The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] is not like any other game I’ve played. It is both hyper-modern and old-school, horrifying and uplifting, rich with detail yet surprisingly concise when all things are considered. It has immense replay value, not in the least because of extensive new game plus content. On the whole, it is something of a cinematic masterpiece that still feels like a game and rewards a gamer’s curiosity, investigation, and persistence.
Everything about Deep Sky Derelict seems to have been done right, from the synthwave soundtrack to the lore to the unusual combat system. It's rare that a game with procedural elements holds my attention for long, and rarer still that an RPG can show me something new.
Gift of Parthax has a simple yet great premise.
City of the Shroud epitomises this approach, putting narrative at the heart of what it does, and emerging triumphant as a result.
Trago is very effective, if a little short. I found myself playing and replaying it for 70 minutes straight before I even began to consider giving it a break, which shows that it's just as addictive as the excessive drinking it portrays.
Overall, Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulator is a very successful attempt to revitalise an exceedingly difficult genre.
With The Crimson Court, I feel like Red Hook is taking us even deeper into Lovecraftian parentage, not just in expanding its supernatural mythos and pantheons, but also by delving deeper into the sense of tragedy, the sorrow of fragile mortality that must be a part of all horror.
Overall, In Between is a stellar title. It’s a refreshing take on the platformer genre in a market that is saturated to breaking point.
I can’t get the thought out of my head that life’s too short to play a game that is so, well, mundane. I guess what I’m saying is that for those of you who love bridges and hate monsters and explosions, Bridge Constructor is the one for you. For the rest of us, there’s Gears of War 4.
There are good ideas in Super Dungeon Bros, such as the inclusion of challenges, the Call of Duty-esque upgrades, and the team-work centred dungeon-crawling. Where it falls down is at the basics: good, satisfying combat and challenging gameplay.
Xanadu Next is a charming RPG title that seems to have sprung out of the past for new life. It reminds us of the old-school principles of gaming, with labyrinthine levels, a vast array of enemies… and an off-beat lore centred around an epic English poem.
So many games attempt humour and wit and fall painfully short of the mark, but Oh…Sir! manages to be outrageously funny without trying too hard.
Whilst the art style here verges on the cartoonish, the gorgeous sense of colour and texture really brings the world alive
There is no real artistic style to the visual elements which is a shame given how haunting the loading-screen art is
The environments are full of interactive objects which can be used to kill the party-goers, but in my view there are not nearly enough and some of them get repeated from level to level
Remember collecting crystals in Crash Bandicoot or rings in Sonic? This game will let you relive that experience as you while away hours trying to solve the most mind-boggling of puzzles…
This game makes me wish my friends lived more locally so I could have them round every week to play a few matches of Living Dungeon with beer or two
One miscalculation and you have to start the entire level again. Sometimes, these miscalculations are not even your fault
The lack of space battles in itself is another blow, which is not to say I don't love dogfighting through a canyon on Tattooine, but there was something about flinging a hapless boarding party against a Star Destroyer in some remote corner of the Galaxy that re-created the heroic adrenaline rush of the original A New Hope trench-run
If you think some of the characters feel overpowered; it's not your imagination. The developers have previously had problems with characters being unbalanced on the first Arcana Heart game and Arcana Heart 2, releasing numerous patches to fix the issues