Lords of the Fallen is enough to tide you over until the next Soulslike, and it has some arresting sights, but it lacks a focus of its own.
Frankly, it’s a relief to see real neck-biters treated with the proper pulp care. Arkane Austin gets right to it: teeth, claws, and clear agendas.
Nonetheless, even when the trappings are more traditional, as they are in Return to Dreamland Deluxe, Kirby is Kirby.
In the end, Gotham Knights is, like the studio’s earlier contribution to the saga, Batman: Arkham Origins, a decent game haunted by the notion of not being the main event.
Not that this is something that has to be endured. The underworld may be outglowed by the freaky fogs above, but so what?
Most potent of all, there is a strain of urban fear running through its design—not of monsters but of the city itself as an isolating entity, rendering you unreachable.
Whether OlliOlli World charms you or chafes at your patience will depend on your appetite for such whimsy.
Indeed, if, like me, you have a weakness for the zombie-hued, and for the sway and flail of first-person platforming, then Dying Light 2 is easy to recommend.
There remains about Pokémon Brilliant Diamond the glint of something far gone, and there is something warmly reassuring about the place.
Its narrative is fractious and slight, compared to Sledgehammer’s previous work, but the chance for a chaotic, target-rich experience with friends exerts a stronger pull than usual.
Where Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy proves most winsome, however, is in its twining of the intergalactic and the terrestrial.
In Back 4 Blood, we have been given a finely tooled zombie shooter, but it lacks the power of the original.
Whether you demand more than comfort from your games will inform the way you see Kena: Bridge of Spirits; is it merely a graphically sumptuous example of design that you wish we would leave behind, or is it a vivifying tribute to a rich precursor legacy?
It offers an otherworldly break from the busyness of life, and, when you do return to Earth, you will do so with a smooth landing, and without stress.
True Colors is the best game in the series since Before the Storm, and it will satisfy your narrative craving for a time.
No More Heroes III should be played, if for no other reason than it could have been made by nobody else.
The humour is thankfully intact, but the mysteries grow as ornate and heavily threaded as Sholmes’s overcoat.
If I didn’t feel the sugary twinge of sentiment in Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, it is down to its pastel starkness.
The fun of playing these games, especially these days, lies in the director, Ryuchi Nishizawa, whose approach to genre was one of precise and genial disregard.
If the DNA of Biomutant sparks a re-evolution of some of the genre's dull spots, perhaps we can forgive the dull spots present here.