Matt Gardner's Reviews
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mE1yHMuYSIw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Ultimately, if all you want from a game is a massive sandbox with bases to take down in the company of friends, then Wildlands is actually pretty decent. But if you're looking for anything remarkable or memorable in and of itself, you won't find it here.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L5V0BTRtLRc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Horizon Zero Dawn is a brilliant, beautiful and bold action-adventure. With this expansive and ambitious game, Guerrilla finally have a masterpiece to their name, and, in Aloy, a PlayStation legend in the making.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AwiaxcC3WvI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Yakuza 0 makes for a perfect entry point to the series, and its unique blend of high drama and entertaining extras creates an action-packed, emotional journey where laughs come as frequently as tears. It's brutal and brilliant and so damn cool.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8GJiJiAcupg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> A fantastic, mind-bending, transmedia tale of time-travel and family, All The Delicate Duplicates is a short but thought-provoking experience that's as engrossing as it is complex.
An early contender for game of the year, Linelight is a minimalist, meditative masterpiece, and an excellent puzzle game that will utterly captivate you . If you're a genre fan in any way, or just like the idea of a chilled-out slice of pure gameplay, give it a look.<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1LS05l55j30" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Watch Dogs 2 is a well-made game that tries hard to (over)compensate for the dour mood of its predecessor with a peppy script and a vibrant game world stuffed full of life and colour. But the game's ever-changing tone, confused narrative, and undercooked gameplay elements still leave room for improvement. It's a solid open world game, but rarely spectacular. <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kw1dK-st_O4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The likes of Halo 5 and Killzone: Shadow Fall have nothing on Titanfall 2. Call of Duty is perennially stuck between a rock and a hard place, unable to truly innovate, while desperately trying to stay fresh-yet-recognisable each year. Titanfall 2 is a game that can make one kill feel worth ten deaths. You’ll come for the blistering speed and agility of the action, but it’s the invention, the depth, and the unexpected heart that’ll make you stick around. That, and the fact that it’s just so damn fun. Forget the best shooter of the year; Titanfall 2 might be the best shooter of this generation. <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vReOIwxI9JI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Aragami might have its foibles, but this purist take on stealthy puzzlers is a shadowy delight in places. Despite the patchy execution, the great ideas on show here suggest that Lince Works are definitely a studio to watch for the future.
An offbeat twist on a gameplay classic, Clustertruck is brilliantly bonkers, and a lot of fun.
RIVE is a gorgeous game that borrows plenty from its blaster genre predecessors to good effect, but sadly a lack of anything particularly original, and some truly punishing sections make it all too easy to leave behind.
Its linearity and lack of challenge do the ideas at the core of The Final Station something of a disservice. It's not a bad way to spend a few hours, but ultimately this apocalyptic train ride comes off the rails pretty swiftly.
Perhaps the game that best underlines the tenet that bigger isn't always better, No Man's Sky is undoubtedly a technical marvel, but it's also sterile, repetitive, and all too easy to put down.
The vast majority of Firewatch is an utter delight. It presents a gorgeous world that you want to sink into like a hot bath, with characters you're desperate to get to know. Unfortunately, that's all sort of squandered by an ending that fizzles out into the realm of the incredibly forgettable.
Slick, stylish, sweet, there are probably more superlatives beginning with S that I could use to describe Superhot but I think you get the idea.
Even if the mechanisms of this game seem a little dated now, we're reminded how the story and its characters are timeless in their good humour and quality, and in that respect, this Remaster should hold almost as much joy for newcomers as it does for returning fans.
Dying Light is a game best experienced on your own terms and at your own pace. It eschews the excesses of its sibling franchise, Dead Island, but is no worse for it and if you can get past the clunky storytelling and the repetitive missions, you might a diamond in the rough that really empowers you to revel in the design aspects of its zombie-infested sandbox.
Gat Out Of Hell is a £15, bite-sized Saints Row-lite experience. Go into it with those expectations and you'll probably be fine. But if you don't care about playing last-gen material on new-gen platforms, give this a miss, do yourself a favour and pickup a copy of the original Saints Row IV for under a tenner.
A deeply atmospheric, emotionally compelling game that manages to treat war as a serious topic and examines the hard choices made by those caught in the middle of conflict. You might not particularly enjoy your time with This War Of Mine, but it's definitely a game you ought to play, being one of the finest critiques of war that this medium has to offer.
Though lazily framed and under-scripted, Far Cry 4 is a gorgeous, systems-oriented playground that provides endless hours of entertainment. And exploding elephants.
LittleBigPlanet 3 is an impressive game, stuffed with more imagination than ever before, and presented in a manner that makes user creation supremely accessible even as the toolset deepens. Though the Adventure mode is sadly short-lived, and the platform differences are fairly negligible, LBP 3 will surely prove to be a must-have game for PlayStation or series newcomers this winter.