Richard Walker's Reviews
As a new start for the eponymous gang, Saints Row ticks most of the boxes, but falls short in offering up anything fresh. A litany of technical and visual bugs also conspire to spoil the party, making for a solid enough, enjoyable, but ultimately uninspired, return for the series.
A slender and streamlined FPS made by just one person, Bright Memory: Infinite is quite the feat – an action game that flies by at a lick, bombarding you with slick set pieces and cracking gunplay. This is a first-person shooter distilled to its raw elemental components, and it's marvellous.
Normally, with a choice-driven adventure, I'm once and done, ready for a post-game water-cooler discussion. As Dusk Falls' warrants more than one playthrough, if only to see how differently things can pan out. If that open ending is any indication, there's more to come.
While many of the Street Fighter and Darkstalkers games included here are already available in previous collections, Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium still includes a plethora of arcade classics, and you're bound to discover, or indeed, rediscover, something well worth playing.
While the new F1 Life hub and the addition of supercars are no substitute for last year's story mode or 2020's classic cars, F1 22 is nonetheless another superlative Formula One game, and a damn fine racing experience in its own right.
A knockout combo of ten arcade greats – including five sensational Darkstalkers games – Capcom Fighting Collection represents fantastic value, online play with rollback netcode the icing on a delectable ass-kicking cake.
While it's almost impossible not to have fun with Sonic Origins, it is easy to lament the missing features, neutered Sonic 3 soundtrack, and absence of the blue blur's outings on the Master System and Game Gear. Disappointing.
Final Vendetta is so very nearly another scrolling beat 'em up revival that could have rubbed shoulders with Streets of Rage 4. Instead, it's scuppered by an egregious level of difficulty that slowly sucks the fun away. If you crave retro beat 'em up nirvana, then do yourself favour, and play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge.
A sensational nostalgia trip imbued with magical mutagen ooze, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is a triumphant return for the TMNT that will scratch any and all scrolling beat 'em up itches, and give fans a sharp kick in the 'feels'.
Wearing its VHS horror influences on its sleeve, The Quarry is an engaging and immensely entertaining choice-driven adventure with a killer cast and a fun, knowingly silly storyline.
All barnacles, salty sea life, and rusty, otherworldly machinery, Silt is an underwater odyssey filled with murky mystery and some pretty neat puzzles. In a nutshell, it's sort of like Limbo, but in the ocean.
Another opportunity to eviscerate Nazis, Sniper Elite 5 is by no means perfect, but it is a wonderfully robust and consistently enjoyable sandbox shooter that's good, reliable fun. And, as if you need reminding, you can put a bullet through a Nazi's scrotum, which will never not be brilliant.
Should you manage to look past the shoddy presentation and dodgy visuals, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong will reveal itself to be a mildly engaging tale of hidden.
Offering a good dose of blood and viscera for gorehounds and more than ample fan service for Evil Dead heads, Evil Dead: The Game is a solid entry to the 4v1 horror genre, let down ever so slightly by repetitive objectives and slightly annoying solo missions. Putting that to one side, what Saber has created here is pretty... groovy.
A stylish side-scrolling samurai epic, Trek to Yomi combines cinematic influences and sharp combat to great effect, but descends into frustration towards the end. Nonetheless, this is a journey worth sticking with.
Tough to get into at first, MotoGP 22 soon starts to pay dividends once you get the hang of its tricky handling and various nuances. The superb 'NINE Season 2009' mode, meanwhile, is worth the price of admission alone.
Chinatown Detective Agency is a disappointing miss, that, with just a little more time in the oven, could so easily have been a compelling hit.
What could have so easily been a retread of previous LEGO Star Wars games, has more than its fair share of new ideas. The Skywalker Saga offers a greatest hits compilation of all nine films, wrapped up in signature knockabout comedy, with enjoyable and uncomplicated, though sometimes slightly dull, gameplay. Bottom line is, I'm a sucker for a LEGO Star Wars game. Sign me up. Again.
Should you be in the market for more of Borderlands' frenetic looter-shooter mania, then Tiny Tina's Wonderlands fits the bill, its uniquely daft take on fantasy tropes and tabletop board games proving robust and infectiously good fun.
After the disastrous launch of WWE 2K20, 2K and Visual Concepts really faced something of a turning point, an uphill struggle, and after a lengthy hiatus, WWE 2K22 emerges as the best entry in the series for years. As per the game's tagline, it really does 'hit different'.