Despite a few wobbles, The First Berserker: Khazan is a lovely surprise. It's certainly not an easy game by any stretch of the imagination, nor is it a perfect Souls-like. It has some issues with boss HP and a couple of level design flaws but cleverly creative inclusions like an Easy Mode (although it's more of a "Not quite so difficult" Mode), bonus Lacrima from failed boss attempts and a lot of variety to skills and build-types makes this a very solid Souls-like. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's the best on the market since Lies of P. This one's a very easy recommendation.
Atomfall is a decent little RPG but it also sports some glaring flaws within its gameplay loop, holding it back from being a fantastic game. The combat and stealth are poor, wildly unbalanced and feature some laughably bad AI. However, the narrative, writing and rewarding open world exploration are really solid, going a long way to balance that scale out. So ultimately, it’s a bit of a mixed bag and a difficult one to score, especially as this is a game you’ll either love or loathe.
While Your House doesn't live up to its boast of "blurring the lines between genres", it is a compelling visual novel with a decent enough story and some great puzzles along the way. If you're after a gripping mystery to tide you over for an afternoon or two, this one's certainly worth checking out.
While the game has had a graphical upheaval on PC and consoles, it’s still the exact same game copy and pasted onto a different system, but charged at a premium rate. I cannot, in good faith, recommend this one on anything but mobile when the experience is the exact same. Save your money, steer clear of this console and PC port and just get this on mobile instead.
Mini City: Mayhem isn’t a bad little city builder but it’s not a particularly great title either. The patchwork of influences have been done better elsewhere – namely in Tetris, Islanders and SimCity – but its simplicity and familiarity make it an easy game to pick up and play. For its cheap asking price this is worth checking out if you’re a city building fan, but don’t go in expecting anything revolutionary here.
It’s such a shame then that Avowed misfires on so many different levels. I wanted to love this game but every time I tried, Avowed showed off another aspect of its shallow game design that held it back from being a better game. The loot and progression systems are poor, while the game is so heavily focused on its magic-based combat, that everything else around it fails to impress. Much like its emotionless NPCs that stand around and do nothing, this is flat and devoid of life across the board. At its best, Avowed is aggressively average. At its worst, this is a shockingly shallow RPG with very little to offer players. Wait for a deep sale before you invest in this one.
Project Tower is ultimately a mish-mash of different ideas that never synergies into a compelling experience. The morphing mechanic is severely under-utilized, and while the boss fights are a definite highlight, there’s just not enough here to recommend as anything but a Returnal clone gone wrong.
Rift of the NecroDancer is a great rhythm game. It’s a title that takes the best this genre has to offer and spins that into a unique, compelling remix that you can’t help but bop your head to.This is an absolute must-play and a blast from start to finish.
Big Helmet Heroes is undoubtedly fun, especially with the plethora of weapons available, but it’s very much your run-of-the-mill experience rather than an outstanding offering in the field.
Eternal Strands has a few nice ideas and tons of potential with its robust magic system. The giant boss fights are a definite stand-out but all of this is hampered time and again by basic gameplay design that usurps the fun. In an effort to try and add in this magical physics system, the trade-off is very limited stamina, big magic cooldowns and an inability to level up base stats. That’s before mentioning some of the performance issues and pretty mindless side quests to pad the run-time. There are elements here that make Eternal Strands a super fun game, but after completing everything this one has to offer across its 25 hour run-time, it’s a disappointingly mixed experience overall, which is a real shame.
We've seen so many metroidvanias in recent years and Blade Chimera is certainly one that does a good job standing out in the pack. There's a great balance of platforming and combat, while the boss fights are easily the stand-out here. While it is a bit short in length, and the story is chock full of cliches and twists you'll see a mile off, the harmonized blend of combat, platforming and puzzling more than makes up for it.
Great Circle is a fun action adventure title, with a decent story, some nice exploration and, more importantly, Indiana Jones the focal point and very much in the driver’s seat. However, this is certainly not without its problems, and between janky combat, truly woeful AI and some hit or miss level design, Great Circle is a fun but flawed adventure that feels very reminiscent of those old movie videogame tie-ins we used to get back in the old days.
Symphonia is a pretty straightforward precision platformer. Its short length is really the only big drawback here as the rest of the game is an absolute delight to play through. The orchestral soundtrack is excellent, the visuals look great, and the levels designed in such a meticulous and imaginative way that you’ll find yourself having heaps of fun with this – even in the challenging sections where you’ll die repeatedly.
The world is a bleak, inhospitable wasteland, full of miserable people requiring you to traverse a miserable landscape in search of more miserable people within a miserably optimized game. And within all this misery, is a surprisingly moreish and eye-wateringly brutal first person shooter.
Infinity Nikki is a blast to play. It’s a super chill dress-up game with nice platforming and a compelling enough story to stick with for the long-haul. The combat is super basic and honestly, the worst part of the game. As far as Gachas go though, Infinity Nikki is a ton of fun. Sure, there are some issues with its core gameplay loop, and some annoyances here and there, but what’s here is enjoyable enough to make for a solid recommendation.
Spirit Mancer is definitely a blast to play though but it's not without its problems. The game is undoubtedly a bit unbalanced given how easily the mechanics can be exploited, while rewards for combat feel disappointingly sparse compared to searching for chests and using the Adventure Guild. Balancing issues aside, if you're after a simple, challenging and enjoyable hack'n'slash, Spirit Mancer is a lot of fun and well worth your time.
Pretty aesthetics aside, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a boring sludge of grey. It's not awful enough to poke fun at for its broken mechanics like Star Wars: Outlaws, but similarly, it's nowhere near good enough to compete with the best Bioware have put out. Veilguard is a complete nothingburger; an indifferent shrug of a fantasy epic that fails to live up to what's come before, and destined to be thrown into the veil, reduced to a passing whisper of what could have been.
While We Wait Here is an interesting indie game and despite its short length, plays with some bold ideas. For its cheap price, this one is definitely worth a few hours’ playtime, but it never quite does enough with its ideas to make for a wholly satisfying experience.
Ubisoft have marketed Star Wars: Outlaws as a AAAA experience. And I whole heartedly agree. It absolutely is… if AAAA stands for Absolutely Atrocious And Abysmal.
Suicide Squad has zero redeeming features. It's a game that tries to be edgy and fails. It tries to be fun but fails. And above all else, it tries to appeal to a wide audience and appeals to nobody. This is a lazy, poorly written mess that deserves to be treated the same way Batman is in this game - like disposable trash that's thrown out after a monologue about how bad it is.