Putting together a final rating for this package is tricky, much like it always is for a remaster. Ultimately, then, I’m aiming this final score more toward people who have never played the game before. Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning needs some spit and polish to get it working properly. If that happens you can bring the score up to a full four out of five stars. But right now, if you can deal with its issues there’s an RPG that was clearly made with love waiting for you.
All in all, Destroy All Humans is a solid remake of a great little game. Naturally the mission designs and some of the other gameplay elements are a little creaky in 2020, but the developers have done a good job of modifying the core gameplay so that it holds up quite well while still retaining the feel of the original game. Hopefully those who played Destroy All Humans back in 2005 can relive their memories along with a brand new audience who can discover the joys of anal probing.
For such a meagre price XCOM: Chimera Squad packs somewhere in the realm of 20-hours of content into its slim frame. It almost feels unfair to compare it so frequently to XCOM 2 since it’s a small-scale spin-off. But Chimera Squad manages to find its own identity while still retaining the general feel of XCOM, even if the pre-defined characters and lack of perma-death might put veterans of the franchise off entirely. And that’s fair because making up your own squad and forming tales of their heroics and their demises has been core to XCOM since it returned from the dead in 2013. But if you can look past that there’s a lot to like in XCOM: Chimera Squad, and if you’re a lover of turn-based tactics games then this is well worth playing, though it has some incredibly tough competition in Gears Tactics at the moment.
Trials: Rising is a tricky one to score. At its very core what makes the Trials games so addictive, so satisfying and so god-damn rewarding is still present. Once again I found myself clutching the controller at 3am with a slightly manic expression plastered across my sweat-covered face, mumbling something about needing to bounce the back wheel off that edge to shave off some time. Once again, I found myself thinking, “Just one more go. Alright, maybe two.” again and again and again. It’s just irritating that Trials, arguably the quintessential example of a sleek game, has got bloated in this latest iteration.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a great example of why double-A gaming is so vital to the industry. Don’t Nod has conjured up an engaging, cool concept and poured a reasonable budget into it, resulting in a game that still looks beautiful without costing hundreds of millions of dollars. And in the end, I enjoyed it just as much as I’ve enjoyed numerous triple-A titles with triple the budget.
Taken on its own merits, Swarm 2 is heaps of fun and an incredibly cool virtual reality experience. Swinging around like a gun-toting Spider-Man is immensely satisfying. As a sequel, I think it’s a little bit disappointing because the roguelike elements don’t add much, at least for myself. Others may find the emphasis on gradually building up power more enjoyable than I did.
It’s clear that there’s a strong demand for a simple, fun co-op shooter and Helldivers 2 is exactly that. Whether you’re hanging out with a group of loyal friends or teaming up with random citizens of Super Earth, Helldivers 2 is a blast to play. Mowing down bugs in the name of democracy and dismantling socialist robots is immensely satisfying, as is calling down terrible rains of fire from your personal super destroyer. If a few other Helldivers happen to get caught up in the devastation, well, they knew what they were signing up for. Freedom must be achieved at all costs, and freedom is rarely this fun.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a pleasure to play and a welcome return for a series that has been dormant for far too long, even if it doesn’t have that much in common with its fully 3D ancestors. A weak story and a few pacing issues hold it back from breaking into the highest echelons of the Metroidvania genre and duking it out with the likes of Hollow Knight, but it’s pretty far up there and a fantastic way to kick off the year. It might even be in the top 10.
Like a cyberpunk human coming in for a couple of upgrades, Ghostrunner 2 is the first game with a few augmentations bolted to its body. Most of the new hardware its chosen to get is an improvement, but a couple of pieces weren’t really needed. There’s more focus on a story that isn’t very interesting and the experiment with open areas falls flat. However, the core mix of platforming and combat remains immensely satisfying and fun and the new bike sections are cool. Fans of the first game should be more than happy with this sequel.
If, like me, you’re a Mortal Kombat fan then Mortal Kombat 1 is a no-brainer – it’s as fun as ever with a great roster and an excellent new Kameo system. However, if you’ve found yourself tiring of the MK formula over the past few games and were hoping the timeline reboot would herald a big new change, then MK1 isn’t going to change your mind. It’s a very safe release, and considering how incredibly popular the modern Mortal Kombat games are it’s understandable that Netherealm don’t want to change the formula too much lest it all end in a brutal Fatality.
Moving Out 2 is a solid sequel to an already excellent game. Not every new addition is a hit but the majority are, adding in plenty of barmy ideas to an already manic game. It’s a hoot with a few pals sitting on the couch and having a laugh as they hurl a microwave through a window and bounce it off a parasol into the truck. Just be careful that the farmyard levels don’t turn your friend group into an angry mob baying for blood.
It turns out, death actually was rather nice.
Pronty is a fairly typical Metroidvania game in most regards, drawing heavily from some of the genre’s big hitters and then mixing in some of its own unique elements. The result isn’t watered-down, it’s stronger for it. The underwater setting is beautiful and Pronty is a joy to control, especially in combat and against the fun bosses. If the Metroidvania genre hasn’t won you over I doubt Pronty will change your mind, but if you love getting lost in a big map and stumbling across an upgrade that opens up new doors, Pronty is fantastically designed and a lot of fishy fun.
For people like myself who already know the wizarding world of Harry Potter, who have devoured the books and scoured the films, Hogwarts Legacy is close to being a full five-star game. Just being able to stroll through the halls of Hogwarts, admiring the moving paintings and the obscene amounts of detail that Avalanche have put into it, is probably worth the price of entry alone. The fact that you’re getting a really good open-world game on top of it with fun combat is just the icing on the conjured cake. Sadly, though, I don’t think Hogwarts Legacy delivers on its story premise.
Of all the things I imagined Firaxis doing, mostly involving getting on with XCOM 3, there was never a point where I considered them getting their hands on the Marvel license and making a turn-based tactics game involving the Midnight Suns, cards and attending a weekly book club meeting with Blade where you end up discussing a Kree book outlining their military doctrine. And yet here we are. Firaxis has taken their genius and attempted something interesting and a little weird, mixing a bunch of ideas into a chunky 40+ hour adventure. Like a long-running comic’s canon, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is…complicated.
There’s a lot of things I think Death Stranding gets wrong. Many of them I’ve not even mentioned here because they’re small things, but things that add up. And yet I found myself thinking about playing Death Stranding even when I was doing other things. Despite everything, I was perfectly happy to fire the game up and spend a few hours building roads, dragging boxes up hills, delivering a pile of stuff in a truck and riding ziplines around. Along the way I thought about life and death, my own health and the state of the world, the people I love and my plans and so much more. Above all else, I thought about how crazy Kojima is and how I’m really glad he’s crazy and has the clout to make games like Death Stranding, games that would never otherwise get to see the light of release because publishers would be terrified of it. Because Death Stranding is like nothing else you’ve ever played. It’s unique, and that’s not an easy thing to be these days.
Being booted back to the dashboard pretty consistently was a massive blow to my enjoyment, so that needs to get patched out quickly, but otherwise, this is the biggest and best F1 package we've got from Codemasters to date. My Team adds a heap of extra longevity to the game. On top of that, there's now a dedicated E-sports menu, online leagues and weekly events, so there's plenty of content to enjoy. The new Podium Pass system is the only question mark. Hopefully, Codemasters will resist the urge to turn its F1 license into yet another horrendous "live-service" marketplace, and will instead continue to build on their great new My Team mode and deliver outstanding on-track action for us Formula 1 fans.
I really liked Saints Row: the Third when it came out some nine years ago, and I’m impressed by how well it actually holds up. Yeah, the driving and shooting feel quite basic, but honestly GTA V doesn’t feel any better in terms of its core movement, shooting and driving yet people still love it. Saints Row: the Third usually finds inventive, funny and entertaining ways to stage its missions and gameplay so that you never notice the problems with it. The result is a game that’s just plain fun and has a bunch of memorable missions, moments and characters. So many games try to be gritty and realistic, or present high concepts,. Sometimes you really just want to sit down and ride a panda-quadbike around while dressed like a wizard and shooting at Luchadores.
I’m actually surprised by how disarmingly cute, charming and engaging Before We Leave really is. I’ve always been able to fire up strategy games and wind up losing a few hours before I’ve realized what’s happening, but Before We Leave is especially good at it. It’s the perfect lazy evening game for when you kind of want to build up a colony and watch it grow but don’t fancy all the moral schtick of Frostpunk or the complexity of something like Cities Skylines. Balancing Monkey Games have done a terrific job.
I didn’t go into Gears Tactics expecting very much. Why would I? And yet really it makes so much sense. Those giant walking meat-slabs have jumped perfectly from their cover-based shooting to turn-based cover shooting. Splash Damage have done an outstanding job taking the foundations laid by XCOM and building on top of that before loading it all in a heavy, sweaty layer of Gears armour before strapping a Lancer to it. The lack of a more meaningful metagame between the action hurts it a little, but Gears Tactics more than makes up for it with it’s fantastically fun tactical plotting and in the way it lets you chainsaw Grubs in half. Which XCOM doesn’t. And really, isn’t that what we all want in life?