PCGamesN's Reviews
I bloody love Hearts of Iron IV. Even when I’m not doing anything, I really am, because my brain is still racing through all the things I need to do, all the focuses I’m contemplating, all the countries that might soon face my wrath.
It was inevitable that The Witcher 3 would close on a high, but few will have expected what they’ll find in Blood & Wine. While unrequited love, barrels of red with a blackberry aroma, and excessive amounts of pomp may not be what you think you want from The Witcher, it won’t be long until you’ve changed your mind.
Calling Stellaris Europa Universalis in space is probably reductive, but it was the first thing I did in this review not because they are almost exactly alike, but because, when I put away my empires and get on with my day, the stories that have played out in these digital worlds embed themselves in my brain, and I so desperately want to tell people about them. Both games tickle the part of my brain that wants every battle to have some greater context, every move I make to be part of a larger narrative. Stellaris manages to do this without history to lean on, though, and does so with aplomb.
The Banner Saga 2 captures much of what made the first game such a compelling fight for survival. It has a tendency to focus on the bigger picture and with the large number of characters that don't have much to say, some of the emotional engagement from the original is lost, but both the management side of things and the tactical battles have been lavished with improvements. The journey is bleak and savage, but the game is great.
You start off as a weak, undead wanderer and eventually grow into a being that can kill god-like monsters, and it's not because the game's narrative needs you to be that powerful, but because you've worked so very hard to get to that point. It's an incredible feeling, and makes Dark Souls III an incredible game.
Fans of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation will lap up the similarities, but Ashes of the Singularity is far more than a clone. When you take all of this into consideration and add unsurpassed scale to the mix, you’re definitely onto a winner.
True disasters crash, burn, and are never rebuilt. Visit a game of Conquest or Rush in Battlefield 4 today, and you could be easily fooled into thinking there'd never been a problem in the first place. Hopefully such a launch is one for the history books and not a future repeat, but Battlefield 4 is testament to both DICE's dedication to enduring design and getting things right, no matter how much pain they have to endure on the way.
Approach it with the view to completing the campaign and sightseeing New York with friends and you'll have a blast. But this isn't a world you'll be living in for years to come.
The Walking Dead: Michonne is supplementary at best. It's a sidestory that fills in a brief gap in a much bigger narrative. There are hints of more interesting things to come, but as of the first episode, this is far from essential for either fans of The Walking Dead comics or Telltale's other episodic games. It's a diversion, and not a great one.
Rise of the Tomb Raider truly makes you feel like Lara Croft: a bow-wielding, mountain scaling, bear-slaughtering, cave diving mad lady with more curiosity than can be healthy. And that feeling is just wonderful.
I'm not going to beat around the bush here: Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is the greatest RTS I have played since I first started flirting with StarCraft II.
XCOM 2 encourages a holistic kind of thinking that was never really necessary in its predecessor.
Why would I want to drive a car or shoot an assault rifle? I just dropped a tank out of a cargo plane and, while surfing on said tank, blew up a jet that was in pursuit with a rocket launcher.
But while the overfamiliar flavour may mean Fallout 4 doesn't quite stand tall, it does mean you can guarantee what you're getting and that's a damn fine game. Its combat is the best Bethesda have ever produced: involving, kinetic, and exciting.
Legacy of the Void, in true Blizzard fashion, doesn't break astounding new ground but does build expertly on what's come before. With an ending so ridiculous I couldn't help but love it, including three of the finest levels ever put in a strategy game, and a plot that never lets up on twists and went brilliantly unspoiled in marketing materials thus far, I don't know how else I would have put the series to rest. No matter your experience with the RTS, StarCraft 2's campaigns are only matched for value and fun by one another.
Cities: Skylines was kept fresh thanks to its army of modders, but After Dark tweaks every single element of the game so that, once you start rooting around the budget panel and customising districts, it starts to feel new again. And it will probably feel new all over again once the modders get their hands on the expansion.
As an exercise in empathy, Beyond Eyes is brilliant. As Rae muddles through her self-induced socialisation period, you'll see her sense of adventure overcome her fear of the unknown. Its message is loud and clear - to let life in, with all its risk and upset, so that the good can enter too - and its conclusion Watership-Down uncompromising. What's more, it's occasionally fun to indulge in a small-scale kind of exploration that encourages you to feel out the entirety of your environment rather than cast your eyes about for enemies and items. But for the most part the execution is too simplistic, and the frustrations are too frequent. Beyond recommendation.
Daily Challenges and split-screen multiplayer and pro-versions of tracks and a really cool soundtrack are all other things that OlliOlli 2 has going for it. It's an improvement on the scrappier feeling original, introducing that one tiny combo-blending manual trick that transforms the game into a profoundly new-feeling and lovely thing.
None of the separate parts – the platforming, the construction, the light strategy – stand out as particularly refined or able to stand toe to toe with games that just focus on one of those things, but Q-Games has put them all together in a package that is much more than the sum of its parts, hiding its flaws under the satisfying pace and multitude of unlockable rewards and newly discovered recipes. With every completed level, the call of the soup drove me forward, onto the next planet, seeking greater profits and fat customers.
Well, I'm still ambivalent, even after working through things in what has maybe become a longer review than planned. For the moments where the procedural stuff just works perfectly, creating a bastard-hard but ultimately memorable level, and for the world itself, which is lovely, The Swindle is worth dedicating a couple evenings to. It won't steal your heart though.