Neil Bolt's Reviews
A welcome addition to an already strong series, Hitman delivers once again with two fresh hits that put interesting spins on existing levels.
Dangerous Golf is a fun combination of sport and puzzling that has an unfortunate number of small faults to it. There’s potential for the future of developer Three Fields here, but this will just be a stepping stone to it rather than a building block.
Song of the Deep is quite often a fantastic voyage, full of rich detail and swimming with charm, but it does little mechanically to rise above similar, better titles. At its best, it’s an entertaining way to spend a few hours in a wonderfully-built ocean world. At its worst, it’s a cheap. uninspired and frustrating slog.
A highly lacklustre standalone addition to both the Trials and the Blood Dragon series. Trials of the Blood Dragon is a pointless exercise that suffers from far too much awful platforming, and a very tight-fisted use of the Trials set up. It has nothing worthwhile to say for either franchise, and frankly doesn’t deserve your money or your attention.
A oily, toxic pool of bad ideas, half-baked mechanics, and shoddy design masquerading as a tough retro-inspired football game. Kick Off Revival is just plain awful.
Umbrella Corps is a timely reminder of how low the Resident Evil series can be dragged into the mire.
Mighty No.9 fails to recapture the spark of its Mega Man heritage in any meaningful way. There's not much inherently wrong with how it plays, but it is haphazardly presented and not quite as enjoyable as it could be.
With its bold, inventive take on the party game, Perfect Universe succeeds in shaking up a tired multiplayer genre whilst adding plenty of single player challenge The issue it has is that some of the nine games on offer are too complex and/or dull to work as good mini-games, and that leaves a fairly small, but decent, collection to peruse for some multiplayer shenanigans.
Minecraft enthusiasts of a certain age-range will be excited by the prospect of seeing their YouTube heroes appearing in A Portal to Mystery, and for the most part, this is a fun murder mystery romp. However, the need to shoehorn in these extra characters takes away from the established cast, and the results of this venture are incredibly haphazard.
Initial intrigue brought upon by Soul Axiom's cool concept and sharp art design quickly tumble downhill when you discover that everything else is a rough, unsatisfying husk that disappoints in a way that brings out your frustration more than your anger. This is one poor soul.
So much of Oxenfree is an utterly heavenly experience. The conversation options knocks other games out of the water, and the characters are relatable and well-realised. The story is well-paced for much of the fairly brief play time, but sadly things unravel by the time the finale arrives, making a potential stone cold classic into something that's merely great.
Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a fine successor to its 2008 predecessor in many regards, but a flat story makes for a significant stumbling block.
Hitman’s third episode builds on your pre-existing knowledge and ramps up the pressure in a very hostile environment. The trip to Marrakesh never quite reaches the giddy heights of the previous episode, but it still stands as another exceptionally-designed level to add to the growing greatness of 2016’s Hitman experience.
What first appears to be a bullet hell shoot-’em-up that’s stuck too far in the past, becomes a game that embraces its retro influences intimately and successfully by being an enjoyably intense and challenging throwback. The only major downside to Score Rush Extended comes in the form of some very basic visuals that prevent this being an even bigger surprise.
While nothing remarkable, Shadow Blade: Reload does at least do a solid twitch platforming job. When it’s hitting its lightning stride, it’s actually quite fun, but too often it trots along being bland and unimpressive instead.
There's joy to be had in One Piece: Burning Blood. It's initially fun and colorful fighting fare that evokes the feel of the anime series superbly. A lack of nuance in the combat, extreme difficulty spikes and the growing sense of repetition all conspire to strangle that joy right back out of the game.
A reasonably-priced pair of remasters that actually do improve upon the original games, plus you get a surprisingly decent bonus title in the mix too. Sadly, while technical hiccups are stifled in the main games, many of the mechanical flaws remain, with the passage of time not helping matters. This means Dead Island is better than it's ever been, but a lot harder to enjoy than it once was.
Downwell manages to blend simplicity with hidden, challenging depths to create a unique take on the platform and shoot 'em up genres that is hard to resist from the moment you first jump into that well. It may not have the lifespan of similar titles, and it occasionally feels a little cheap in later stages, but that doesn't stop it from being a highly enjoyable descent.
Easily the best DLC entry for Fallout 4 to date, Far Harbor introduces some exciting new enemies and a tighter, more enjoyable main storyline. It also brings an air of over-familiarity and fresh performance issues that blight an otherwise exceptional expansion.
A valiant effort has been made to salvage this long troubled game from the doldrums, but despite some good ideas, solid combat, and neat concepts, Homefront: The Revolution suffers for its long gestation more than it benefits from it.