Joshua Wise


91 games reviewed
67.2 average score
70 median score
57.3% of games recommended
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Oct 6, 2020

You could argue that Squadrons breaks no fresh ground, that it is merely the latest in a prized patch of genre; but the ground, fresh or otherwise, was left behind long ago, and being the latest is no bad thing.

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Sep 24, 2020

If you're hoping for a sombre tale of lives brought low by the touch of darkness, my advice would be to go for a ride and take in the sights instead.

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Sep 8, 2020

The new studios pay both respect and homage to the original releases by valuing their clarity above all else.

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Sep 4, 2020

There may well be the feeling of a missed opportunity here, but no matter. Almost worthy is still pretty good.

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7 / 10 - Windbound
Aug 31, 2020

The more I played the less the goings-on of the narrative bothered me, and the more I relished the wavelike rhythm of the action: the roll and crash of sailing and breaking to alight for supplies.

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What's on offer here is a version of what would only have been available, back then, from a top-flight studio; a haven for those who crave a hit of Tartakovsky; and a hack-and-slash hardly ahead of the curve but happy to polish the past.

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Jul 27, 2020

I would recommend the remake to anyone with a nostalgic thirst for the original, but so, too, to those that like their laughs with a dark bite.

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Jul 14, 2020

The game may never have been as sweet as it was in the first of the three main areas, but, to its credit, that’s because I was swept along by the story.

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Jun 12, 2020

Where it succeeds isn't in how close it scrapes to the level of prestige TV, or to films. Its coup is not, "Look how closely we can make games resemble highbrow art." It's more, "Look what previously fenced-off realms we can get interactivity into."

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7 / 10 - Skelattack
Jun 2, 2020

As with the rest of the game, outside of the more focussed platform sequences, I was boosted through by the breezy mood more than anything else. Skelattack is a masterpiece in the art of the pleasant.

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7 / 10 - Maneater
May 23, 2020

The chief pleasures on offer are those of the power fantasy and of the newly burgeoning subgenre that we might call the zoological misadventure.

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8 / 10 - John Wick Hex
May 9, 2020

John Wick Hex could have been a number of different games, none of them as strange and satisfying as this.

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Apr 27, 2020

Does it succeed? Well, I don't know—I'm not an astronaut—but I can report that it has a pleasing gravity.

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Mar 10, 2020

In the beauty stakes and beyond, there are very few, in the rarefied realms of indie or AAA, who can challenge it.

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8 / 10 -
Feb 11, 2020

Those intoxicated by the game's dreamy brew may argue that there are no detours—that, like the Zero, you're either on it or you're not. If you're anything like me and Conway, however, you'll be somewhere in-between.

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Feb 3, 2020

The mood wafts above it all, overpowering any laughable suggestions of plot or character—neither of which fuels Zombie Army 4.

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Jan 27, 2020

It's a game of MacGuffins, so to speak—what you're doing and why you're doing it is inessential to the joys and the juice on offer.

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5 / 10 - Wattam
Jan 3, 2020

Wattam should be played, if for no other reason than to see a designer expressing ambivalence about his own ideas.

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It isn't that we miss the mists of Arcadia Bay specifically, or that we long to retread old ground; it's the slow etching of stories, scattered with care.

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8 / 10 - Shenmue III
Nov 28, 2019

With Shenmue III, we are offered a glimpse into a gifted mind, constantly turning the everyday into play.

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