In a bid for Ubisoft to try and remain politically neutral, Watch Dogs: Legion loses any sharpness it could have had with a more urgent and focused message. Instead, what we get is a watered down open-world experience that feels like just another NPC in a sea of open-world players.
If you can look past some of the frustrating puzzles and have a bit of patience with this, SHUT IN is a decent little game to shut yourself away with for a few hours.
Marvel’s Avengers is just not a fun game. It’s a vapid, boring, buggy, uninspiring mess of a live service that tries to jump on the band-wagon and falls flat on its face doing so.
Look, at the end of the day Fifa will sell regardless of review scores. There are incremental changes across the different games but this is largely the same package, designed to encourage seasoned players to settle in like a comfy, tatty, serviceable pair of shoes – even if those shoes are full of holes and barely stay on your feet. It doesn’t matter what score critics give Fifa 21. It could get a 1/10 from every publication and fans will still buy Fifa. However, it’s hard not to come away from this one disappointed.
With an entertaining but forgettable story and a sparse but enjoyable multiplayer, Star Wars: Squadrons shines through with its gameplay. Flying is incredibly immersive and if you have a VR headset (and the stomach) this one boasts the quintessential immersive experience. For those without though, this feels like a decent but not-quite-great game.
Topics of grooming and sexual abuse are here but distorted into a bizarre romanticized narrative that not only undermines the ideas, it actually damages the game’s credibility. I really wanted to like Suicide of Rachel Foster and I think games as an interactive medium are actually well-equipped to tell these hard-hitting and difficult stories – but not from this perspective. Whether on purpose or not, the tone-deaf narrative promises to tackle these subjects diligently but does nothing of the sort. Instead, Suicide Of Rachel Foster is a game in serious need of a rewrite and difficult to recommend in its current state.
Crash 4: It’s About Time is a wonderful sequel that’s sure to appease fans with its challenging platforming and nods to the past titles. While the difficult learning curve is a little too steep and newcomers may feel alienated by the inside jokes, there’s enough here to make Crash 4 one of the best platformers to crash-land on Playstation for quite some time.
No Straight Roads proves there are no straight roads in the rhythm genre. In its bid to achieve originality the game both over-complicates and over-simplifies itself. The end-result is a composition of beautiful melodies that turn into a cacophonic mess when brought together.
Hyper Scape ultimately falls within that realm of forgettable mediocrity; a mid-level battle royale player that never quite hits the top 20 spot but isn’t the first one eliminated either.
Fall Guys is a wonderful summer scorcher and one of the more unique and inventive offerings in this crowded battle royale space.
Between some irritating bugs and a sorely lacking checkpoint system, Terrorarium is a real marmite game that you'll either love or hate. The map maker is just enough to save this from being a complete disappointment but beyond that there really isn't a lot here that hasn't been done better elsewhere.
Roki is a wonderfully imaginative point and click adventure game. While it doesn’t do anything particularly outstanding that hasn’t been seen before in this genre, it is a tightly written, enjoyable title nonetheless.
Ghost Of Tsushima is a visually stunning game that matches its beauty with an incredibly fun and tactically sound combat loop. The open world is diverse, full of interesting locations to visit and helped by a simple but effective tale about a Mongol Invasion. The game does suffer from the same issues other open world games do too but there’s at least a consistent effort to make Tsushima stand out from the pack. And stand out it does. Sucker Punch deliver a powerful, memorable game that caps off this gaming generation on a high.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps doesn’t reinvent the Metroidvania wheel but it does polish it up in such a way that it feels like a whole new experience. It’s a game that confidently showcases some of the best platforming and environmental puzzles of the year and does so with a picturesque beauty that makes this such a joy to play through.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.