Why Trials of the Blood Dragon exists, we have no idea… it’s quite clearly one of the worst games I have played, ever, and is a game with no redeeming qualities. Save your money, folks, this one is a stinker. A proper stinker!
Better than Fighters Uncaged, but that wasn't too hard. Fighter Within works, and that's the only positive thing to say about it. For £50, you're best off paying for a session of S&M with your local masochist. It'd last longer.
We Happy Few is a case of quantity over quality. A by-the-numbers venture whose game world seems to have been populated by a script rather than being handcrafted. Despite moments of what could only be described as brilliance, We Happy Few is full of fetch quests, boring busy-work and some of the most baffling design decisions in the history of video games. Oh, and it's broken as shit too. Happy? Not really, no.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is not completely awful. It's just not very good. Sure, it does have some good ideas and some interesting mechanics, but for every good idea, there are ten that are just bloody bewildering. Warhorse seems to have valued realism over fun and enjoyment with Deliverance, but to be honest, it's not even that realistic. It's just a bloody boring buggy mess of a game, but one that isn't completely terrible. Every cloud and all that.
Redfall is perhaps one of Bethesda and Arkane Austin's most ordinary titles. A perfectly competent first-person shooter that does little to raise itself above the competition. The perfect Game Pass game that's not worth the money, but is worth a casual weekend of play.
High On Life is easily Squanch Games’ most ambitious project, but aside from the environments and the world-building which match that ambition, the first-person shooter itself is incredibly generic, and not funny enough to make up for it.
A bit of a ham-fisted attempt at a sequel that feels more like a balance update to the original than anything else. Overwatch 2 is a lesson in how not to do a free-to-play sequel to a much-loved and established franchise. Other than that, it still plays pretty amazingly, but this is ultimately a disappointment.
Buried beneath Lake's innumerable mundane tasks are some really cool characters and stories. It’s just a shame you have to dig deep to really reach them.
State of Decay 2 is a perfectly fine game. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, it may be buggy and it might be a step back from the original, but it is nevertheless still a fun game, albeit one that doesn't really motivate you to keep playing. To keep grinding. I imagine it's what a real zombie apocalypse would be like, we just wanted more from a game about it.
Battlefield 2042 is DICE’s most average Battlefield yet, one that despite boasting two new modes to discover in Hazard Zone and Battlefield Portal, clearly forgot about the core of the experience. With some weird design decisions, plenty of bugs, and more crashes than a destruction derby; the future of Battlefield, this is not. It’s still fun, but we hoped for so much more.
Telling Lies is almost the perfect metaphor for real-life: inane bollocks for the most part, with some really interesting things happening every so often to stop you from falling asleep.
Darksiders: Genesis is a neat concept with a frankly bizarre execution. While the isometric viewpoint is cool during certain scenarios – namely Strife's twin-stick shooter gameplay – everything else doesn't really fit, especially the awful platforming. It's not a bad game, it's just not a very good one.
Genesis Alpha One has some really cool ideas going for it, unfortunately they're outweighed by repetitive busywork that you easily get bogged down in. Sure, it's an interesting strategy game at times, but the grind is just too damn much!
Anthem is a game that despite poor optimisation, agonising load times, bizarre design decisions and an unbalanced loot system, can actually be a lot of fun to play. The open-world, story, characters and combat are all solid, the rest, not so much. Anthem has potential to be a good game, it just isn’t right now. It could be one day though.
Fallout 76 is effectively about base-construction, survival and world-building, not the story and your part in it, which isn’t a bad thing. The execution is though.
The Crew 2 feels like a missed opportunity for Ubisoft after what was a decent start for the franchise in 2014. It's a racing game with some interesting ideas, but the new main additions frankly aren't entertaining enough and there's too much of a focus on quantity over quality.
If you can get past all the issues that The Sims 4 has on consoles, it's a ton of fun. That's a pretty big 'if' though!
Bleeding Edge is a fun game, but one that lacks any real content and depth to keep players interested for the long-term. You'll be entertained for a few hours, for sure, but if you're looking for a multiplayer experience to invest in over the coming months, you might want to look elsewhere.
The Bradwell Conspiracy is a game whose lofty concept doesn't quite match its execution. Its light, fairly arbitrary puzzles aren't particularly challenging, but its strong narrative is deployed almost perfectly throughout to weave them all together. The Bradwell Conspiracy is still an enjoyable journey, however, and certainly worthy of your time.
'Anime Dark Souls' was its billing, but it's not until Code Vein breaks free of the tried-and-tested formula that it shines brightly. With a difficulty balance that stretches from a leisurely stroll to hair-tearing madness, it's hard to know who this game is for. Code Vein is fun, though. Really, really fun, and a great place to start for anyone keen to dip their toe into a more chilled and relaxed Souls-like title.