Fade to Silence still needs work. It has a solid foundation of survival and crafting mechanics, coupled with great visuals, but is let down by an incoherent story, awful combat, and the glitches that go with it.
Average execution across the board makes for an experience that, while not terrible in moment-to-moment gameplay, leaves no lasting impression.
Dolmen's janky combat, cheap difficulty, and grindy multiplayer mechanic make it tough to recommend to all but the most devoted 'Souls fans that'll stomach it.
If you’re desperate to complete your remastered Resident Evil collection, and have never played Resident Evil: Revelations before, the low price point is appealing. The game is certainly worth experiencing for Resident Evil fans, if only for the ridiculous and entertaining plot.
Unfortunately, the presentation and strong opening hours are not enough to offset the repetition and grind that comes to dominate the experience if you want to unlock more of the narrative and see the true ending.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood might be fun during minute-to-minute gameplay, but it is seriously lacking in complexity when it comes to actual “role-playing”. If you’re after an experience akin to Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, you’ll have to hold out for its sequel.
If you love your yearly fix or want to return to the IP without having to invest 100 hours, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is easy to recommend. If, however, you’ve been desperately waiting for some evolution of the IP, you’re out of luck yet again.
Starfield is a game that somehow enthralls me and irritates me in equal measure. On one hand, you’ve got a compelling galaxy-sized rabbit hole you can lose yourself in for hours on end, with complex questlines, refined role-playing mechanics, and that “new IP” freshness that makes it easy to ignore the flaws for a while. The problem is the more time you invest, the more procedurally generated content you experience, and the less rewarding the experience becomes.
This is the President is an engaging take on the typical management sim genre, with a strong focus on story-driven elements that manages to charm and frustrate in equal measure. The story-driven elements serve to both elevate and detract from the overall experience.
A serious lack of polish and some unnecessary padding keeps it from being great, and it’s still got nothing on the criminally underrated and oft-forgotten Warhammer 40k: Space Marine – the pinnacle of action games set in that universe.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning still plays much the way it did in 2012 – ambitious in scope but lacking in depth. You may not be compelled to see it through to the end, but you’ll enjoy most of the time spent with it.
They Are Billions on console is still a great survival RTS, but is let down by poor controls and variable performance. Despite those issues, I’d recommend it to RTS fans craving new content (it's not as though we get many RTS games on console), but take note it still requires some work.
Void Bastards is great fun in short bursts but is, unfortunately, let down by the limited scope of its environments, with no unique ships or even distinct "boss" encounters.
Legrand Legacy is a strange proposition: it’s a love letter to JRPGs, produced by a small indie team with AAA ambitions but a small budget, capable of providing over two dozen hours of classic gameplay brought down by some rough edges and bland writing, all priced at what you’d expect for a AA game.
I kept going back to it this time and found myself getting swept up in cathartic violence and juvenile insults for hours at a time.
The sights and sounds of the forest keep you unsettled, Ellis’ flashbacks and conversations slowly unravel his past, puzzling and combat is nicely interspersed with exploration, and Bullet is one of my new favourite animal companions in a video game.
Piranha Bytes sticks to what they know best, providing another distinctly Gothic-like RPG, for better and worse.
Performance and controller nit-picks aside, Pinball FX3 is a solid pinball simulator with an impressive amount of content, only let down by the inclusion of overbearing progression systems and annoying UI design.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a great coop experience that manages to retain several elements of the prior Wolfenstein games – the gunplay, the characters, the excellent writing, and presentation – but changes up the mission-flow, enemy encounters, and the levelling mechanics to better facilitate a faster-paced game.
When the gruesome pixel art, amazing soundtrack and arcade-like gunplay come together, Let Them Come is an experience.