Richard Walker's Reviews
Cygni: All Guns Blazing is an old-school shmup in modern clothing, offering the same sort of immediate arcade fun as its genre stablemates, but with a cinematic (albeit slightly perfunctory) story and some neat high-res graphics.
A fast-paced and addictive roguelike first-person shooter boasting a bold cyberpunk style, Deadlink is a cracking little game, and one that rewards your time and effort to boot.
An inspired combination of colourful dungeon-crawling, social sim, and action-RPG, Dungeons of Hinterberg proves to be a remarkably pleasant surprise. Ignore this at your peril.
Nobody Wants to Die is a fantastic, wonderfully cinematic sci-fi noir that's over all too soon. Its procedural detective work can be too procedural, but there's the kernel of something really great here.
An absorbing open world adventure drenched in colourful New Caledonian culture, Tchia is beautifully unique and more than deserving of your time. It's on Xbox Game Pass – there's no excuse not to give it a go.
A fast and frenetic slice of heaven, Neon White is a sublime combination of tasty gunplay, twitch platforming, and speed-running that's unlike little else.
Still Wakes the Deep is wonderfully, authentically Scottish – even the carpets on the Beira D oil rig are tartan. It's also a singularly immersive and utterly memorable piece of work that's among The Chinese Room's very best.
What a wonderful game Humanity is. Tetris Effect developer Enhance has created something that's not only beautifully unique, but also ingeniously constructed and executed. Like the best puzzle games, you'll be dreaming of solutions all day. Its mechanics are also impeccable – this is the good stuff.
Here I was thinking Codemasters couldn't possibly top F1 23, and then the studio goes ahead and drops this little beauty. EA Sports F1 24 is stuffed to the sidepods with content, but it's the impressive handling model that sets it apart – this is easily the most unadulterated fun I've had playing an F1 game. Dynamic Handling is a good thing, then.
An enjoyably easygoing interstellar hospital management sim that doesn't take itself too seriously, Galacticare is exactly the sort of game that will gobble up your time without you even realising. With streamlined mechanics and a daft sense of humour, there's a good dose of fun to be had here.
Making its console debut, Nightdive's excellent System Shock remake retains all of the meaningful changes from last year's PC version alongside a smattering of refinements for controller-wielding players, and succeeds as a brilliantly accomplished redux of a truly revolutionary FPS.
Sustaining its paper-folding hook across reams of compelling 2D levels, Paper Trail is a pretty unique puzzling adventure, with endearing characters, an engaging fairy tale look, and a procession of smartly executed paper conundrums. This is some good sheet.
As well as eleven new characters, each with their own weapons and individual perks, Operation Guns introduces the Neo Galuga stage, peppered with exploding cars and authentic enemies (a menagerie of marauding robots and aliens) to tear through, but it's the new weapons that immediately stand out. Homing missiles, the spread shot, screen-clearing smart bomb grenades, the long gun, the short gun... they're all present and correct. The level of unfettered chaos that eventually engulfs the stage as the timer reaches its final minutes remains one of the most gratifying things available in any video game. Ever. Chuck in proper tunes taken from the Contra series, and there's nothing here not to like - everything from the new stages to the character sprites have been lovingly recreated.
Milestone settles into a cosy groove with MotoGP 24, building upon the work it's accomplished on the series in recent years, delivering another dose of realistic sim racing. Not short on depth and detail, MotoGP 24 is also a welcoming racing game that caters to players of all skill levels. Lovely stuff.
At a basic level, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is a perfectly serviceable brawler and a decent enough port of the 2017 arcade game, with a couple of additional levels to play through. However, one-note gameplay and a lack of unlockable extras make this a throwaway, short-lived affair.
A remarkably accomplished 2.5D metroidvania platformer, Tales of Kenzera: ZAU melds fluid traversal and combat with an emotional, heartfelt narrative. Its difficulty spikes can be a little off-putting, but it's worth persevering and pushing through to the end.
TopSpin 2K25 is a strong enough return for 2K's dormant Top Spin series, despite being a somewhat barebones offering, short on modes and bereft of fun extras like mini-games. On a fundamental level, however, this is a great game of tennis. Maybe we can expect more from TopSpin 2K26.
Harold Halibut's handmade world has bags of charm, but its sedentary pace and largely uneventful narrative might not be to everyone's tastes. Great stories stay with you, but, sadly, I'm not sure Harold's will.
Cutter Slade's long-awaited return has flashes of jetpack-fuelled brilliance, but tiresome missions and a story that fails to engage ensure that playing Outcast: A New Beginning quickly develops into something of a chore.
Fans of the show will no doubt get something out of this, but on a fundamental level, South Park: Snow Day! emerges as a somewhat shallow and unsatisfying experience, despite its best efforts to provide depth through cards and other light RPG elements. After Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole, this feels like a backwards step.