Ian Boudreau
- Red Dead Redemption
- StarCraft
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Ian Boudreau's Reviews
Assault Android Cactus, despite the bold colors and glowing lasers, a very unpretentious game that's mostly about having fun.
Having played lots of the classic adventure games in the '90s, I find myself now completely bereft of nostalgia for them. Games, I've felt, have generally moved on and found better ways to impart an experience of "adventure." But Dropsy is deftly executed and so full of genuine heart and warmth that it overcame my cold-hearted distaste for the form. It's sweet without ever being saccharine, tells a story that disturbs without ever resorting to cynicism, and ultimately is disarmingly uplifting.
These warts considered, Might & Magic Heroes VII isn't enough of a refinement over VI to justify purchase if you already own that game. It's unfriendly to newcomers to the series, with nothing that qualifies as a tutorial included out of the box. And fans of the old games may find themselves put off by all the unnecessary visual flash. But devoted fans of the series will certainly find lots to do with the latest entry.
So I think of Armikrog as a tragic point-and-click adventure. It's sad because of what it might have been, and because it might have lent itself to further episodes set in Tommynaut's delightfully retro universe. But given the state of the game before us, I can't imagine we'll be visiting it again any time soon.
In any case, Armello is a remarkable achievement. Instead of simply transferring a board game experience to the TV or computer screen, developer League of Geeks has managed to escape the boundaries of the board game format using modern innovation. Arthur C. Clarke suggested that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and in that light, Armello is quite definitely magical.
I’ll have more to say about Darktide once I’ve spent some time with the newly stabilised release build. For now, be aware of the technical issues players faced during the beta before diving in. I’m hopeful that Fatshark has been able to sort most of them out, because this is some of the most fun I’ve ever had in the 40k universe to date – when it works.
I’m still working my way through my first season at the helm of the semi-pro Bath City FC (a team I’ve chosen as a way to connect with my coworkers in PCGamesN’s hometown), and so there’s still more I’d like to see before assigning a score – particularly, the initial patch that updates the beta build I’ve been playing. But my impressions of Football Manager 2021 so far are largely positive. This is a clear step forward over last year’s edition, even if some of its new ideas don’t completely work.
A Civ-like with neat ideas, but half-formed fundamentals and messy execution make your decisions feel less than impactful.
It’s by no means a terrible game, but it whiffs on too many elements for the admittedly cool aesthetics to carry the day.
I’ve missed out on Roller Coaster Tycoon and its descendants, so I can’t compare Parkitect to those games. What I can say is that it is delightful and non-threatening, and playing it has typically left me feeling pleasantly drowsy and contented, the way I might after wandering around a brightly-lit midway, munching a corn dog covered in mustard in a gauzy childhood memory of the carnival.
Playing it was a trial for me every time I fired it up – the firehose of outdated pop culture references and toilet humor made me feel like Alex DeLarge undergoing the Ludovico Technique in A Clockwork Orange. Should I ever find myself on stage for a robot game show in the 26th century, I'll opt for lethal injection instead.
A cheeky take on Dungeons & Dragons lore isn't enough to carry the lacklustre combat, sluggish controls, and dodgy enemy hitboxes.
An earnest but empty love letter to Quake and Duke Nukem 3D that never gets around to doing anything to call its own.
Grim-faced dedication to history has produced a rules-heavy RTS that's rarely fun or strategically rewarding – a highly accurate depiction of the First World War, in other words, and a success in that respect at least.
Shadwen has a lot of dings and dents – a superfluous crafting and loot system, unreliable physics, poor AI, and a fairly one-note aesthetic, and a brief campaign – but it manages to entertain nonetheless with its devil-may-care approach to puzzle solving and a heroine who’s actually a rather horrible, stabby bastard.
[W]hile I loved the atmosphere, the setting, and the aesthetic of The Flame in the Flood, I never got that "one more run" feeling I've gotten from other roguelites like Isaac or Spelunky. It's possible that the game's pace is a bit off, or that I haven't quite figured out the "correct" way to play it.
A new and complete version of Dragon's Dogma adds some modern polish to a diamond in the rough.
Cobalt could definitely use a bit more documentation or a more fleshed-out tutorial to explain the many systems it throws at you from the outset, and the gameplay never feels as tight as, say, Super Meat Boy, but it's full of its own weird, clunky charm and certainly has a high skill ceiling for those interested in mastering it. Imagine R2-D2 in Mark of the Ninja – that's Cobalt.
Simple and beautiful to look at, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is a pleasant distraction but lacks the depth in its combat and economy to stay interesting for very long.
The classic RTS battles carry the third entry in this once-essential series, returning more or less untouched, but alongside a bloated and unfinished campaign mode that feels at odds with the core ideas of Company of Heroes.