Matt Gardner's Reviews
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is a wonderfully harmonious game. It's enormous, packed with more things to see and do than ever before, but Ubisoft have managed to make every little thing mean something in tangible, impactful terms. Black Flag is a wonderful piratical romp that manages to revive the stealthy focus of earlier series instalments, whilst delivering an outstanding naval sandbox, an excellent setting and story, and lashings of swashbuckling action. Unmissable.
Enemy Within is an improvement on an already outstanding game. It takes familiar systems, builds on top of them and challenges us in new ways, once again wearing our fingernails down to the bone and frazzling our nerves by making us second-guess each and every decision we make on and off the battlefield. It's bigger, deeper, and more challenging than ever before, forcing players to rethinktheir approaches, and expanding massively on replayability once more. Prepare to lose weeks to this game...AGAIN!
The production values are cracking, with outstanding voice work and some great dialogue, not to mention an ending that flips the script nicely and sets up an intriguing sequel. But sadly the first part of Burial at Sea flounders in its attempts at nostalgia, mashing different parts of the Bioshock legacy together in an easy hybrid that lacks the atmosphere of the original game and completely fails to capitalise upon the expansive vision of Infinite. Half-hearted fan-service at best.
Stood against the best SHMUPs of this passing generation, it's not necessarily as special as it seems, helped along by being the first and only current game of its kind on the PS4. But it's a great little PS Plus pack-in for new adopters, and will no doubt please genre fans immensely on the harder difficulty settings with a purity of purpose and execution that makes for a deliciously balanced and focused slice of SHMUP action.
The first couple of hours of Killzone: Shadow Fall hint towards a game that might just play as well as it looks. And it looks phenomenal. But sadly, the game falters and falls rather quickly, crushed under the weight of its own ambitions, and it retreats to the safe banality of staid FPS conventions for a second half that's all filler, no killer. It's a great game to show off the power of the PS4, a magnificent spectacle, and its Custom Warzones hint towards the possibility of a bright future, but it's just not that fun to actually play.
There's still room for improvement, but Visual Concepts have created a truly next-gen instalment for this year's iteration of NBA 2K. Everything, from the furrowed lines on LeBron's brow to the engaging back and forth between your MyPlayer and their agent in MyCareer mode, oozes personality like never before. Probably the best sports game on the planet right now.
How did it come to this? Knack is basically a risible film tie-in without a film to recommend it.
A whimsical, living sketchbook of self-realisation and a quirky look at what it means to be human, Doki-Doki Universe guides players along its absurdist, surreal journey with a cast of weird and wonderful characters, warm storytelling, and offbeat humour. You won't find challenges to beat or puzzles to really solve here, and the game perhaps doesn't do enough to break up the repetition at its core, but Doki-Doki Universe is a strangely uplifting game, one that might just put a smile on your face even as you ponder the definition of love while hurtling through the stars on a flying poo.
Imagine Game of Thrones crossed with a dark, brutal, bleak Disney production that Disney would never dare to make, and you're pretty close to The Banner Saga. Stoic have delivered a cracking tactical RPG centred around an impressively elegant combat system and a peripatetic adventure that never lets up with tough choices and decisions to be made, letting the burden of leadership weigh heavy on players' shoulders. Engrossing, challenging, and aesthetically striking, The Banner Saga is a crowdfunded triumph.
If you engage in regular local multiplayer with friends or family, then this is a no-brainer. Chip in a couple of quid each and you've got yourself a lovely little party title. But it's a bright-burner with a short wick, and you'll have to decide for yourself if that's worth a tenner.
OlliOlli is a cracking little game that combines fiendish challenges with simple fun, with the responsive controls and inventive level design making for a game balanced perfectly between enjoyment and frustration. It's just a shame that it doesn't fully take advantage of the Vita's capabilities, with little sense of score challenges between friends so masterfully wrought in the likes of MotorStorm RC. Still, a worthwhile purchase for arcade fans, and a cracking content package at a budget price.
Broken Age's first act does just about enough to stand alone, though it really wasn't supposed to be this way, and that's clearly evident in a game that's slow to start and ends just as it hits its stride. However, gorgeous visuals, cracking performances, and a wonderfully-written script that manages to perfectly blend the serious and the surreal make Broken Age worth a look at this early stage. But we won't be putting a score on it until the whole thing is in our hands.
Octodad: Dadliest Catch is an absurdist delight. It only has one joke, but it's a damn good one. Though the game itself falters perhaps towards the end as Young Horses try to force things a little too much, it is to be hoped that the creation tools and the Workshop included with the game extend its lifespan. A brave and bonkers game, for the most part Octodad lollops along the fine line between fun and frustration with gloriously haphazard aplomb.
Jazzpunk is a wonderful blend of spy-spoof, exploratory adventure game that actively involves you in the jokes it tells. Inventive, stylish, and downright hilarious in places, it's basically the lovechild of a three-way between The Meaning of Life, The Naked Gun, and Thirty Flights of Loving. An utterly absurd treat.
It's the fourth-best game to bear the Thief name, but it doesn't trample on Garrett's legacy as some might have predicted. The story is utter balls and the game as a whole isn't as cohesive as it could be, but when Thief remembers its name and has you working out the best way of breaking into a place and picking it clean, it does a damn fine job.
Broadcast+ saves Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition from just being a bare bones rehash of a four year old game, but this is the first PS+ game to be attractive because it's free, not because it's a great game. Add a couple of points on if you really adored the first game, have some friends to challenge and don't have anything better to play.
In many ways, inFamous: Second Son is a lot like its sales rival Titanfall -- it doesn't do much that's new, but rather refines and polishes and balances everything that came before in expert fashion, providing new little twists and expanding in areas that had the scope for it to deliver a blockbuster experience that rarely lets you down.
Though it presents a strikingly unique aesthetic and a daringly open invitation to the player to piece together a mysterious narrative for themselves, Betrayer is ultimately a bit of a disappointment thanks to uneven pacing, inconsistent mechanics, and a world and story that just aren't particularly interesting. In the end, Betrayer assumes a little too much and works too little for the player's interest, which is a shame because it ultimately makes a rather striking game all too easy to walk away from early on.
Goat Simulator serves up a tiny, but pretty dense, sandbox stuffed with slapstick goofs and anarchic, broken comedy. It isn't much of a game, particularly for £6-8, but it's one hell of a joke.
Warlock II: The Exiled is a game that stands on the shoulders of its predecessor rather than blazing a trail, but that's okay. What Ino-Co have given us here is an incredibly solid, hex-based strategy title that provides a great entry point to the series (and the genre, to be honest), with enough here to keep fans engaged for several thousand turns.