Like Diablo, this is a game designed for multiple playthroughs on increasing difficulties, but few players will feel compelled to return to a seam that’s all dried up after a single day’s exploration.
An echo of Arkane’s past glories - one in which the studio’s unique voice can still be heard, but more faintly than we’ve come to expect.
Chucklefish's strategy tribute does nothing worse than Advance Wars, and little better - instead, it's exactly what it needs to be to spiritually succeed. It's small, in both character models and design ambition, but it's probably going to be massive. Despicable.
Only for nostalgists and those who love getting lost on spelunking holidays.
Even Abermore's cult of beetle worshippers would draw the line at this many bugs.
As an exercise in empathy, Beyond Eyes is brilliant. As Rae muddles through her self-induced socialisation period, you'll see her sense of adventure overcome her fear of the unknown. Its message is loud and clear - to let life in, with all its risk and upset, so that the good can enter too - and its conclusion Watership-Down uncompromising. What's more, it's occasionally fun to indulge in a small-scale kind of exploration that encourages you to feel out the entirety of your environment rather than cast your eyes about for enemies and items. But for the most part the execution is too simplistic, and the frustrations are too frequent. Beyond recommendation.
This hack-and-slash wears its simplicity like a lovely Scandinavian jumper, but is scarcely substantial enough for its handful of hours and drenched by awful aesthetic choices.Jeremy Peel
If you prefer your pleasures somewhere on the periphery of your attention, you’ll find there are plenty to pluck off the branch here.
There’s slow-burn greatness in Phoenix Point. It’s a game where you might be exploring a site, bracing for ambush, but instead find an abandoned theme park dedicated to a novelty boy band of hedge fund managers called the Lucrative Lads.
Clockwork God celebrates the tension between old and new, and finds profound comedy in the juxtaposition. It’s Size Five’s masterpiece.
I hope the flickering headlights of a glowing review are enough to help players find SnowRunner through the fog.
Jett is a game that's equal parts wonder and frustration, an evocative adventure that feels brilliant under the thumbs, but one whose creative systems feel stifled by rigid story-telling.
Arkane founder's first indie outing is a chaotic soup of colliding systems, and that soup tastes absolutely delicious.
While its refusal to let you cheat the exam will prove too punishing for some, the new System Shock is a breathtakingly beautiful and astonishingly faithful remake that proves the enduring power of Looking Glass design.
Folded-in features from battle royale can only go so far in saving this rushed production.