A rather dated proposition in 2018, one that’s made worse by some eyebrow-raising omissions and a baffling AAA price tag.
Appealing art direction and excellent sound design do a lot of the heavy lifting in Somerville, but are undermined at almost every turn by frustratingly sloppy gameplay mechanics.
WWE 2K Battlegrounds delivers shallow yet fitfully enjoyable, bite-sized mayhem, even as it feels unmistakably slung together in a hurry.
Slick flying and gunplay collide with infuriating design choices throughout Anthem. But its biggest problem is a lack of soul – this is a cynical, committee-produced product bereft of any significant creative spark.
As a social space to kick some digital footballs around in and have some janky laughs, it shines, but as a faithful rendition of the beautiful game, it's sadly a bit of a clumsy mess.
An underwhelming, scarcely two-hour horror romp that not only fails to make the most of its brief length, but also makes numerous choices directly antithetical to the dread-infused atmosphere it sometimes manages to muster.
How much patience you’ll have for Sea of Thieves will depend almost entirely on your social set-up, how much you care for loot and how allergic you are to repetition.
After Us has style to spare and its heart in absolutely the right place, yet the maddeningly finicky controls make traversal feel like a chore – a cardinal sin for any platformer.
God of Rock feels like a decent first draft of a great idea, but lacks the finesse to fully exploit its inspired mash-up of rhythm and fighting games.
At times refreshingly simple and at others mind-numbingly generic, Dead Island 2 offers up no-frills zombie-clobbering both for better and worse.
As maddening as it is beautiful, Solar Ash's gorgeous aesthetic is thoroughly undermined by traversal mechanics that are neither fun nor intuitive.
House of Ashes does just enough to deliver the basic goods for horror fans, marking a modest step forward for the underwhelming franchise.
Despite its appealing open-world and charmingly oddball characters, Biomutant’s jank-heavy gameplay, short length, and over-familiar grab-bag of RPG tropes make for a frustratingly lukewarm experience.
Before Your Eyes almost loses its intriguing story and sumptuous aesthetic beneath an unpersuasive eye-tracking gimmick that's more irritating than boldly forward-thinking. Mercifully, though, there is the option to ditch the blinking and just play through it with a mouse.
Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy has smartly attempted to recreate the breezy feel and tone of Tales from the Borderlands in its first episode, and despite the strain of Telltale’s brand fatigue weighing heavily, they’ve basically manage to achieve this.
It’s a shame Danger Zone doesn’t offer more in the way of location variety and overall polish, but it does a fine job serving up the basic goods, and sometimes that’s enough.
Developer Forge Reply has delivered an atmospheric and intense retelling of the classic Ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, one that makes engrossing use of the VR space, but at just 90 minutes in length, unfortunately feels more like a budget-constrained “experience” than the substantial 3-5 hour adventure most were surely hoping for.
Unless you’ve been quite literally chewing your own arm off waiting for a futuristic VR racer, it’s probably best to wait for this one to go on sale in a few months’ time, because it’s neither good enough to give a solid recommendation, nor bad enough to swear off; it’s just…fine and uninspired.
Defector does feel a bit like a skeletal VR tech demo rather than a fully-formed project, and that is what above all else separates it from the decidedly more sturdy, intuitive and entertaining Blood & Truth.
ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove shamelessly coasts on nostalgia and has little time for finessed gameplay or appealing visuals, but it nevertheless knows what its audience craves most.