Lonely Mountains: Downhill excels as both an adrenaline-fueled racer and a zenlike exploration. It’s a signal of the game’s clarity of vision and tightness of scope that it can, somehow, succeed at both. A triumph of beautiful cinematography and spinning tyres alike.
Doom Eternal features all the raw, raucous action of the 2016 reboot, but for reasons we can’t comprehend, is dragged out to an interminable length. Technically solid, blistering in parts, but lacking in soul.
Dan Marshall has said publicly that if Lair of the Clockwork God doesn’t sell well enough, it will most likely be Ben and Dan’s final adventure. And if that’s how it transpires, then this game will be a fitting swansong. But if there’s any justice in the world it will sell hand over fist, because it’s a brilliant, joyous, clever and generous experience.
Final Fantasy VIII isn’t without its flaws, and it spreads them fairly evenly across story, mechanics, and pacing. Happily, the speed boost on offer in the remaster fixes the pacing, which effectively papers over the cracks in the grind-heavy mechanics. What you’re left with is a fun, somewhat silly, and beautiful RPG. And on Nintendo Switch, you can play it anywhere. This really is the best way to play Final Fantasy VIII.
The career mode is a little underwhelming, but Grid's racing is as on-point as ever. A culmination of Codemasters' years of experience – combined with brilliant assists and that oh so clever Nemesis system, that makes trading elbows with competitors as much fun as the racing itself – make this an ideal motorsport sim.
Almost everything that's wrong with Untitled Goose Game – and to be fair, there isn't that much – is inherently wrong with the stealth genre in general, and a silly game about a goose wrecking someone's flower beds was never likely to change that. But what it does do, over and above other stealth games, is combine charming visuals and glorious audio with such a ridiculous and unique premise, it's impossible not to honk through this one with a massive smile on your face.
It may be clever, scary and intriguing, but Man of Medan rarely reaches the heights of its stablemate and elder sibling, Until Dawn. Perhaps its a case of difficult second album syndrome, or more likely, it’s just too weighed down by the tropes and trappings associated with the genre. (And the sooner Supermassive ditches its penchant for fourth-wall-breaking, creepy old narrators, the better.)
Developer Adam Robinson-Yu began developing A Short Hike when he was feeling burned out working on another project. It's fitting, then, that what began as an act of self-care for the game's developer has blossomed into a welcome respite from the modern world that everyone should experience.
My Friend Pedro is one of those activities – like skateboarding, or playing the guitar, or any form of dancing – that always looks that much cooler when someone else, someone more proficient is doing it. Don't let that discourage you, though. You'll still have a lot of fun playing a slick, stylish game built almost entirely out of those brilliant, cinematic, single-shot hallway fight sequences.
Don't let the endearing protagonist and lo-fi, vintage visuals fool you: Gato Roboto is a challenging, pedigree Metroidvania. But what sets it apart from its peers are the quality of life improvements that redress all of the genre's worst flaws, without blunting any of the barbs. This is a Meowtroidvania worthy of the name.
Like the movie it's loosely based on, World War Z is in no way scary. It's not even particularly compelling as a piece of horror. But like the movie, it is a relentless piece of AA action fluff that, if played with the right group of people, makes for a riotous and frenetic – if shallow – action tower defence game.
Ape Out is a dynamo of a game, simultaneously stylish and meaty, that manages to succeed as both a technical demonstration of procedural generation – particularly that magical audio – and a bloody fun game to boot. Between this, Gris, and Pikuniku, Devolver Digital is absolutely crushing it right now.
Pikuniku is an unbridled joy. It's rainbows, ice cream, long weekends and kittens, combined and distilled into their purest, most potent form.
Horizon Chase Turbo is a slick, polished, pulsating love-letter to the arcade racing games of yesteryear. It's just a shame that in a genre known best for what felt like endless rolling roads, what's on offer here – thanks to its transition to tracks and unlock-to-progress mechanics – feels rather more repetitive in comparison.
As loathe as we are to re-open the old "are video games art?" debate, it's no exaggeration to say that Gris (along with the likes of Journey, Ico, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture) is one of the examples you should roll out to prove that they most definitely are.
The Golf Club 2019 certainly isn't everybody's golf game, but if you're in the centre of the (admittedly small) Venn diagram of "prefers the intricacy of SKATE to the button-mashing of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" and "is really hardcore into golf" then you're in for a massive treat.
Hyper Light Drifter's a tough game and for that, it won't be for everyone. But if it already has your interest, your admiration, or your love, then it has – all hyperbole aside – found a perfect home on the Nintendo Switch.
We're not saying that We Happy Few is all style and no substance, but have you seen how bloody stylish it is?
Other than the portability – which, without tilt aiming, feels like an opportunity wasted – there's no compelling reason to pick the Switch port of Hello Neighbor over any others. Worse still is the feeling you've already seen all the best bits, just like an all-too-revealing movie trailer, but that's an issue with Hello Neighbor on all platforms.
It's hard to ignore the unsavoury taste that comes along with The Crew 2's social media-based progression system. That being said, most people will accept that it's just a somewhat topical stand-in for an experience point system – and skip through all of the awful vlogger posturing and horrid presentation – to find at its heart a knockabout arcade racer with the capacity to make you smile.