You're going to love it.
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).
Aside from interface complaints, I would not really call Banished a bad game. I would also not call it a pleasant game.
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.
This time around, the repeat journey was absolutely worth it, and I'm glad if surprised to end 2013 finding that XCOM was my greatest timesink for a second year running. It won't, naturally, change the minds of anyone who felt XCOM was a betrayal of X-COM, but if like me you're contented by the Gollop and Firaxis efforts co-existing and doing their own thing rather than replacing each other, this really is an excellent add-on despite a few pulled punches.
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.
I'm not sure the Homeworld games were first built with the expectation that they'd stand the test of time like this, but because there was so much care, because there's been nothing quite like them since, and because the remastering has been sensitive, this package comes across as beautifully timeless, and as essential as real-time strategy gets. Welcome home.
Look, Sunless Sea isn't for everyone. It requires patience, and it requires no small amount of imagination. For those who have those qualities, or are prepared to try and acquire them, I would say that Sunless Sea is an uncommonly rewarding roleplaying game, and an essential one.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 doesn't have the cleanness or the slow-burn escalation of your old-school C&Cs or the first Warcrafts and StarCraft, so certainly don't approach it as a return to the old ways, but if you want a giant sci-fi army bashing buildings and monsters to death while a crazy lightshow rages, Legacy of the Void is hard to argue with on that basis.
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.
Twenty minutes. No cost. You'll laugh. Bargain.