Gary Alexander
Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star is a decent Musou-style action game with a few drawbacks that can dull the experience. While the game’s story is kind of interesting, it’s weighed down by some clunky, poorly written dialogue.
Detention is a great horror game, single-handedly redeeming the lack of quality in the genre’s most recent years. It trades in cheap scare tactics to instead create an unsettling and incredibly effective atmosphere of terror. You’ll dread going through each and every door in Detention, but be compelled to do so anyway thanks to a compelling main story and excellent world building.
I love the setting, the characters and the premise of playing a happy-go-lucky superhero with gravity shifting abilities. Kat is the cutest, most likeable protagonist you’re likely to come across all year. When the game is in full flow, either during its awesome comic book style cutscenes or during its large scale combat, it’s superb. Unfortunately the game is far too comfortable simply forcing players through lazy content. A sizeable chunk of the gameplay isn’t actually all that fun to play.
Gary and Tom spent a weekend playing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in and out of VR. Now they’re sitting down to recap and review it [VIDEO DISCUSSION].
Urban Empire is a game with a lot of promise that ultimately lets itself down due to a lack of depth in its core mechanics. While there are probably hundreds of ways each mechanic connects with each other, these connections are never explained to players, making the whole game feel inconsistent.
Tales of Berseria is the best Tales game in a while. Its story, while a bit too slow paced in its first 20-30 hours, is a solid tale of revenge. It breaks away from the more traditional good versus evil yarn that Tales usually aims for, instead telling a darker tale with more Human characters at its core.
Gunmetal Arcadia is a fun platformer. While it’s definitely a throwback to the NES-era in its visuals, soundtrack and gameplay style, it also adds a lot of its own ideas and mechanics to a classic formula.
As you might expect, sniping is the most entertaining way to play the game, whether you’re pulling off a tricky shot, executing a plan to perfection or scoring a troublingly satisfying X-Ray killcam (and seeing a Nazi’s testicles explode in slow motion). Though the game also deserves praise for the huge number of alternative options at your disposal, which plays into the excellent level design that does a great job letting you put these options to use.
For the time that I spent it with, All The Delicate Duplicates really sucked me into its world, as I scrambled to understand the meaning behind the strange images I was seeing and the almost ominous mood I was experiencing. It’s a unique experience and one I can definitely recommend to anyone looking for something a bit more out of the ordinary.
Berserk and the Band of the Hawk is an average but frustrating game.
I truly love the underlying combat mechanics, but what really lets For Honor down is its gear system, which can grant players enormous benefits on the battlefield (especially those willing to spend cash on microtransactions). A subpar matchmaking system in these gear-enabled modes doesn’t help.
Gary reviews the excellent action samurai game (and Playstation 4 exclusive) Nioh [VIDEO DISCUSSION]
The story of Mae Borowski is an effortless blend of growing up while confronting the strange going’s on in the woods. And while it’s an excellent story, it’s the characters and their struggles, triumphs, joy and sadness that I’ll always remember about Night in the Woods.
Horizon: Zero Dawn is an excellent robot hunting game. When you’re in the thick of fighting one of its fantastic robotic opponents it feels like one of the best games you’ve played all year.
Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a very monotonous game. Solid gameplay mechanics quickly give way to empty repetition as the game never really varies its core gameplay loop at all during its running time. Regardless of your specific mission objectives, you’ll never break free from the endless cycle of clearing out buildings populated by the same enemies you were fighting ten hours ago.
Once Firis has passed the exam and the game drops the time limit, Atelier Firis turns into a pretty good JRPG with some deep crafting mechanics but a fairly lacklustre combat system. To get to this point, however, requires a fairly substantial time commitment.
It’s not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, and hardcore first-person shooter fans can find a lot to love here, but it can turn into a bit of a slog the further into the game you progress.
Everything comes together to create a really great stealth gameplay experience.
A demo that should have been free instead costs $6.99 on the Playstation Store. Whether judged as a game or a chance to explore the Ghostbusters firehouse, it’s not worth it.
Snake Pass is a game that evokes both satisfaction and intense frustration, often simultaneously. Guiding Noddle through the fifteen levels on offer is a great experience, though it is marred by some issues with controls, checkpoints and a wayward, sometimes difficult to control camera. There’s also nothing quite like it.