If you’re a little bit curious, or if you enjoyed any of the games with which it shares its DNA, Virginia may be one of the oddest and most fascinating things you’ve played in a long, long time. Vivid Virginia is a hell of a lot more than plain old “walking.”
The biggest drawback to Snowfall, much like After Dark, is that it will probably find a way to clash with one or two of your favourite custom additions. But if you're a modder, I guess you already live life on the edge. Otherwise, it's a charming and worthwhile expansion for what is already an excellent city-builder. I have nothing but warmth for it in my heart.
Blackbird Interactive crafts a worthy successor to the Homeworld classics, although it can lack a spark of its own.
But if you were hoping for a new squad-based game with the finesse of XCOM, or the many tactical choices of Jagged Alliance 2, this is not it. Mordheim is dumb. Mordheim is flawed. Mordheim tries hard and doesn't succeed. This is not a happy Christmas, everyone, but the misshapen horror of Faschnat. It's your present from Krampus.
Rebel Galaxy's rendition of space is full of possibilities - but they're all a little too dull and repetitive for it to really work.
Emerging from Early Access lean and focused, Prison Architect is one of the best management games in a long time.
A stylish and attractive neo-noir tactical game, Satellite Reign sadly ends up being frustratingly inconsistent.
The Sims 4 is both fresh and yet also predictable, pleasant, comfortable and rarely overstimulating. It's wobbly, and you can still see some of its joins, or hear the creaks as new parts settle into place. It's not likely to win over any new players, but it will satisfy a lot of its old ones. For many of its fans, it will feel like moving into a new home. They'll settle.
This game rewards the most patient of tacticians. If that's you - if you're the person with enough time units of your own - it will certainly satisfy. Xenonauts knows exactly who its audience is, exactly what it's aiming for and, while it may never achieve a wider appeal, it will capture that audience in a very familiar act of alien abduction.
Wolfenstein: The New Order has all sorts of war stories it wants to share with you and it knows how it wants you to feel, but it's not convincing. Its stories are more sensational than poignant. It's a decent shooter with a good few impressive moments, but it can be buggy and it doesn't offer much you can't find elsewhere, with little to tempt you back when it's over. Where it most tries to stand out, in its narrative and setting, it often comes off as juvenile. Overall, it's built on an impressive world but it doesn't do enough with it, and as a result it's curious, but hardly compelling.
I liked playing Banished. It was complex, but never fiddly, difficult, but rarely cruel, though it would benefit from a little more transparency. But as soon as I had a handle on it, as soon as I'd started to see through some of the fog of its complexity, I wanted to grasp for something bigger, something greater. Banished is satisfying, but never spectacular. That's not quite enough for me.
It's hard, it's obtuse. It's big, it's beautiful. It's cruel, it's arbitrary. It's an adventure.
World of Warplanes is not bad, but it's not nearly as exciting as World of Tanks. It's a sometimes enjoyable, occasionally tiresome arcade shooter that's forgiving to fly and a challenge to master. Compared to its smart, successful older brother, it's not nearly as sophisticated and, most importantly, it's not nearly as much fun.
I got along a lot better with Cities of Tomorrow than I did with SimCity. I've watched the finely-sculpted skyscrapers become sundials for the city, while the streets they've stood watch over have filled with robot firefighters and automated garbage vans. But I've also been called away from my mayoral duties by police officers complaining about non-existent crime, by reports of full classrooms from empty schools, by a transport advisor who said my streetcars were lost. Every time I've reached for the future, it's brought me back to the present. Just as I was having fun.
If a few joints can be tightened, a few rough edges filed down, Ironclad Tactics could hum along nicely. For now, however, I wouldn't recommend you climb aboard this one. It's a rickety ride.
Then again, if that's all the freedom you need, then Neverwinter is a free, easy and very, very simple game that you can put as much time into as you like.