It can’t be overstated just how much a Dead Space remake always seemed like a sure thing, and after my time with it, that perspective hasn’t changed. It’s easily one of the best modern horror games, and the fresh lick of paint to really bring its grimy, snarling interpretation of sci-fi horror into sharp new relief is very welcome, especially when it maintains such faith in the source material.
There’s a solid game at the heart of Black Iron Prison, but every opportunity the game gets to subvert expectations or do something new is instead a moment of deferral to one of Callisto’s many inspirations. It’s nice to see Callisto try to be a new brew, synthesised from many parts, but an entirely new vision would have stuck around in the bloodstream a little longer.
It feels so exciting that after seven long years (and a collection of middling to decent entries in the Dark Anthology series), Supermassive has created something that surpasses the game that put them on the map all those years ago. The Quarry is a loveable achievement – whip-smart, beautiful, and more than willing to pull the rug out and blindside you in the way the great horror often does, all while paying tribute to icons of the genre.
Opus: Echo of Starsong is a very particular kind of game, but when you give your time to it fully, it’s a rewarding and wonderful experience.
The true goal of the game – raising the plight of the gibbon as one of the most endangered primate species in the world – is admirable and touching. If anything, the simplicity in the game’s design only serves to stop this key message from being crowded out.
The stories in Citizen Sleeper are worth hearing, but the fairly sparse and restrictive mechanics underpinning the game begin to buckle under the demands of that storytelling. More complications resulting from task categories may have expanded the possibilities here, but despite this, Citizen Sleeper remains a great cyberpunk diorama, and it’s well worth uncovering all its little details.
NORCO is a confronting video game; a confident, biographical and bewildering point-and-click narrative experience that feels more like something you inhale rather than play, with an effective cocktail of magical realism, societal heartbreak, and bummer coolness.
Martha is Dead swings about as hard as one can in its depictions of violence in order to communicate the viciousness with which war is infiltrating the lives and psyche of Giulia and her family, but it walks an increasingly fraught and unjustified line as more and more pain is inflicted on the narrative’s key players
Blending humour six years past its prime with combat you’ve played before, Shadow Warrior 3 trims the fun, instead of trimming the fat.
At essentially every opportunity throughout my roughly four-hour playthrough of the game, Webbed chose joy, whilst never sacrificing sharp puzzle design nor the fundamentals of platforming and web-swinging that make it a pleasure to play.
A beautiful game of movement, momentum, and emotional weight, Exo One is a deeply satisfying sci-fi experience.
Battlefield 2042 is trying to be a distillation of what the first-person shooter genre has become in recent times, while also not committing to any single vision, let alone one that Battlefield can claim ownership of.
It’s impressive that something as charming, gorgeous, and lovingly constructed as Eastward even exists; at least when it has the good grace to stop talking for a second.
You are told at the game’s opening that you belong to the future, but confronting the nature of that future is what JETT is all about.
The narrative flourishes of Backbone are wildly ambitious, and the tonal shifts will butt up hard against expectations set by the opening hours’ clear love for noir-narrative and tropes. It’s a game obsessed with change and transformation, and in a world as damned as this, perhaps that’s the best one can hope for.