John-Paul Jones's Reviews
A beautifully paced and emotive narrative adventure with some standout vocal performances, what South of the Circle lacks in terms of substantive gaming meat it more than makes up with an intelligently curated, heart-tugging tale that remains long in the memory after you've put the controller down. Holding up a mirror to our own era of social, political and economic turmoil, South of the Circle provides the sort of expertly crafted and keenly felt warm emotional storytelling that we could all perhaps do with right now.
Quite simply Severed Steel is one of the most downright entertaining shooters to come out this year. Sure it doesn't boast the most comprehensive offering from a content perspective and genre fiends looking for a token narrative to go with their serving of face-gunning may well be disappointed, but Severed Steel bends and in some cases breaks the traditionally rigid rules of the FPS genre to often giddy effect. The end result is the sort of gloriously freewheeling, acrobatic first-person shooting extravaganza which aims to demonstrate that innovation in the genre doesn't have to just begin and end at the the gun clasped tightly in your hands.
In the end, Bright Memory: Infinite feels like an advert for a much larger, much more ambitious game and the price tag (around $15 or so), reflects that. Bright Memory: Infinite both absolutely looks and plays the part of a furiously assured shooter with resoundingly empowering combat, it's just a shame that the relatively emaciated amount of content that surrounds its otherwise excellent core makes Bright Memory: Infinite feel much more like a taster for something more ambitious to come rather than anything else.
A straightforward recreation of 1980s computer adventure games through the lens of pulp fiction. Mothmen 1966 is a brief, but enchanting, paranormal experience that has real love for all aspects of its fusion.
With more time in development and tweaks here and there to its overall design, Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX could really have been something. As things currently stand however, the superb premise, gorgeous visuals and compelling platforming roguelike gameplay all feel stifled under the weight of some really nasty game breaking bugs that make the game almost impossible to play for any decent period of time. A real shame.
Though structurally identical to the previous Capcom Arcade Stadium collection of retro goodies, Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium nonetheless remains an easy recommendation thanks to its assemblage of still enjoyable and well emulated classics that are given the sort of love and sheen that each has long deserved.
While DNF Duel isn't quite able to unseat Guilty Gear Strive, what Nexon and Arc System Works has conjured here is nonetheless deeply worthy of commendation. A welcoming, two-dimensional fighter boasting a honeyed aesthetic that caresses both the ocular and aural senses, DNF Duel makes a great representation as a fantastic entry point for genre newcomers, as well as being a reliable source of instant gratification for brawling stalwarts.
Between the poor, blocky visuals, the array of glitches and bugs, the sub-standard UI and lack of any attention given to making the game more accessible to a contemporary audience, it saddens me to admit that Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition should be avoided at all costs. Tragically, this is because under all of this scarred and badly implemented design, there's a roundly excellent and atmospheric detective yarn just bursting to come out, but is now seemingly condemned to be lost to time, like tears in the rain.
It's perhaps ironic that in a game where so much of the exploration and world building physically exists in a space without any atmosphere, that Deliver Us The Moon is absolutely overflowing with the stuff. From the claustrophobic sensation that almost every minute of its playtime exudes, through to the detailed modelling of its real-world adjacent world and the carefully constructed yet involving plot, Deliver Us The Moon is a slow-paced, if thoroughly captivating adventure thriller that is living its best life on PlayStation 5.
With superb emulation, a range of remixed soundtracks, beautifully optimised Rollback netcode for all titles and a smattering of museum extras such as special illustrations and more, Capcom Fighting Collection really does feel like a labour of love that boasts a degree of value that's impossible to deny. Honestly, just for Red Earth alone, Capcom Fighting Collection is worth the money but look beyond that and you'll find a treasure trove of rarefied two-dimensional fighting goodness.
Though the technical presentation of the three games encompassed in the Shadowrun Trilogy is modest, each of them nonetheless provides an entertainingly told narrative wrapped up in an old-fashioned CRPG shell with involving, but not especially sophisticated turn-based combat. If you're after a whole lot of cyberpunk RPG goodness with a very unique cyberpunk setting, great world building and entertaining writing, then the Shadowrun Trilogy is just the fix that you need.
Despite its small steps toward evolution and innovation, Final Vendetta feels like a wistfully romantic and well executed, if ultimately conservative take on those side-scrolling brawlers that held our attentions (and quarters) so rigidly in years gone by. Nonetheless, despite the fact that Final Vendetta doesn't push the genre forward with any sort of strident vigour, it's certainly true that it's still a lot of fun all the same and that enjoyment is only amplified when played with another friend locally.
In the end, despite its penchant for occasionally boring puzzles, rough character animations and wildly varying voice performances, Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is nonetheless a roundly fulfilling detective adventure with a vampiric twist that will appeal greatly to anyone that follows the World of Darkness setting. For others, Swansong makes for a fine, if occasionally clunky introduction to that sprawling world of supernatural politics and generation spanning stories.
Unpacking is like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket as you gently watch the years roll away in front of you. Though much too short, the relatively brief experience that you'll have with deconstructing the emotional narrative of characters that you'll never see via its block fitting puzzles, cements the fact that Unpacking won't quickly be forgotten and will be an experience that you'll likely go back to time and again whenever you need a precious smidgen of soul affirmation
As battle royale efforts go, Bloodhunt is surprising; which is more than other like-minded efforts can lay claim to. Though cross play remains unbalanced against more capable PC players and concerns over balancing and map variety remain, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodhunt nonetheless brings a scintillating blend of furious traversal, inspired PvE design and neat lore from the World of Darkness setting to fashion one of the most refreshing battle royale efforts in quite some time.
An enduringly clever inversion of traditional survival genre tropes coupled with a palpably tragic and gut-wrenching experience, This War of Mine: Final Cut offers up 11 bit studios magnum opus in its perfect form. By packing in all of the DLC released to date in addition to the stellar Stories expansions and providing a pin-sharp 4K presentation, This War of Mine: Final Cut is an ageless, horrifying and inventive survival effort that everybody should play without delay. This is as essential as survival games get and its mediation on the desperate plight of civilians during a time of war has never been more resonant.
A beautifully crafted love letter to Sega's Out Run, until the latter publisher decides to get their act together, Slipstream is not only the closest you'll get to recreating Sega's classic arcade racer on contemporary hardware, but it also adds enough new parts and components to this vintage ride to make it well worth taking in 2022.
Deeply emotive, intimately crafted and bursting with freedom, Road 96 takes interactive storytelling to a whole new frontier and provides players with a timely reminder that developer Digixart is one of the most underappreciated studios in the industry today.
There is absolutely nothing like Crusader Kings III on console. By including such deeply embedded and emergent role-playing elements in Crusader Kings III and thus making it much more approachable than any of its more decidedly hardcore strategy predecessors as a result, Paradox have also created something of a gateway to bring traditionally non-strategy fans into the genre at large. Oh and it's basically a Game of Thrones simulator to boot. Which is nice.
A robustly entertaining cyberpunk dungeon crawler wrapped up in some of the most sublime audiovisual presentation and thoroughly satisfying combat to come along in a good while, though it isn't quite as ambitious as I would like it to be, the Ascent is nonetheless a fantastically entertaining offering that will appeal to genre fans of cyberpunk settings and dungeon crawlers alike.