Conceptually at least, Close To The Sun is actually a really intriguing game. Combining elements of Bioshock, Sherlock Holmes and first person horrors, Close To The Sun attempts to capture the same wonder found in those titles but fails to really capitalize on that as well as it perhaps should. Admittedly, the opening few chapters are pretty good at building up the tension but soon after the game devolves frustratingly into a series of chase sequences and puzzle-platform sections that don’t always work well with the narrative.
Kakarot is ultimately a game of two halves. On the one hand, this is the quintessential way to experience the entire Dragon Ball Z story beyond watching the anime, with some gorgeous aesthetics, faithful boss fights and some really iconic moments along the way. Unfortunately this is let down by a disappointing and barren open-world structure with little incentive to explore, especially give the long loading times and miniscule experience gains. It’s a game that could have been great, with all the ingredients to produce a spectacular RPG effort but unfortunately fails to hit Super Saiyan status.
Dreams is unlike anything else out there. Of course, this also makes reviewing the title incredibly tricky too – do you review this as a game? Or as a game creation software? The answer is, I guess, a bit of both. Mileage will vary from person to person but it’s a very specific game that itches a very specific scratch, one that you’ll either pick up and love or pick up, play for 2 or 3 hours and never come back to again.
If you’re a fan of Where’s Wally and other books where you have to scan the pages meticulously to find hidden items, Hidden Through Time is essentially the video game equivalent of this. It’s such an ingeniously developed game and this simplicity makes it the perfect Indie to sit back and relax with. It’s a great coffee break game to play between big blockbusters and one that certainly has a lot of scope to expand in the future.
Doom Eternal is a bloody good game. It’s a violent, gory, adrenaline-soaked descent into the hellish depths of your nightmare but it does so with such finesse and style that it’s easy to forget how well-designed and complex this game actually is. Between the 12 hour campaign, the plethora of collectables and the evolving combat that organically adds layers of challenge over time, Doom Eternal is hands down one of the best first person shooters of 2020 and, dare I say, a top contender for game of the year.
Despite its shortcomings, Journey To The Savage Planet is a charming little game, one that utilizes some good humour whilst delivering an enjoyable, vibrant and short adventure worth playing. It's unlikely to be regarded as one of the best games of the year, but it's a pleasant enough journey nonetheless.
As a rental and a possible £25/£30 title, Resi 3 is well worth your time and although limited in scope, is an enjoyable enough experience to blast through. It’s not perfect but much like Nemesis itself, the Resident Evil 3 remake wants you to beat it again and again and again. After a while though, this becomes tiresome and it’s unlikely you’ll return to this one in a hurry when you’re done with it.
The Final Fantasy 7 Remake does both the best and worst things to enhance the original. The battle system is a great step forward despite a cumbersome camera and the world building is second to none. Characters are faithful to their original counterparts, boasting some wonderful voice acting from all involved and some of the locations are a joy to revisit all these years later. While the nostalgic slices of the original game are easily the highlight of the entire 30/35 hour experience, Remake is let down by inconsistent pacing, narrative and design choices, ones that have serious ramifications for the second part to come.
Overall though TT Isle Of Man 2 offers up a much improved experience over its predecessor. While it still remains a challenging and at times frustrating game to play through, there’s enough improvements to make it worth jumping back into to check out. If you’re on the fence then it’s worth a rental and just like driving itself, eventually it’ll click and the experience is unlike other motorcycle sims out there. It’s not perfect, and the long loading screens and steep learning curve will almost certainly be tall towers to climb but if you can persevere and make it to the summit, there’s a decent enough view that’s worth holding out for.
Someday You’ll Return is a great 6 hour game stuffed into an over-sized 15 hour package. On the plus side, the story is certainly gripping, the graphics look great and the sound design is some of the best in any video-game this year. Frustratingly, what begins as a really interesting and hellish dive into an adventurous mystery with horror elements quickly becomes bloated and bogged down, throwing in far too many unnecessary stealth sections and obfuscated puzzles.
Moving Out is one of the best couch co-op games to be released in quite some time and combines the best elements of Donut County and Overcooked to create this hybrid of endless fun. The gameplay tweaks are smartly implemented, allowing both kids and adults alike to enjoy it, and the campaign is fun, full of great humour and increasingly elaborate levels. With a vibrant aesthetic, a simple but effective gameplay loop and plenty of levels to chew through, Moving Out is easily one of the best Indies of the year and a must-play for sure.
Those Who Remain certainly won't be for everyone and there will undoubtedly be a good portion of players that take one look at the early, clunky mechanics and outdated character models and turn this off. That's a shame though because if you can get past some of the initial jankiness, Those Who Remain opens up to produce a pretty enjoyable (albeit flawed) Indie horror experience. The sound design is great, there's some nicely placed jump scares in here and the story is engaging enough to actually answer the numerous questions raised early on about what's going on and why this town is blanketed in a nightmarish veil of despair. This won't win any awards for being the best horror of the year, nor is it likely to be a title you return to in a hurry when you finish it. For £15.99 though, if you can look past some of the graphical issues and bugs and take to the story being told, there's enough here to make for an enjoyable enough play-through that's actually worth experiencing despite its flaws.
Make no mistake about it, Minecraft Dungeons is not a game designed for experienced gamers looking for a challenge. It’s an entry-level dungeon crawler tailored for older kids looking to branch out from the blocky open-world nature of Minecraft. In that respect, the game is worth picking up and certainly holds enough of the aesthetic flair and charm from the Minecraft IP to feel like a natural spin-off. The gameplay is basic so kids should be able to pick this up quickly and aside from a disappointing leveling up system, Minecraft Dungeons is a fun co-op experience that knows who it’s targeting and executes on that perfectly.
Acting as a soft-reboot for the Sakura Wars series of games, this PS4 title essentially plays out as an interactive novelization of an anime. It’s a game that feels like a half baked medley of ideas, swinging between a slice-of-life dating simulator, a simple hack’n’slash arena fighter and a visual novel. The result is something that’s disjointed and feels like three games awkwardly squeezed into one 20-hour title. With an archetypal anime story full of the usual tropes you’d expect holding everything together, a couple of stand-out moments in its narrative just aren’t enough to elevate this above disappointing mediocrity.
There’s something strangely endearing with Beyond Blue that’ll keep you playing through to the end. The simplicity of its scan/travel gameplay loop does become tiresome by the end but the calming, meditative state of exploring the ocean and watching these creatures in their natural habitat is worth persevering for. The story has some nice emotional beats too and the characters each have their own motivations and a decent level of depth. It may not be as good as Subnautica or Abzu but it does have the edge over those games when it comes to educational content. For that alone, Beyond Blue is well worth playing through and a reminder of how precious and beautiful our watery world really is.
The Last Of Us Part II will be an incredible game for some and a disappointing, narratively disjointed mess for others. Graphically, the title is easily one of the best looking on Playstation 4 and the level design is second to none. The art feeds into this beautifully too, with an aesthetic that switches colour palettes and ideas throughout the 25 hours to prevent the game stagnating. Unfortunately all of this is undermined by characters with very little depth, a narrative that flits between personas and flashbacks with little rhyme or reason, and some genuinely unsatisfying conclusions for almost every character at the end, save for Ellie. As someone who loved The Last Of Us, Part II is a tough pill to swallow. It’s a game that asks perhaps the biggest question of all – why should I care about these characters? And that’s something this never really answers with much conviction.
When you compare this to titles like Minecraft of Stardew Valley, Summer In Mara fails to match up to its predecessors that stand tall in this harvested field. Sure, it looks pretty and for some of the younger kids this may even be a good stepping stone to get into this genre, but the gameplay loop and repetitive quest design wears thin long before the end of the main narrative.
Timelie is a complex, stealth-driven puzzle game that doesn’t just use its time mechanics as a gimmick, it integrates this into the very core of its gameplay.
Flying around as Tony Stark is a lot of fun but gamers expecting something akin to the recent ‘AAA’ experiences on the platform will be left disappointed. Baby steps of course but Iron Man VR should be viewed as a foundational stepping stone for greater things to come rather than a solid, sculpted work of art.
Assassin’s Creed Unity is not a good game. It’s a buggy, poorly written adventure that received a lot of criticism from the fan-base when it released back in 2014. 6 years later, that criticism is still warranted as Unity remains a buggy, poorly written title that stands out as one of the worst games in the Creed franchise.