Rossko Keniston
If you’re in the market for a Baseball game, or a new sports game at all, you could do a whole lot worse than Super Mega Baseball 2. If you’re a Baseball fan at all and you’ve dreamed of starting up your own team and taking on the world, you’re not going to find a package more enjoyable than this.
There’s plenty to love about Don’t Die Mr Robot!, especially now it’s on Switch which seems a natural fit for ISG puzzler. I’ve been playing it all week as I travel and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. I just want to apologise to Mr. Robot as I’ve murdered him many, many times.
Overcooked! 2 then, whilst not a revolutionary leap from the first is still as madcap and downright ridiculous as its predecessor and then some. It’s still hilarious to play with friends and adds enough fresh elements and ideas to keep ardent fans delighted. It’s still hard as nails in some parts but the gentle easing in of new mechanics ensures you’re always ready for what’s to come. It’s now replaced Overcooked! on the top of our multiplayer game night lists, and if that isn’t high praise I don’t know what is.
Mothergunship is a great game thanks to its genuinely brilliant gunplay, fantastic craftings mechanics and a steep-ass difficulty curve. It can be frustrating but it’s most assuredly never boring and earns an immediate place on your hard drive.
Polygod then is going to test your metal in every sense of the word and should you want a hardcore rogue challenge you’re not going to go wrong here. Krafted Games have um, crafted an experience that is partly ridiculous, partly wonderful and altogether just tough as balls.
Minor camera/control niggles aside, there’s very little here I can moan about. It’s essentially the most open-ended wrestling sim you could ever want, and its creation tools along with the fully customisable licensing ensures there’s more than enough here to ensure you’re never going to get bored. How can you when the game essentially never ends?
The Heist then is a packed DLC, kicking off with a terrific new story and leaving us desperately awaiting the next episode. There’s plenty to be getting on with and with a whole new story to tell, it’s been great to jump back into Insomniac’s New York and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
The Legend of Evil is a fun little game that you can complete in a few hours if you’re any good at it (you can switch over to a lower difficulty at the beginning of each level if you’re finding it particularly tricky) and with its sense of humour and lovely visuals, it’s got an awful lot of bang for your five quid (yeah, this game’s a fiver). The added Rogue Conquest mode turns the game once its head once again by making the levels procedurally generated, adding an extra layer of difficulty which brings an entirely new way to play the game right from the off. It’s all about that risk and reward.
The strengths of Wargroove come from the visuals and the gameplay, relegating the story to second place but that’s absolutely no problem for me. In order to get the most out of this game I really had to fall into it and I’m glad I did. There’s plenty to love about Wargroove.
Deeper than you may have been expecting, New Star Manager ticks the 'football management sim' boxes.
When you’re powering through mansions like Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, blasting your way through bad guys and smashing up the place all for the greater good, RICO really comes into its own. It’s by far the most fun we’ve had playing an online co-op game this year. It isn’t even close.
Snooker 19 brings a fully licensed simulator back to players and does so in some style.
Erica is a genuinely terrific achievement. As far as the ‘PlayLink’ aspect goes – even if the game is not officially part of Sony’s range – there’s nothing better out here. Technically it feels solid as a rock, with gloriously smooth transitions from gameplay back to FMV cut-scenes. You immediately feel part of the world and it never really gets old. You want to do right by Erica the moment you meet her and there’s very few games that offer this level of interaction, even if as a whole, the game is about the journey rather than the destination.
Bulletstorm lives and dies on its campaign and the Switch version has absolutely smashed it out of the park. It’s a crying shame the planned sequel was cancelled due to the poor sales of the original release possibly in relation to launching so close to Gears of War which was considerably more successful. The madness of this game warrants a second outing, the tremendous Skillshot system still unrivalled to this day.
Not Tonight begins as it means to go on. You’re quickly introduced to your protagonist, a British national with European lineage. They’re stuck in the Britain that no longer sees them as worthy inhabitants of their proud nation, keeping them around only to work the menial jobs and live in the crappiest of accomodation built specifically for those ‘Euros’. Your job as a character who is most assuredly British but just ‘doesn’t look like it’ is that of a bouncer, going from pub to pub working for landlords who are either going to be decent to their ‘Euro’ or not.
Two Point Hospital is a glorious port that should keep any fan of the management genre happy as Larry, and Theme Hospital fans should jump on this immediately. Damn near everything you loved about the game is here on display, along with modern objective-based missions and star ratings that keep you wanting to improve your hospitals over and over.
There’s a ton to love about Moving Out and it comes recommended as a new title to place in your party playlists next to Jackbox and Overcooked. It’s just a shame you don’t have the option to also move out that enormous online shaped elephant in the room.
Your enjoyment of The Eternal Castle will weigh heavily on either having fond memories of the era or wanting to leave it buried. It’s difficult to see how younger players will react to its visuals and punishing difficulty, but it serves as stark reminder that we’ve come a long way, baby.
It’s just a shame there’s no sign of the Minecraft’s primary mechanic, which would have been a great addition to the overall experience. It’s a good laugh and as is so often with co-op games, you’ll get the most out of it with your pals/family.
I certainly felt that once I got my head fully and completely bamboozled by the intricacies of Do Not Feed The Monkeys, it was over. Fortunately the game is replayable to the nth degree due to its central mechanic of playing the game particularly how you want to, no matter how stressful each playthrough was always going to be.