Jason Coles
A staggering improvement upon a solid foundation, Remnant 2 is an engrossing Soulslike that brings all the horror and joy of alien world exploration to wonderfully dark fruition.
Honkai: Star Rail is still in its early stages, but this free-to-play turn-based gacha game is incredibly good fun. With a strong opening, heavy focus on story, and simple but deep turn-based battles, this RPG is bursting with potential.
Nintendo Switch Sports is a fun reminder of the Wii Sports craze, bringing back some classic sports and adding some new ones that make use of the Joy-Con and motion controls in more advanced ways. It's all just a bit shallow, though, and difficult to wholeheartedly recommend unless you expect to play online a lot or constantly break it out for local head-to-head battles.
The Switch version of Dark Souls simply lacks the polish that the remaster brought with it, and even added in a few issues that aren't present anywhere else. The ability to play the game on the go isn't something that you can get anywhere else, and it is hard to quantify just how much that makes up for the issues. Souls Remastered is still a very worthwhile game, but it is hard to justify this version over any other given the weaknesses that are unique to it.
Beast Of Winter is a fantastic slice of everything that Pillars of Eternity does well.
The game has a gooey smooth outer coating that contains a rough, unpleasant centre. Unfortunately, Black Clover Quartet Knights is much like Asta himself; completely lacking in magic.
Sin Slayers aims to meld two genres together into one tasty soup but instead creates a nasty black goop.
Vroom Kaboom has a great core concept, but doesn't do anywhere near enough with it. If you want to see what this game is all about then get the free version and think of it like a demo. Just keep in mind that the chances are you are going to find the experience as flimsy as a Vespa in the face of Tank.
Downward Spiral: Horus Station is a unique take on zero gravity that feels fairly true to what it would be like. The trouble is this makes for a dull experience when not in VR. While everything feels as though it fits well, the trouble is that the abhorrent camera speed makes the only real challenge looking at things. The combat isn't hard, but still manages to be frustrating. In VR the experience may well be completely different, but without that hook, the game is an easy pass.
With an awesome inspiration and some very cool ideas, it's an immense shame that City of Brass game ends up being as dull as it is. With lacklustre combat, enemy design, rooms and movement, City of Brass feels like a chore to play. With the smorgasbord of Rogue-lites to play these days, some of which are among the best games you can play, City of Brass is an easy pass.
Dance of Death: Du Lac and Fey is as awkward to play as it is to say. The interesting concepts can't save it from being a rather disappointing outing for the legendary characters.
Full of good ideas, but less than stellar execution
Aside from the new tweaks to levelling up and the chance to create a band of explorers from friends, the series has been diluted rather than enriched.
Bookbound Brigade is a Metroidvania that simply misses the point. It builds on all of the worst aspects of the genre while enjoying none of its strengths.
Outward will appeal to people have enormous patience. But if that isn't you then it'll simply feel like a time drain. Jason Coles
I desperately want to like Lords of the Fallen, but it's the first game all year that's actively annoyed me. I love the Soulslike genre more than any other, but this game took all of the lessons it could have learned since the original Lords of the Fallen and either forgot them entirely, or just misunderstood them so greviously that you'd assume it skipped a class.
Sifu is a game that I wanted to love. I had high hopes for it being one of my game of the year contenders, but it left me feeling intensely deflated instead. It's a game that confuses the precise mechanical difficulty of Sekiro with a forced difficulty brought on by simply giving bosses armour. I find myself irrationally angry with Sifu. Sifu is a game that had exceptional potential, but squandered it on the wrong lessons.
While Heroland looks good and has a few funny moments thanks to the writing, there's simply not enough here to make it worth your time. Idle games work well on mobile because you're meant to do other things while they're chugging along, Heroland requires too much input to be left alone, but not enough input to ever hold your attention.
Between sluggish movement and dull puzzles, I think it's enough to say that even Jodie Whittaker can't save this game.
All in all, Swords of Gargantua is just kind of disappointing. It starts off with such an intriguing and involving cutscene and lore dump, but then never really follows up on it at all. What you end up playing is a very run-of-the-mill wave-based sword fighting game, but one that lacks the same depth as so many other VR titles. It never manages to make good on what it could be, and instead seems happy to stick around as another arena battle game, but one where the combat isn't good enough to carry that. There are just better options out there.