The Lord of The Rings - Gollum is every bit as twisted, nasty, broken and miserable as its protagonist. It is without doubt the most objectively poor and outright broken game that I have ever pushed through to completion. A patch has been promised for launch that may well alleviate some of the technical woes that plague the game, but no amount of fixes can pave over its utterly mediocre overall design. Spend your money on a second breakfast instead.
It’s not just one of the best Warhammer video games ever, it’s also one of the best shooters I’ve played in years.
Crime Boss Rockay City has many flaws – but here’s the thing – I’ve had a blast playing it regardless. It’s clearly been made on a modest budget, and its celebrity cast feels largely like a pointless distraction, but the core design of its criminal empire simulation is really damn compelling. Every time I failed a run I wanted to immediately dive into a new one, which I think is a sign that it’s doing the roguelike thing very well on at least some lizard-brain level.
My prevailing feeling on WWE 2K23 on the whole is that it’s a welcome, if small, step up. Nobody who is coming over from WWE 2K22 will really be wowed by anything here, but the cumulative minor updates, iterations, additions and improvements are all very good and very welcome. Your mileage will vary depending on how worthwhile an overall modest update to last years title is to you, but for my money the few dozen hours of excellent sports entertainment that the pair of new MyRise stories and the Cena Showcase provide are worth the price of admission on their own, and WarGames is the juiciest possible cherry on top.
Even as omnipresent as Darktide‘s technical woes are, it’s the exhilarating thrill of a mission run that shines most brightly in my mind when I think about my experience with it. Even on low graphics settings, shining your rifle’s underslung torch down a dark corridor, only to see a horde of Poxwalkers glaring back at you before your whole squad unloads on them, provides an utterly giddying rush.