PCGamesN's Reviews
As a sandbox for building stupidly large cities, Cities XXL can be a fun diversion when performance issues aren't rearing their ugly heads. But once the buildings are plonked down, there's little to do aside from plonking down more of them. The management aspects are shallow, and made entirely redundant by how easy it is to reach Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth. And there's a serious dearth of good reasons for veteran Cities players to return. They've seen it all before.
Sunless Sea does demand a lot from its captains, though. Patience, mainly. It's a slow, deliberate game, where a journey across the map can take an age, and where secrets are unfurled without haste. But the sea offers up a veritable bounty of rewards, and absolutely the best writing in any video game since, well, as long as I can remember.
Grow Home is utterly lovely. It's welcoming and sweet, and its simplicity is as elegant as BUD is adorably clumsy. Little experimental treats like this are worth a dozen Far Creeds and Assassin's Crys. More of this, please, Ubisoft!
I'm pretty happy with this version of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, but it is a bit harder to recommend when the Complete edition is on GOG with even more missions and a map generator.I can cheerfully recommend it to people who may never have encountered the game before. But if you're a Heroes of Might and Magic fan, who never needed high-definition anything to enjoy these games, then the chances are that GOG already had you covered, and there's not much for you here.
After quite a bit of meandering, Life is Strange offers revelations, along with dialogue that isn't trying to ape how a teenager might sound. Or maybe the awkwardness is just drowned out by Chloe and Max's sincerity. And, in the tradition of all good TV pilots - it owes as much to TV and cinema as it does to other games - there's a cliffhanger that's going to force me to come back.
Despite taking cues from other open world games, ones nobody could ever accuse of being fresh, Techland has molded these borrowed parts into something that is occasionally formidable. Dying Light never quite shakes off the spectre of these other games, but it doesn't play it as safe, presenting a world that is infinitely more deadly and fraught with tension. It is at its best, though, when the game doesn't get in the way of itself; when there are no calls on the radio or breaks in combat for a rest and a cup of tea.
I've been hammering away on the keyboard without writing anything positive for quite a few paragraphs, so I feel that it's necessary to emphasise that I do genuinely love Grim Fandango, and I think you should play it. Again, if you already have. It's loaded with some of the best adventure game one liners; a gripping, winding plot that only slips up three quarters of the way through the game, and then improves drastically afterward; and a vibrant, bizarre world that, for all its weirdness, is extremely easy to get attached to. It's just not a very impressive remaster.
Still, these are flaws in an otherwise tremendous offering from Petroglyph. It's the most purely fun, accessible RTS I've played in years. Whether it will stand the test of time like Company of Heroes or StarCraft is a question for five or ten years from now. What I can say now is that Grey Goo is a superb, cheerfully inviting real-time strategy game. It's one I can recommend to both fans of the genre and people who have felt shut-out from RTS gaming these past few years.
Blackguards 2 has surprised me. Though I enjoyed the tactical combat in its predecessor, I wasn't left hungry for a second outing. But the more focused campaign, and a protagonist that is much more than a cardboard cut out have elevated the sequel considerably. Some slightly awkward writing and odd moments of jarring silliness weaken the grim premise, but not enough to topple it. And the immensely satisfying fights are more than worth putting up with some cracks.
Elite: Dangerous is a beautiful arcade experience, plugged into an empty galaxy, one so big and bold that it might trick you into thinking there's more to see and do than there really is. You'll probably love it anyway.
The strange characters you meet never become more than a whimsical cut-outs with a few lines of dialogue. Shortly after you meet them you're off to the next surreal setpiece. It gives the sense that the city simply looks lovely but the team haven't put similar thought into the people who live in the place. In games like Broken Age, which is far weaker on the puzzle front, there's a fascinating story that's pulling you through the game. It lets down an otherwise excellent game.
Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon is a bit skinny for a wargame. I can't deny that I've missed getting stressed about logistics or big picture strategy, and it certainly hasn't set my heart aflutter in the way that I hoped a Warhammer wargame would. But there aren't very many wargames that are this easy to dip into, either. It's got a focus and simplicity that's often lacking elsewhere, and it could be indispensible for anyone looking to dip their toes into the genre.
The real problem is that Talos suffers in comparisons. While Portal was just a series of connected puzzle chambers it always felt that a developer was leading you through it. The Talos Principle feels like boxes within boxes, left by the developer for you to play in.
The possibility that the world is illusory and that what we're seeing is a lie makes the world impossible to embrace, however. There's no strong sense of place, and nothing to anchor the high falutin ponderings that make up so much of the game. And even if we were to take it at face value, which seems to be impossible, it's only a snapshot, a vertical slice of this world without much context, making it hard to reach any solid conclusions. Theories and guesses, though? I've got dozens.
The Lost Lords is an improvement, then. A significant one. But by introducing two new characters, there hasn't been enough development, despite the fact that we're approaching the halfway point of the series.
Telltale's trip back to its comedy roots is a triumph. Rhys and Fiona are a duo I want to spend more time with. Baker and Bailey do a phenomenal job of bringing them to life, with spot-on comic timing and just enough humanity so they don't simply feel like vehicles for jokes. Pandora is a world I'm enamoured with once more, and being able to explore it without grinding or shooting a thousand addle-brained enemies over and over again is a very welcome change.
It's hard to recommend a game that makes you feel disgusted or upset, but I'm doing it anyway. This War of Mine is great, it just asks a lot from its players.
While still an RTS, Ardennes Assault takes a lot of cues from wargames. By opening it up and providing countless meaningful choices and random events, Relic has put the war in the players' hands. It's not a directed journey through a bunch of scenarios where winning is all that matters; it's a persistent struggle where failure is always nipping at the Americans' heels, where an entire company can be lost in battle, making the war seem even more desperate. It's exhausting, and the best game in the Company of Heroes series.
That's the thing about Beyond Earth: I feel like for every considered, clever addition to Civ's formula, there's always a near miss. War is fun, but the AI is not. Aliens are novel, but humans are dreary. I enjoyed playing it, I'm still playing, but it just hasn't gripped me like previous games. I want it to be better, more interesting, than it is.
And with the game's unwavering deference to the film's cinematic world building and detail, and its skillful adherence to Ridley Scott's original vision, Alien: Isolation is quite easily the best Alien game ever made too.