Stuart Thomas


96 games reviewed
77.4 average score
80 median score
56.3% of games recommended
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Oct 30, 2015

Then, once I realized that I'd been a numskull, I installed the DLC and tried again, playing with the new tourism and leisure districts, and building taxi ranks and bus lanes, and… well, once again I had a great time and felt that the DLC was a little light on content.

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At the end of the day, this reminded me a great deal of Telltale's Tales of Monkey Island series of recent years. It's a modern take on a classic genre, heavily capitalising on a famous name and rich in character and humour, but ultimately built on a straightforward foundation short on real innovation or beauty. Still, it's been a while since we've seen a lot of these adventures, and this is the first chapter of five. The main characters are endearing enough that after a couple of chapters they might be able to carry the games more or less on their own merits, but less in the way of un-skippable animations (some of which you'll need to sit through a lot) and mid-game ambling would go a long way toward warming me up when the subsequent chapters arrive.

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7 / 10.0 - SOMA
Oct 3, 2015

They're good at telling stories, these Frictional guys. They're good at building tension, and at using audio cues to stimulate fear. But in the end, I was put off by the inconvenient monsters. When fear is replaced by impatience, something is lost. This is something that Alien Isolation had very occasionally, and that completely ruined the 1999 PC game Aliens vs. Predator. When the monsters become a nuisance, and you're more worried about them for holding up your progress into the main plot than really terrifying you, it's hard to stay really scared.

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7 / 10.0 - Blood Bowl II
Nov 14, 2015

The storyline of the campaign mode is sort of fun and playing a season with all of the ups and downs that brings is also fun, but for me I think most of the joy comes from the nostalgia, I'm afraid. 

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7 / 10.0 - Blackguards 2
Jan 24, 2015

I have sort of enjoyed my time with Blackguards 2, although writing a review where all you really want to do is scream "IT'S THE SAME AS BLACKGUARDS!" has been a challenge. It really is a testament to the fine voice actors and tightly crafted combat above everything else, that even after two extremely similar games I'm still not staggeringly bored of it all. Slightly bored, perhaps, but not staggeringly.

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Sep 20, 2014

It's not cynical to say that Planetary Annihilation was built from the ground up as an e-sports option. As such, it's not really designed for mellow, thoughtful play at home so much as overly frenetic, WMD-laden violence before an army of screaming South Koreans. It has certainly learned the lessons of past MP giants, but whether it is really going to conquer that demanding arena or sputter like a damp squib is hard to predict. As a game in its own right though, a lot of what you're doing is standard RTS stuff, only simultaneously on a series of spherical maps, which adds dramatically to the challenge.

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Sep 30, 2014

Perhaps the point is to highlight the futility of foreign conflicts that fuel endless generations of inter-religious strife. And if they do introduce a 'baby/village idiot' difficulty level in a later patch, I might revisit. Otherwise, the only crusade I'm going to sign up for will be the one against fixed save points in PC FPSes.

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Dec 24, 2014

There is a solid wargame here, as you'd expect from the Panzer guys at Slitherine. Warhammer fans will be able to lose themselves down the rabbit hole of unit loadouts and Armageddon pattern variants, tinkering with constructing the perfect battalion, and there's even a map editor bundled with the game (which I found to be a little more complex than it needed to be). At the moment, I can't help but feel that a full-price ticket is a little ambitious for a game that looks for the most part like it could be handled by a web browser, but once the price comes down a little it's a worthy gateway drug to the world of really crunchy wargames.

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7 / 10.0 - Etherium
May 16, 2015

At the end of the day, there are a few good ideas in what is obviously supposed to be a multiplayer-focused RTS, but there's just a lack of anything really imaginative, anything we've not seen before.

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7 / 10.0 - Blackguards
Feb 19, 2014

Overall, Blackguards is a fun, tactical time waster with a throwaway fantasy RPG plot that does nothing new.

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As it is, Mountains of Madness is fun as a casual diversion for Lovecraft lovers and Cthulhuphiles, and is nostalgia-adjacent for those of us who grew up around Guybrush Threepwood.

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7.5 / 10.0 - The Falconeer
Nov 6, 2020

And while it's easy to recommend you pick up and enjoy The Falconeer, its real magic lies in waiting. As hopefully it's the start of a new series, where we eventually see The Falconeer Black Flag, or whatever Tomas decides to call it. And that is really where it starts to fill my flight chaps with excitement juice.

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7.5 / 10.0 - Port Royale 4
Sep 25, 2020

Port Royale 4 is ambitious and delivers in most regards, leading to a well rounded and beautifully choreographed world. The green tropical islands seem to breathe with life and purpose, a purpose that you influence through a variety of means, whether through trade, nationalism or just blatant piracy.

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7.5 / 10.0 - Cloudpunk
Jun 7, 2020

Props to the small team for really doing a whole lot with a little graphically. The rain never seems to let up, and the neon glow of the noodle stands shimmer on the trash-strewn alleys, and the smoky canyons between the seemingly-endless skyscrapers adds a feeling of vastness to the city. Really though, when you get down to it, Cloudpunk seems more like a straightforward interactive novel than it does a really fleshed-out game. It takes the first part of the 'go anywhere, do anything' sandbox model and does it very well. It just doesn't really deliver on the 'do anything' part all that well.

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Dec 12, 2016

The biggest down side - if you can call it that - to Natural Disasters is just how obvious it all is. Helicopters and shelters, weather stations for early warning, loss of life, rebuilding efforts, and so on. The whole idea of demolishing huge areas of your city with various crises. It's all been done before, and while it most certainly belongs in a game like Cities Skylines, I wasn't really surprised with the novelty of any of it. Does that mean it isn't fun? Heck no! Of course it is. Either playing with random disasters as part of the challenge, or manually bringing about the End of Days on your city like a vengeful god are brilliant ways to spend your time. Because, deep down, I suppose there's something in all of us that loves to just watch the world burn.

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Oct 15, 2016

So it's a little game, but with a big heart. There is some serious love of Norse mythology - prepare for an armload of nidvellirs, ratatosks and mjolnirs. To relive that feeling in the pit of your stomach when either you and the end-of-level boss will be killed by the next stroke. Ultimately, there's nothing in Jotun that would have even been hailed as original if you'd seen it in Mickey Mouse: Castle of Illusion, but fun is timeless.

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7.5 / 10.0 - Bohemian Killing
Aug 21, 2016

While the experience was enjoyable, I have to say I was sort of waiting for a big reveal that just never really arrived. I suppose I was in love with the idea of Bohemian Killing more than I was really in love with the game itself. That said, originality and the bravery to walk off the beaten path of game design are laudable characteristics, and I did enjoy getting into the mystery, with all of its weird Promethean themes and bizarre scenes.

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7.5 / 10.0 - Hard West
Nov 28, 2015

X-COM was a really great game, and Hard West is flattered by the resemblance. But when it comes down to it, there is nowhere near as much genius in it as there is in Firaxis' predecessor. As a tactical shooter it's fine, if simple, and the fairly gentle system requirements and low price point bring it back to the table a little. Lacking in obvious flair and with sub-games that often do little to add anything to the game besides unnecessary management, the gunfights still manage to keep Hard West from being a failure.

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Jan 28, 2014

Fun to play, certainly, but it's the same fun you'd get from pretty much any game in the series.

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7.5 / 10.0 - Total War: Attila
Feb 19, 2015

If this relatively obscure episode of history isn't your thing but you're jonesing for some Total War, of course, it shouldn't be too long until the incredible sounding Total War: Warhammer shows up. Apart from that, at least we know that Creative Assembly has a bright future making sci-fi survival horrors.

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