Goblin Stone makes a wonderful first impression with playful and charming presentation, but that charm spell soon dissipates, revealing a sometimes stodgy, grindy, and unsatisfying tactics game with diminishing returns.
In the moment, Broken Roads offers up creativity in spades, but the bigger picture story - combined with weak combat and a dry take on moral choice - never coalesces into anything especially entertaining.
A potent blend of tactics and RPG possessed with raucous momentum, Sons of Valhalla is excellent. Then it's not for a bit. Then it's excellent again.
Every single change Pharaoh makes to Troy is for the better, and some changes are so good that it's going to be difficult to play any Total War without them going forward. But the fundamental issues of Total War - mainly enemy battle AI - are far too entrenched to fix in a few years, and the bronze age setting doesn't allow for enough unit variation to make up for them.
This realtime 4X makes great use of Dune's furniture in crafting a compulsive, busy, and well-made strategy game, and its new campaign is a great addition. But the soul of Dune remains elusive, leaving its desert planet feeling barren in the wrong ways.
Aliens: Dark Descent is an authentically atmospheric campaign borrowing from both turn-based tactics and survival horror, stymied by a seemingly deep paranoia you might mistake it for one of those strategy games for nerds. It's not. It's not for nerds. It's for cool Aliens fans. You can use a controller. It's not for nerds.
This grungy medieval low fantasy tactical RPG isn't just a sandbox, but a quick-sandbox, capable of sucking you right in with emergent stories and moments equally thrilling and silly. The trade off here is it can lack a bit of momentum, but if you stay curious, you'll end up well rewarded by its layered and considered world and systems.
Two final girl sprints forward and one terrified limp back, The Devil in Me is the strongest Dark Pictures to date, but still feels like Supermassive are yet to find the right balance between fun and frights, camp and terror, and interactivity and storytelling.
Signalis is like playing a classic survival horror on your PS1, but you accidentally spilled a bucket of raw meat in the disc tray. Also, your PS1 is possessed by a malevolent cosmic entity that you're madly in love with.
A compact, complex 4X with attentiveness to the source material. But an inconsistent midgame and lack of narrative decision making hold it back from maximum spiciness.
An admirably odd and confident golf mini-game/ARPG hybrid, brought down by a tedious structure.
A sandbox tactical/RPG hybrid with gritty, low fantasy charm, Wartales is systemically ambitious, but sturdy and clever enough to hold its own.
Short of somehow also being a massive box full of toys, secret envelopes, and bears to rummage around in with a group of mates, I couldn't ask for more from this loving and skillful adaptation.
Aragami 2's ninja garb is frayed around the edges, but it's still an easy, breezy fit. Perfect for a quick-fix of stealth, and joyfully light on its feet.
The frequent combat in this ARPG is hit-and-miss, but behind it is a sweet and sincere tale set in a land you'll care about saving and starring the G.O.T.Y (grape of the year).
Occasionally neat visuals and cyber magic can't save this cyberpunk shooter from firing damp squibs on all cylinders.
King's Bounty 2's hexed-based battles, customisation and army management are all a good time. The RPG they're packaged with, while sometimes gorgeous, is baggy and bland.
My only real major disappointment with Atmomicrops is that the advertised simulation bits turn out only to be a few light nods to the genre. It’s got some simulation-shaped aspects, sure, but they’re flimsy plastic ferns in comparison to the very much alive and dynamic creeper vines of its shooty-dodgy core. This said, the farming does make fighting more interesting simply by providing a worthwhile distraction, leading to almost unbearably chaotic instances of frantic multitasking. As long as you know what you’re getting into, and are up for sewing a few hours of practise in before you reap the rewards, I think it’s well worth your cashews. Which I’ve only just realised are a play on ‘cash’. Ooh.
It’s a winner. Sixteen tons of detail, sixteen tons of character, sixteen tons of riotous bug blasting, spelunking co-operative goodness. Deep Rock Galactic is a company I’ve got no qualms about selling my soul to for hours more to come.
It’s a game that pays homage to genre conventions like hacking and exploration, but with forward facing design. Rather than backwards. Then side to side. Then 90 degrees to the left. Monch monch.