PCGamesN's Reviews
The core of Legions of Steel – not the tutorial, not the barely present premise, not the shoddy presentation – is strong. The Machines could pose a bit more of a challenge, but the scenarios and the conundrums I needed to solve tickled my brain in all the right places. It's so spartan, though. It's missing that spark of personality and something that ties all the scenarios together. And it's in desperate need of a great deal of polish.
Yoshida and his team has cemented FFXIV's place amongst the MMO titans that dominate today. They're not going anywhere - if any new MMO is going to see a decade plus lifespan, it's this one. Don't wait another second - Final Fantasy XIV, along with Heavensward, is an MMO you need to be a part of.
But you'll keep bothering. Because there's no question that Guild of Dungeoneering is a tightly-conceived, devilish little game, keen to show dungeon crawling conventions the trapdoor. It takes what it needs from the best in CCGs and tactics and folds them into a structure that's clever and consciously underivative. It's a deck I intend to keep playing with.
When the servers are active and you can get into a multiplayer match, then Rocket League is brilliant. This is a game where you can chase a ball while driving on the ceiling, as fans cheer from their seats in sleek futuristic stadiums. This is a game where a goal is accompanied by an explosion and an aftershock that sends every car hurtling backward. It's fast, explosive and completely ridiculous, and it's horribly frustrating when whole days go by without it working.
But the game is only £6.99, and what you get for that bargain basement price is a good slice of well-built fun. When you first boot it up it feels surprisingly robust, and there's never a sense that it was created on the cheap to cash in. The matchmaking can certainly make or break the experience from match to match, but when the going's good Block N Load is a smile-generating shooter.
Her Story is a captivating experiment in stripped down storytelling and the best use of FMV that I've ever had the good fortune to encounter. It's a story that we get to build, and thus, despite the way that it sometimes keeps players at a distance, Her Story becomes Our Story. By obsessing over clips and trying to put them in order, trying to make sense of them all, we become embroiled in the story and can make it fit our own theories. It's unique, singular and will take a long time to stop bouncing around inside my head.
With care and attention there's hope for Magicka 2. Patches and DLC could fill in gaps and deal with the game's brevity, but it's hard to recommend based on that assumption. At the moment it's functional, sometimes fun, but only something that should really be considered if you've got three chums who are guaranteed to play with you. Even then, you might be better off with the original Magicka and its slew of DLC or Wizard Wars, which is free-to-play.
Perhaps The Witcher 3 could have done with another month or so of extra development to work out the kinks, but even without the extra time it's an enormously impressive game that proves, in case there was any doubt, that gargantuan games don't need to be stuffed with forgettable filler guff. Any worries that, by making the game open world, CD Projekt Red were just following popular trends should be set aside, because The Witcher 3 dances to its own tune. There isn't an RPG like it out there, not even its predecessors, and its uniqueness should be treasured.
But to enjoy that game, you have to forgive incomplete or poorly implemented features, and make your peace with the evil AI. They're small problems, in the scheme of things, and they don't spoil a great drive. But they're just enough to deny Project CARS what could have been a clean pole position.
I love space and Kerbal Space Program.
I worried that, after years of playing its predecessor and all of its expansions, I would be too familiar with Galactic Civilizations III. I worried that I'd get a bit tired of it too quickly. This hasn't remotely been the case. I'm hooked in the same way I was with the last game, and not because it's stayed the same, but because it's managed to strike that balance between the comfortingly familiar and the refreshingly new.
Order of Battle: Pacific is that dramatic, and the scenarios can be that finely-balanced. Once I start a scenario, I find it almost impossible to quit until I've seen it through to the end. Fast, approachable, and challenging, it is everything I want in a wargame.
It's been a shame to watch all of Perils of Man's promise go to waste. It got its hooks in me, made me eager to jump down the rabbit hole, but it just led to disappointment.
It is, perhaps, not a very good adventure game, but – and this is despite the first act – it's a compelling bit of interactive fiction. Uneven, but compelling. I want to know what the deal is with the train's destination, Augur Peak and… and that's about the only question I can repeat here because all the other ones that are rattling around my head like a bag of bones are great big bloody spoilers.
If the rest of the game had been crafted with the same care and attention given to warfare, StarDrive 2 would be an impressive 4X game. But its annoying tone, eccentric AI and the shallowness of the empire management casts a shadow over it. If we weren't in the middle of an unexpected flood of 4X games, then its take on space conflict alone would make it worth playing, but at the moment there are just too many alternatives.
All of this makes Titan Souls a tough game to recommend. Personally, I found it a chore, becoming so caught up in my frustration that it became difficult to enjoy the detailed pixel artwork, take in the soundtrack, or even find satisfaction in finally killing a boss. However, I think there are players who will love this game. It is an unforgiving, unrelenting challenge that almost no other game offers.
Obsidian had a daunting task before them: to make a spiritual successor to a series of games that are inextricably tangled up in nostalgia, over a decade after the height of those games' popularity. This is not the Baldur's Gate of 2015, it's Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, the best parts of the lot of them wrapped up in something new and brilliant. And before you venture forth, don't forget to gather your party.
Visceral have create a perfectly good functioning Battlefield game in Hardline. It shoots as good as the best of them, the car-chases are fun, and the small tweaks made to the core formula are very welcome. But a little refinement does not mask that this is a very similar game to what we bought in 2013; despite the strong efforts to make a variety of new game modes, you can't shake the feeling of playing classic Battlefield. And quite honestly, Battlefield without tanks and jets is only half as fun. Curiously the single player campaign is the most interesting element, which is surely due to the studio's strength in solo-play design from their days on Dead Space. That's not enough to make it an essential purchase, though. Players new to the series may find the urban setting interesting and will certainly benefit from the refined mechanics. Series veterans, however, are best sticking to what they already have.
Starships may not be a grand epic like Civilization, but its stripped back design fulfils a purpose. If you normally struggle with the multiple complexities of a 4x strategy game, Starships is a great introduction to the genre. It even offers step-by-step advice at every point if you need it. But for anyone more advanced than total rookie, after a handful of campaigns you'll have seen everything Starships has to offer. Without the usual 4x depth or any multiplayer, Starships lacks the level of replayability. Even though it's priced accordingly, that's still its open exhaust hatch. A couple of afternoons after buying, Starships is likely to be lost among the debris of your unplayed Steam collection.
I wanted to like Hotline Miami 2. I adored the first game, and everything the trailers promised - new weapons, enemies, mechanics, and violence, oodles of violence - looked excellent. However, it's just not as enjoyable. The first game felt like a focussed blast of adrenaline. Hotline Miami 2's always stopping and starting, its new characters feel rough and buggy, and the new reliance on guns restricts how you can approach combat.