A faintly interesting premise is irrevocably squandered by muddy visuals, tedious moment-to-moment gameplay and a hateable weak-willed protagonist.
A quaint art direction and an occasional well-conceived puzzle are not enough to redeem this painful slog through a child's living nightmare. Trial-and-error instakill sections and some of the worst hide and seek stealth since Sanity of Morris ensure the greatest nightmare will be your own.
Enchanted Portals copies almost everything about Cuphead, except for the precision of its mechanics, the tightness of its design and the enjoyment gleaned by mastering it. All the good bits really…
A game with incredible graphics and brilliant sound design that is brought down by a middling campaign and murdered by a confused and unbalanced multiplayer
The game leans heavily on its visuals and sound but can't sell its simplistic gameplay
Necromunda: Hired Gun features a stunning art direction, but with a garbled story and more technical and design blemishes than you can poke a space stick at, this one's bound to be buried in the under-hive.
Curse of the Sea Rats' charmingly nostalgic art direction can only partially hide a Metroidvania whose mechanical shortcomings are numerous, and whose substandard technical stability is irredeemable in its launch state.
A bland hack 'n' slash with tonnes of content but painfully repetitive and simplistic gameplay that can't sustain itself
Micro Machines World Series fails to capitalise on what makes the toys and games so great, delivering a shallow experience unlikely to hold up against any level of nostalgia you might have for the tiny cars
A budget action-RPG that is aggressively mediocre in almost every way
Rise of the Rōnin's open world is vast and content-rich, but it's a case of quantity over quality that's only partially rescued by the unambitious but technically adequate combat.
Metal: Hellsinger enlists some all-star musical talent to bring its dream of metal-based FPS mayhem to life, but stumbles in finding its gameplay rhythm.
Foreclosed features a masterful comic book art style and pumping sci-fi soundtrack, but its average action and failure to capitalise on its cyberpunk themes make it a hard sell.
Bound's impeccable, surreal visuals are let down by its lacklustre platforming and a narrative that can't quite deliver the necessary emotion
The Invincible absolutely looks the part, jampacked with stunning alien vistas and a brilliant retrofuturistic aesthetic, but its premise can't quite maintain the momentum of suspense and intrigue generated in its opening act
Borrowing heavily from Hotline Miami, The Hong Kong Massacre has some of the style, but not enough of the substance
An interesting fusion of Trials-inspired traversal and robot destruction that is let down by its inconsistent execution
Awesome gunplay and some slick production can't hide the fact that there's not a lot of actual meat on Rage 2's bones
A visual masterpiece with an interesting central gameplay idea that unfortunately fails in its main mission of being emotionally engaging
Call of Duty: Vanguard unabashedly apes the style of 2019's Modern Warfare, with a multiplayer that is fun though familiar, but featuring a campaign that largely misses the mark.