John-Paul Jones's Reviews
With Tales from the Borderlands, Telltale Games has struck gold. Easily its best effort since the first season of The Walking Dead, Tales marries the series cheeky humour and laugh-out laughs with some properly touching and poignant moments. This is as essential as it gets.
An interesting if conceptually unambitious effort, One Upon Light is an easily accessible puzzler that provides a decent amount of challenge – it's just a shame that the game isn't longer with a better handled narrative.
A train-wreck spin off of a series that deserved so much better, Fellowship of Evil is an unholy combination of so many undercooked elements that it's any wonder the game made it to release. While Overlord certainly deserves better there is someone else who does too – you. Avoid.
Even though it stands as more of a refinement over its immediate predecessor than a genuine leap, this latest entry in the BlazBlue series stays true to form by overwhelming players with a deliciously deep combat system, brilliant cast of characters and a veritable avalanche of content.
A simplistic yet visually attractive take on anime that's been around longer than most of the people reading this, Saint Seiya Soldiers' Soul is a decent prospect for newcomers to the fighting genre but ultimately holds far less appeal for long-time scrapping veterans who want a little more depth from their digital brawlers.
A wonderfully eclectic collection of local multiplayer curiosities, the second coming of the Jackbox Party Pack is somewhat uneven when it comes to quality but remains a strong choice for gamer and non-gamer folks alike looking for a multiplayer party fix.
A great improvement over its humble origins, Deathwatch's engaging tactical systems and great progression elements also serve to highlight the odd fact that the next essential Warhammer 40K strategy title isn't a homegrown PC effort at all but rather, one born in the often reviled realm of ultra-casual games and microtransaction misery. If you have any prejudices about mobile games, look past them and get stuck in – Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch Enhanced Edition is the real deal.
Ultimately, Skyhill brings to mind 11-bit Studios seminal survivalist opus This War of Mine, though in doing so it invites comparisons it can't possibly survive as the former feels much more reduced in scope and flair than the latter. While entertaining for the most part then, Skyhill's ease of play and encouragingly gentle roguelike mechanics are not quite enough to allow the game to reach the ambitious heights of the structure that it takes as its namesake.
Extreme Exorcism invigorates the arena battler with its brilliant ghost mimicking mechanics, proving to be a highly entertaining proposition for either a group of friends or the lone player to stuck into.
A charming and well-constructed take on the twin stick shooter, Flame Over endears itself greatly with easy to play, yet difficult to master mechanics which neatly avoid the frustration usually associated with roguelike titles.
Stairs is an odd beast then. A veritable love-letter to psychological horror, it's clear that the developer commands an impressive grasp of the visceral nature of the genre. Frequently terrifying and constantly unsettling, Stairs excellent atmospherics serve not only to deftly stimulate the senses with aplomb, but unfortunately also highlight that the game upon which these expertly fashioned frights exist doesn't boast a similarly formidable calibre.
A gloriously funny and unabashedly enjoyable side-scrolling hack em' up, Zombie Vikings is great fun with friends but falls just short of true excellence on account of some glaring visual flaws.
Wily for the first time, what Capcom have essentially wrought with the Mega Man Legacy Collection is a consummate assembly of the franchise's 8-bit era outings. Brought back to life in their original retro splendour and meaningfully augmented by both a longevity expanding challenge mode and a museum mode that files the depths of the series considerable history, minor flaws and a crushing, yet tolerable, difficulty are not enough to dull the enduring appeal of this great collection of titles from yesteryear.
Calvino Noir starts off strong with a great setting and cast of characters but finds itself almost totally crippled on account of its heavily flawed stealth mechanics; a tragically missed opportunity.
An entertainingly substantial, if simplistic take on tower defence warfare, Toy Soldiers War Chest's thrills are prominent, yet a little dulled by some technical issues and a needlessly greedy pricing model.
A brilliantly constructed if slight first-person puzzler, the new narrative in Q.U.B.E Director's Cut serves to elevate an already entertaining yarn into a near-essential prospect.
In the end, Traverser is a game that shows great a deal of promise in the early going, with its interesting setting and accomplished visual style making the game tremendously easy to get into. Once in for the long haul however, Traverser begins to reveal an affair less compelling than its first impressions would suggest. With shoddy controls, uninspired puzzles and frustrating boss encounters all detracting from an otherwise entertaining experience, the result is a title that is merely enjoyably average rather than truly great.
A bold take on the long-forgotten FMV adventure genre, Her Story might be old-fashioned and light on what some might describe as traditional gameplay, but its sophisticated narrative and entertainingly novel take on detective work both allow it to soar far beyond the zenith of its seemingly outmoded remit.
A content stuffed version of 2013's Payday 2, what Payday Crimewave Edition lacks in single-player allure and aesthetic sheen, it more than makes up for with its irresistibly compelling multiplayer heists.
More than anything else, from a technical standpoint Bladestorm: Nightmare is a disappointingly subpar port of what is effectively a last-gen console game. With the tremendous amount of grunt available to them, the developer should have produced the definitive version of the game, instead of the poorest which really, is a position that no PC gamer should ever find themselves in.