. At the same time, sharper, caveman-free writing and a big spend on more accomplished voice-acting would be redempetive – would transform Risen from appealingly odd and into truly impressive. But maybe what's special about this would be lost if it were able to pursue norms. Perhaps it needs to be as weird and awkward and unpleasant as it is. Perhaps that's why I like it so much, even when I hate it.
Runers is cute and clever, despite its uninspiring surface, and I can well imagine it occupying the same comfort gaming berth that The Binding of Isaac did for me a couple of years ago, and Realm of the Mad God before it.
I do think it suffers from significant tonal misjudgements, but it does a very good job of keeping me busy, keeping me pushing pennies into the slot, and keeping me fed with micro-anecdotes that, though they might dissipate immediately, are instantly replaced by new ones.
Adam: Wolfenstein – BETTER THAN IT HAD ANY RIGHT TO BE Alec: Quite right too.
There are some bum notes both tonally and strategically, Tropico old hands will find the bones of the things over-familiar, and despite having tons of things to fiddle with ultimately it's hard not call it a lightweight game. I really think it has to be, though.
I think this is the best episode yet, despite being a little on the short side, and despite having repetition at its foundation it does a bloody good job of both concealing it and dragging me deeper into the game's murky world. I know that I'm being sheep-herded to a fairly fixed conclusion, and I'm now enjoying the neon snarl of the ride enough to be entirely comfortable with that.
On the first playthrough, it's distracting that Daylight is one-note tonally, unconvincingly written and acted, and unwisely tethers progress to increasingly drearily combing environments for every last scrap of 'oh no something terrible happened here once and everyone's dangerously mental' paperwork. On the second playthrough, it's oppressive. At a guess, self-awareness of this is why the game's so short, but by God another pass on the writing and more care about voice-acting would have made the world of difference.
Warlock 2 is a smart and appropriately chaotic strategy game which really feels as though it has an identity of its own, rather than being made up of borrowed parts (er, other than its own).
I'm perhaps not quite as in love with this series as I was after episode 1, but I badly want to find out what happens next, and I badly want to play episode 3 again to see what I might have missed.
Singular of vision but faltering in execution and in need of some fleshing out – something's missing here, in terms of exploration and progression, but what is there is really quite special.
Sky-high ambition. Incredible visual design and attention to detail. Promise it couldn't possibly live up to. Shortcuts. Pride. A fall.
[Luftrausers] is such a little thing. I have to focus hard to remember it when it's not right there in front of me. It probably doesn't have much staying power. But when it's there, when the sound of machine-marking throbs through my speakers, when I drop like a stone into the ocean then rebound heroically skywards, with smoke pouring out my engines, it's everything that matters.
Aside from interface complaints, I would not really call Banished a bad game. I would also not call it a pleasant game.
In terms of making people want to play because it looks beautiful and strange, rather than because it's an adventure game. Unfortunately the latter creates huge expectations, an albatross they hung around their own neck.
It's an uneven experience, populated as much by frustration as it is by triumph, but it feels technically solid and is appropriately enormous and secret-filled.
Yeah, I love the world and the existential agony of it all, but I just don't think it's a particularly well-realised strategy game too.
I was deeply disappointed to find after all my worrying and all my sacrifice that The Novelist's conclusions are suspiciously neat, too mechanical and too implausible in the family permanently cutting off one option in favour of another rather than pursuing compromise later in their lives – the destination is, sadly, not the measure of the journey. Some familial interactions ring hollow too, sound too scripted, too dramatic, too perfect. Nonetheless, it's a journey I'm glad I made.
It's the best Assassin's Creed yet! Which is 90% because Black Flag, a a third-person action adventure about pirates in the Caribbean, isn't really an Assassin's Creed game in the traditional sense, and 10% because the lead character is from Swansea.
There's a sadness to that as much as there is to our limited time with a fully-operational Rapture, but at the same time Burial At Sea is extremely effective at posing big, gnawing and dramatic new questions to a riddle we thought answered. I am so very hungry for part two, but I do hope it gives us more Rapture-in-light as well as answers, self-reference and metatextuality. Burial