A multiplayer first-person shooter in which teams of three fight to capture cash boxes in fully destructible levels, with plentiful parkour and movement abilities.
I feel like I can let a lot of you know whether you'd like Warhammer Age Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin with just a few words: it's about micromanagement. Victory is dependent on rapidly issuing movement, attack and ability commands to several small squads of soldiers, and your units will pay a heavy price if your attention leaves them for more than a few moments.
A brilliantly written and performed spy-thriller set in the middle of Night City and of Cyberpunk 2077's overarching story.
A cute and creepy adventure game about three young friends exploring a small town and uncovering the secrets that lie beneath its surface.
A rhythm first-person shooter in which bursting demons to the beat makes your weapons more powerful.
A first-person heist 'em up about smashing buildings apart chunk by chunk so you can get in and out quickly.
A science fiction journey in which you roll and glide across epic planetary landscapes, but which quickly loses all momentum.
Cyberpunk 2077 is huge, sprawling, complex, and deeply flawed. It’s at its best as a fairly straightforward singleplayer action game, with likable characters and thrilling capers in a fascinatingly detailed open world that looks better than any game before it. It’s at its worst if you want it to be an RPG, an approach-as-you-please Deus Ex successor, or a polished piece of software. I enjoyed my time with it a lot, and I even want more of it, though I’m going to spend years complaining about its flaws. I’ll enjoy the complaining, too.
It’s rare that a developer is able to wrestle this kind of ambitious technical witchery into the shape of an actual game, but Noita pulls it off. Fast and loose, or tight and controlled? It doesn’t matter, I’m having fun either way.
Spelunky 2 makes Spelunky new again: a fancier strap, more cogs, a cuckoo popping out from a hidden compartment on the hour. The correct time, as delightful as the first time I learned to tell it.
The result, for me, was anxiety. A low background hum of “did I miss something”, combined with the high notes of being unable to find the next new area. It was enough to shade my entire experience with Carrion, turning a pleasant enough Metroidvania with a one-of-a-kind protagonist into something I felt like I was struggling to escape from.
It’s the underlying systems which let everything else down, and which felt incoherent to me. Some games only become fun once you work out what they expect from you, and I spent most of my time with Wildfire wondering if I was playing it wrong. Maybe I was, but if there was a fun way to play it, I never found it.
I hope I don’t have to wait for brain-computer interfaces to exist before the series returns again, because despite a handful of complaints, I still think Valve make the best first-person shooters around.
As it is, it’s the best way to play Valve’s original design if you haven’t done so before, and it’s a brilliant way to retread those old ventilation shafts, if you have.
It is a fine game, but it has already served its purpose: it entertained me for roughly as many minutes as it cost in pennies, and it left me refreshed and ready to play some longer games.
My Friend Pedro does let you realise the fantasy of conducting a bullet symphony while hanging upside down from a zipline, but like most fantasies, it doesn’t survive past the initial rush of blood to the head.
Void Bastards is ultimately not more than the sum of the parts I outlined 1400 words ago, but it’s worth rummaging through all the same. Just like yer da said about the bins, when he finally found those Euros.
For all its hurried stabbing and spilled blood, Katana Zero is a beautiful game, from the juicy text boxes onwards.
[PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds] is best when one round you're a Ghillie-suited assassin and the next you're a struggling nobody with a gun you've never seen before. When you aren't at either extreme, the highs and lows of play can begin to even out and round after round can begin to blend together.
I got my money's worth and I've got enough complex games to play. I want more that are simple and that are as satisfying as this, and while I'm done with it for now, I'm betting I'll be drawn back before the year is done.