Stefan L's Reviews
A handful of excellent new units, a much needed faction rework for the Wood Elves, Drycha's campaign, and a host of quality of life changes make The Twisted and the Twilight's lacklustre Vortex campaigns much easier to overlook.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure starts off slow, feeling like a hollow reflection of the franchise, but eventually grows into its new 3D platforming elements. It's at its best when it blends the new with the old, when there's power-ups, side-scrolling and a meaningful challenge, but it takes a bit too long to get it together.
DMC5 Special Edition for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S builds on the excellence of the original release. It's not the most essential purchase, since you will soon be able to buy Vergil as DLC for the original release, but with some new game modes like Legendary Dark Knight difficulty and the new graphical options making the game smoother/prettier than ever before, it's sure to be tempting for fans of the series. Our original review score follows.
Bright Memory is a rare good-bad game that's enjoyable partly because of its oddities and flaws, but there's signs that its sequel Bright Memory Infinite could actually just be good.
Astro cements himself as the PlayStation 5's mascot with a celebration of all things PlayStation that also showcases the full potential of the immersive new DualSense controller. Astro's Playroom is the first thing you should play on PlayStation 5.
Disc Room is a hell of floating discs, obscure puzzles and inevitable death. It's great.
Lifting the Tetris 99 template wholesale, Super Mario Bros. 35 is a fun and accessible spin on the battle royale, but it's one that's hampered by a lack of clarity over its multiplayer mechanics. Its fresh new player base also leads to endless trips through 1-1 and gruelling marathons instead of tense battles to be the last Mario standing.
Much like an actual 35th birthday party (I assume), Super Mario 3D All-Stars just feels a little halfhearted. It bundles together three great platformers, all of which benefit from the bump up to HD resolutions, and Nintendo have done well to adapt the varying controls to suit the Nintendo Switch, but there's a squandered opportunity to enhance and go beyond this in a meaningful way. Maybe Nintendo are saving themselves for the big five-oh in 2035?
Struggling is a mess. While I can't fault the controls themselves, the object physics are just not reliable enough in crucial areas, as the momentum when using some objects is too chaotic to reliably make progress. Unless you have the patience of a saint or an online audience eager to see your reactions as you're battling through, this is probably not the game for you.
The best way to think of Crusader Kings 3 as a sequel is in terms of its own dynastic gameplay. Sure, Paradox have started from scratch with a new game, but it's still full of scheming, warring amidst an impressive breadth of cultures and religions. Crusader Kings 3 is an heir that has been born from Crusader Kings 2 and its many expansions, including and improving on so much of what made that game great, but it can still grow and improve in its own right.