John Walker


246 games reviewed
Are you John Walker? If so, email [email protected] to claim this critic page.
Unscored - Photographs
Apr 3, 2019

Photographs is a very novel experience (well, a very short story experience, fnarr), lovingly crafted, if not fully composed. I don’t love it as a puzzle game, but it’s a vignette of vignettes, and I like it for that.

Read full review

Unscored - Baba Is You
Mar 14, 2019

But this is wonderful. Completely wonderful. Original, inspired, challenging, and most importantly of all, that constant sense of “Oh no, how will I ever do this one!” so quickly followed by, “I AM A GENIUS!” It’s a very, very smart game, that has the humility to let you, the player, feel like the clever one

Read full review

Mar 12, 2019

There is just SO much to do, to explore, so many secrets I know I’ve missed, and bits I want to return to. This is completely splendid.

Read full review

Mar 6, 2019

I just kept thinking of so many different ways this could have been a much more ambitious take on a cheerful anachronism from an ancient 16-bit era. Sadly, I appear to have been the only one.

Read full review

Unscored - Vignettes
Mar 6, 2019

Vignettes is a toy. And that is why it’s completely splendid.

Read full review

Unscored - Delete
Feb 21, 2019

The result is a very decent puzzle game, that occasionally has completely inspired puzzles within it. If it could have focused on the buttoned levels, gosh, it’d have been a real classic. As it is, it’s a calm, gentle game, with intermittent moments of brilliance.

Read full review

Unscored - Tametsi
Feb 20, 2019

I’m 32 puzzles in, and that’s taken me a good long while. That there are 68 more of these to go, plus another 60 that have been released since the game’s initial release, makes me a very happy little man.

Read full review

Unscored - Rainswept
Feb 15, 2019

Ultimately, Rainswept has a good story to tell. A sad story, one of grief, loss, murder and small-town cruelty.

Read full review

Unscored - Crackdown 3
Feb 14, 2019

It reeks of development hell, as demoralising to play as I imagine it was to make. Yes, clearing a map of its icons can be readily distracting, and it fulfils this role at least.

Read full review

Unscored - Globesweeper
Feb 13, 2019

For less than a couple of quid, this is well worth it. Randomly generated puzzles, so you won’t run out, plenty of options, and that bonkers triangle mode for a real head-scratcher.

Read full review

Unscored - Eastshade
Feb 11, 2019

A slow, gentle, personal RPG, with neat little stories, characters I remember, and a real sense of having spent time in a special place.

Read full review

Unscored - Art Sqool
Feb 6, 2019

Gosh I was all ready to love going to Art Sqool. But either I or it have failed. Nowhere near as odd or quirky as its trailers suggested it could be, and offering no surprises, its fun is over in the first few minutes. Bums.

Read full review

Jan 23, 2019

I love the presentation, I love the conceit, but ultimately this is just a cleverly disguised badly designed point-and-click adventure.

Read full review

Unscored - Pikuniku
Jan 21, 2019

What a really pleasant time this is. It’s family-friendly, without being a kids’ game.

Read full review

Unscored - The First Tree
Jan 19, 2019

I’d love to have played a game that tried to explore that rocky landscape, with some nuance, some introspection, and most of all, with some humility. This is not that game.

Read full review

I love the ideas behind The Pepper Prince. A little queer love story, written in verse, presented in faux-ASCII. Sounds gorgeous. But on the evidence of the first episode, the verse is poor, the story meagre, and the puzzles absent. Which makes it hard to recommend. And yet, had I not winced and winced at the writing, I’d have enjoyed the aimless process of clicking through it all.

Read full review

Unscored - Sagebrush
Dec 21, 2018

I’m really impressed by Sagebrush. It could have been tacky, it definitely could have been gross, but it’s neither. It’s sensitive, well constructed, and harrowing just where I think it should be.

Read full review

Unscored - DUSK
Dec 18, 2018

Honestly, this is purist FPS as good as it gets, just a constantly stunning game. Don’t miss this.

Read full review

Dec 6, 2018

This remains the magical, bizarre, joyful and utterly peculiar game that earned its place in gaming history. It also remains very short (about four hours at a slow pace?), but also extremely replayable, with so many targets to meet. And it’s very funny, in a super-dark way.

Read full review

Unscored - Just Cause 4
Dec 4, 2018

Although that said, even if the bugs and AI were fixed, it would still leave behind a version of Just Cause that barely changes anything you actually do since the third edition, yet has made every aspect of doing it so astronomically more annoying. What went wrong? How did such an established and entertaining series end up in such a quagmire? Gosh I’d love to know.

Read full review