Royce Wilson's Reviews
You can see the framework for a really good game here – with a better tutorial, more transparent mechanics, a better UI with alt-text reminder tips, things like that, a general shine and polish, and so on, this could have been a gem – but right now this feels like a first draft rather than a Director’s Cut.
Teething issues aside, Atomic Heart is a remarkable achievement which I personally think is easily as good as the Bioshock games they so clearly draw inspiration from.
Overall though, Company of Heroes 3 is a step forward for the series. The tactical map is a great addition to things and the ‘living battlefield’ works very well too.
If you are searching for an authentic Grand Strategy experience with a Victorian flavour, then Victoria 3 has a lot to offer, but I felt it was still a flawed experience which needs some more polishing and fine-tuning.
There’s a lot of potential here, but I think this game is missing something and didn’t provide the reward or payoff I was hoping for, despite its promising premise.
Pentiment isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you have patience for it and can appreciate what it’s trying to do (and I certainly did), it’s a rewarding and enlightening experience which I’m very glad I’ve had the ability to play and enjoy.
It’s not an exaggeration to say Mario + Rabbids: Sparks Of Hope has given me a reason to play my Nintendo Switch for the first time in months – it’s an excellent game, well crafted, and a lot of fun. This game sparks joy and is a very highly recommended addition to your Nintendo Switch library.
I found the game to be a frustrating, unenjoyable mess that failed both as an entertaining game and a Lovecraftian Horror experience, and ultimately in my view, Lovecraft’s Untold Stories 2 almost completely misses the mark and is, as a result, best left unplayed in its current form.
In my view, this “remake” – and let’s be frank here, it’s effectively still the same game we’ve seen twice before now – simply does not justify its price tag. Even factoring in the accessibility options which will make the game available to more people, it’s still not OK to be charging a AAA, next-gen premium price for this.
I find myself ambivalent about Saints Row – it’s a well done and necessary reboot with a great setting, fun mechanics, and good writing, but the story was just not paced well and there were the graphical and AI glitches that held the experience back to me.
If you liked Two Point Hospital, Evil Genius 2 or War For The Overworld (or similar games), you’ll enjoy this – just don’t expect to become a permanent student here. This is a worthy sequel and follow-up to Two Point Hospital, but it hasn’t earned itself a High Distinction.
As much as I’ve enjoyed Cartel Tycoon, I still can’t shake the feeling it isn’t quite ready to come out of early access. It’s almost there and there’s a lot of potential for future content, but for now I think this is one that needs a few more features and some additional polishing before being ready to hit the streets.
Broadly, however, Sniper Elite 5 is outstanding – it’s easily the best game in the series and offers a rich, rewarding and replayable adventure which can be as easy or as challenging as you like. The levels are well-crafted and detailed, the payoff when a shot or trap comes together is extremely high, and the ability to play from “the other side” is a welcome feature too.
This isn’t Ghost of Tsushima but it isn’t supposed to be – it’s a different, but enjoyable experience and one well worth experiencing if you’re a Samurai Cinema fan or looking for a new Samurai-themed sword-wielding adventure.
Overall, I couldn’t help but feel Weird West needed to be a proper RPG. The world is there; the setting is there, the atmosphere is there, writing is there, the story is there – but it hasn’t quite come together for me in this form.
I think how much you’re going to enjoy this significantly depends on how much you’ve enjoyed the previous Asgard elements of the game. If you really like them, then having 30+ hours in that world will be a welcome addition to what must surely be one of the biggest open-world single-player video games in history at this point, and it is pretty cool to feel like a Norse warrior-god as you travel around the realm smiting people foolish enough to get between you and that quest marker. If, however, you find the mythological aspects of the game to be a bit ‘meh’, you can safely pass this one over – I mean, it’s not like there’s a shortage of stuff to do/find/explore in the rest of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, after all.
Gran Turismo 7 is a technological marvel and a top-gear motorsports game to boot. It’s a love-letter to car culture, automotive technology, design, and history, and if you have any sort of interest in cars or racing games, this should be very much in the digital garage that is your PlayStation’s storage drive.
If you’ve already got the most recent Uncharted games, the upgraded lighting effects and framerates etc aren’t enough to make this collection worth getting (especially at AUD$75!) – but if you missed them games previously, this is definitely the best way to experience them on your PS5 while we wait for confirmation as to whether there’s actually an Uncharted 5 in development…
With friends, this is a great, casual-but-challenging FPS co-op shooter experience that offers a familiar experience with a new twist and manages to establish its own space in the genre, too. It’s not going to be for everyone, but I like what the developers have done here and I hope they continue to grow and support Rainbow Six: Extraction for some time to come yet, so the game can reach its full potential.
On a next-gen console and an 8K TV, the dinosaurs look absolutely amazing and there is a surprisingly relaxing time to be had watching them going about their dinosaur lives, eating and drinking and wandering around. At least, that’s how it always starts. Then later there’s running and screaming – especially if you don’t keep your dinosaurs content or the power grid fails and the bigger, nastier, more carnivorous ones get out of their enclosures and decide to snack on some guests instead of the goats you’ve so generously been providing them.