The Medium is another fantastic game from Bloober Team. Whilst not as scary and anxiety-inducing as previous games, it’s more creepy and supernatural dealing with the spirit realm. The dual realities feature is by far the best element of this game and I loved exploring both the real and spirit worlds for clues to solve puzzles and progress the story. I sometimes felt restricted with the fixed camera angles, and had an occasionally glitch in a cutscene, but overall the voice acting enhanced an awesome story that is well worth playing through.
Dirt 5 is an excellent racing game and is awesome fun to play with various race modes to suit all types of racers. Fans of the Colin McRae/Dirt series will sit in the drivers seat with ease, but there’s enough variety in game modes and track locations that it feels like a fresh iteration. On the Xbox Series X, the graphics are insane, however I did notice a drop in overall look and performance when I played on my original Xbox One.
If you’ve played any of the Serious Sam games, you’ll likely remember they never were outstanding in the graphics department, mainly due to having so many monsters to fight on screen at once. Whilst some of the character animations weren’t the best, some of the level environments were amazing. We had a great time playing Serious Sam 4 co-op slaying hordes of monsters with lots of laughs at the hilarious and perfectly-timed one-liners.
I spent over 5 hours in Firewatch and loved every minute as I got more intrigued by the story as events unfolded. The ultimate outcome of the story is quite grim, so fair warning to anyone playing with kids watching towards the end. It’s a great game for those times where you want to play something but don’t want to worry too much about multiplayer or difficult gameplay mechanics. The story left me thinking long after playing and I highly recommend checking the game out on Xbox Game Pass.
Pagan: Control is a fantastic look into the mind and history of Far Cry 4’s villain, Pagan Min. You certainly see how events from his past has shaped him into who he was.
Astria Ascending is a beautifully hand-drawn JRPG with tactical and strategic combat, rewarding dungeon exploration and the ascension tree gives you much versatility in how you specialise party members.
Sheltered 2 is a fantastic survival management game with good crafting and resource expeditions. Combat was of lesser quality but still interesting enough, though it wasn’t my focus if I could avoid it.
Dice Legacy is a fun take on the city-builder genre with dice as your workers, though it did take me several hours to get my head around all the main mechanics and research better build/research orders.
Golf Club: Wasteland is a fantastic golf game with an amazing sound track, but geez did it tilt me at times. It’s easy to chill out and play with a good level of challenging pars for the 35 holes across the game. However the controls are frustratingly inconsistent, especially on console.
Paw Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls is another enjoyable game in the Paw Patrol universe for all ages. There are however some niggling issues such as long load times on Xbox One and missing interaction icons in main missions.
Lawn Mowing Simulator turns the mundane everyday task of mowing lawns into a relaxing, zen-like experience that I can play for hours.
Song of Horror is a decent horror game with enough scares to make me a jump a number of times, and should satisfy most horror game fans. There’s no combat in the game but be aware of permadeath. The option can be turned off, however this added some extra tension to the game making you care about your character(s).
I didn’t expect to like Jupiter Hell as much as I did with a good mix of nostalgia and fun, yet challenging gun-play. Being a roguelike with permadeath, planning your moves was key and I enjoyed exploring the procedurally generated levels, clearing as much as I could before eventually being overwhelmed. The permadeath was an opportunity to learn for the next run and it’s a game I can come back to with alternate modes to change up the gameplay.
Beautiful Desolation is a decent isometric game with outstanding voice acting featuring South African dialects and slang, amazing environment art and a gripping story. It will not be for everyone and is more of a slow burn story progression which suits me just fine as a gaming dad with limited time.
Red Solstice 2: Survivors hits all the marks of a good sequel with vastly improved graphics and gameplay elements, gritty atmosphere and intense battles requiring thoughtful tactics.
The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom is a lot of good light-hearted fun and another great game for young gamers over eight. Even this almost 40 year old gamer got right into it and couldn’t put the controller down. It’s a decent challenge for the target age group and the content is balanced with great cartoon graphics and humourous story elements. It has all the hallmarks for an aRPG with 4-player couch co-op and lots of collectibles and upgrades to extend your playtime.
Imagine Earth is a well-designed sci-fi strategy sim that is suited for novices and veterans of the genre. The excellent graphical representation of the planet and resources immediately caught my eye, and the tutorial planet and story missions progressed the complexities of the game without overwhelming me.
I had a lot of fun playing Paw Patrol Mighty Pups: Save Adventure Bay co-op with my 4-year old daughter. This is a great game for parents to play with their kids, and one safe enough for them to play on their own once they’re able.
King of Seas is a fantastic isometric pirate action game with a good story and plenty of loot to plunder. It’s great for short bursts or long loot hauls as I worked towards the next best ship.
Base One is an enjoyable space base building game with great ship interior detail, a decent story and good challenging gameplay. Without a multiplayer component, custom games will extend the gameplay beyond completed the campaign free of mission objective shackles. It’s well worth the purchase price though and I’m looking forward to the first DLC.