Nicola Ardron
- Minecraft
- Mass Effect
- Dark Souls
Nicola Ardron's Reviews
Dead Effect 2 falls into the "so bad it's good" category of things with a certain B-movie charm to it. Just don't expect a technically polished shooter.
Knee Deep has some interesting and fun mechanics and delivers a reasonable mystery. It is just a shame that the quality shown at the beginning doesn’t last until the end.
Sabotage is a good introduction to the DLC schedule for Infinite Warfare, with some solid multiplayer maps and a very strong Zombies outing.
Uncanny Valley shows a lot of promise, but the harsh reality of its non-linear narrative structure and reliance on multiple playthroughs to make sense of it all means it is asking too much in the face of the early game's uninspired, repetitive gameplay.
A solid sharpshooting experience that knows where its strength lie. The open ended nature of each level, as well as the myriad ways to despatch enemies makes each level interesting, but it is the X-Ray kills that remain the centrepiece of this particular franchise.
Kitty Powers Matchmaker has a wonderful kitsch charm to it, delightfully self-aware and witty. It does start to show its limitations after extended play, but overall it is great fun and pretty much nails the awful dating experience.
Forma.8 is an utterly gorgeous and affecting take on the familiar 2D Metroidvania style game with some clever puzzles for your plucky little probe to navigate.
LEGO Worlds is a delightful game, full of whimsy with tonnes of things to see and do. The draw of exploration is excellent as is the myriad of items to collect, but frame rate issues and quest bugs slow the gameplay down a bit.
Loot Rascals is a quirky turn based card strategy game that incorporates rogue-like elements. The off the wall presentation hides a surprisingly deep system to manage, but luck often hampers the best laid plans meaning progression feels limited at times.
Snake Pass is a unique take on the classic puzzle platformer with a genuinely inventive style of movement that reinvents the genre, but a difficult camera and archaic save system takes some of the shine off.
Blackwood Crossing is a surprising release, a game that delicately explores the difficult emotions of grief, guilt and love told through the eyes of two orphaned siblings.
The Ringed City DLC is a mixture of things, unfairly difficult in the beginning, it opens up and delivers a thematically fitting end to the series of the whole. Great boss fights as well as a new PvP mechanic elevate it above the previous DLC.
GNOG is a game that defies explanation. It is a weird, abstract puzzle game that has a sense of play and about it, but ultimately leaves you wanting a little more.
Prey is a game that meshes together a variety of ideas into a game that rewards exploration and experimentation and provides players with a fun toolbox with which to do so.
Portal Knights takes inspiration from a variety of games, blending the crafting and building of games like Minecraft and merging loose RPG elements to make it a sandbox game with a goal.
This isn't a bad game, but there are some omissions that have been with the series forever which are strangely missing.
A slow start, but Hero in Residence ends on a high note with an interesting new enemy and a very funny new character.
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a lovely, sedate open world adventure game that inexplicably gates its crafting mechanic behind an obtuse, tiered system that renders it moot.
Aven Colony is a gentle city builder where you will be tasked with growing colonies in different locations each with their own challenges. Where it lacks in depth it more than makes up for it in accessible gameplay, perfect for dipping into.
A unique blend of marble madness and tower defence that does become repetitive after a while, but sits nicely in the spot reserved for games that are great to dip into now and again.