Despite a few missteps, Smoke and Mirrors is an excellent follow-up to Faith. It's a twisted journey through Fabletown's dirty, neon underbelly exploring the darker side of glamour magic and the exploitation of fables. It ends somewhat abruptly, with a terrible revelation, making the wait for the third episode already agonising.
Why would I want to drive a car or shoot an assault rifle? I just dropped a tank out of a cargo plane and, while surfing on said tank, blew up a jet that was in pursuit with a rocket launcher.
The Banner Saga 2 captures much of what made the first game such a compelling fight for survival. It has a tendency to focus on the bigger picture and with the large number of characters that don't have much to say, some of the emotional engagement from the original is lost, but both the management side of things and the tactical battles have been lavished with improvements. The journey is bleak and savage, but the game is great.
A polished, wide-ranging update that brings the classic RTS into the modern age.
An elegantly simple adventure that proves this new genre has legs.
Homeworld 3 takes some big swings, but while it's a very good RTS, it never quite comes together in the same way as its predecessors.
Refreshing tactical changes and some of the best maps in the series make this an experiment worth checking out.
Not quite as novel as its predecessor, but the co-op is still bewitching.
A brilliant early game and bold experiments almost make up for the AI niggles and the boring march to the final battle.
A smart historical 4X that doesn't quite match the inventiveness of the studio's best.
A mismatched mix of genres grafted onto a moving, beautifully presented story.
Uninspired puzzles and weak art might put some folk off, but they'd be missing out on a thoughtful, slow-burning tale that opens up into something poignant, even though it never stops being bleak.
None of the separate parts – the platforming, the construction, the light strategy – stand out as particularly refined or able to stand toe to toe with games that just focus on one of those things, but Q-Games has put them all together in a package that is much more than the sum of its parts, hiding its flaws under the satisfying pace and multitude of unlockable rewards and newly discovered recipes. With every completed level, the call of the soup drove me forward, onto the next planet, seeking greater profits and fat customers.
At number 5, we're still seeing iteration rather than revolution. Everything that's great about Tropico 5 is built on the same foundation that all the previous games have built on. That's a solid foundation, of course, but it's become a bit too familiar. There aren't any surprises to be found here. But just as familiarity can breed contempt, it can also provide comfort. Returning to Tropico remains a delight, and the drive to plonk down one more hotel, oversee one more year and win yet another election continues to make it the sort of game that can swallow hour after hour.
After quite a bit of meandering, Life is Strange offers revelations, along with dialogue that isn't trying to ape how a teenager might sound. Or maybe the awkwardness is just drowned out by Chloe and Max's sincerity. And, in the tradition of all good TV pilots - it owes as much to TV and cinema as it does to other games - there's a cliffhanger that's going to force me to come back.
I've been hammering away on the keyboard without writing anything positive for quite a few paragraphs, so I feel that it's necessary to emphasise that I do genuinely love Grim Fandango, and I think you should play it. Again, if you already have. It's loaded with some of the best adventure game one liners; a gripping, winding plot that only slips up three quarters of the way through the game, and then improves drastically afterward; and a vibrant, bizarre world that, for all its weirdness, is extremely easy to get attached to. It's just not a very impressive remaster.
Despite taking cues from other open world games, ones nobody could ever accuse of being fresh, Techland has molded these borrowed parts into something that is occasionally formidable. Dying Light never quite shakes off the spectre of these other games, but it doesn't play it as safe, presenting a world that is infinitely more deadly and fraught with tension. It is at its best, though, when the game doesn't get in the way of itself; when there are no calls on the radio or breaks in combat for a rest and a cup of tea.
It is Open World: The Game, and as such, struggles to find an identity of its own beyond its entertaining hacking hook and the inspired multiplayer. But those two elements make up a sizeable portion of the game. There are moments of genuine brilliance buried in the game that elevates it above mediocrity, but its reliance on increasingly tired design does it a disservice.
Lichdom: Battlemage's magic system is second to none, and it carries the game. It does one thing exceptionally well, while the rest of the game languishes a bit. Everything is subservient to firing off apocalyptic spells and frying thousands of loud, angry foes. The disappointment I felt when I wasn't able to use my magic for nonviolent exploration or the exhaustion I felt every time I had to hear another trite piece of exposition were brushed aside in a cacophony of arcane explosions.
Like the unnerving fiction that inspired it, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a bold and fascinating story. But the story is something that's revealed, not something that's lived through. I was a tourist, a witness, a reader, and that left less room for being a player. Yet I expect the game to stay with me for a good long time, and its grisly, gorgeous world alone makes the trek worthwhile.