What emerges is a genuinely impressive engine for generating narratives somewhere between Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick, but riddled with errors and overlooked features.
Perhaps more interesting than the bosses are the moments where FromSoftware stretches the limitations of its mechanics and nearly reaches whole new genres.
While the diversity of loot doesn't reach Dead Cells' level, the combat and movement already sparkles in this early build.
The world is gorgeous screenshot-fodder and the characters are written fine enough – well, maybe a bit overwritten – but that fierce creativity doesn't seem to extend to the way Nightingale plays.
"The mishmash of brutal, amoral survivalism and innocent saturday morning cartoons is something that never stops being ghoulishly fascinating"
Lords of the Fallen just about justifies the return of this forgotten franchise by being basically fine. It has a few clever ideas and a whole bunch of very predictable ones, ultimately resulting in a soulslike experience that won't feel particularly new or fresh, but rarely offends or goes too far wrong.
Tears of the Kingdom sets a standard for immersive gameplay that most major games don't even try to achieve, let alone match
"The open world inherently changes so much for the series that it needed a total ground-up rethink of the mechanics"
Though occasionally likable and basically inoffensive, Mario Strikers: Battle League struggles to build on its ideas and ends up feeling pretty undercooked as an experience.
Elden Ring is both a refinement and evolution of the Dark Souls formula, presenting an expansive world that's as hostile as it is inviting. Despite the occasional excess, suffering has never been as much fun as this.
A certain level of scrappiness can be charming, but it’s harder to excuse in a big-budget project like this one, and three crashes in an hour is far too scrappy to be overlooked. Still, I do have a fondness for Rift Apart, perhaps because I do get the sense that this was a project built with love, yet not so much love that it wasn’t willing to experiment and try some new things. Once all the many, many bugs are fixed, this’ll be a pretty good game for families to enjoy, and a superb showcase for what the PS5 is capable of.
After months of waiting from audiences, the latest entry in the Zelda franchise, Breath Of The Wild, has been released to huge expectation, with a massive open world and a new interpretation of Zelda gameplay. But does it hold up to the staggering hype? Grab your sword, don your hardiest travelling gear and find out!
At the end of the day, for all the goofs and missteps, this is a Resident Evil game – and it's the first good one since RE4.