PCGamesN's Reviews
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum fails to live up to both the Tolkien name and its own potential. From exhausting, repetitive gameplay to a poorly constructed narrative, this is a piece of Middle-earth you should never explore.
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.
I was wrong. It's a universe filled with boring people living on boring space stations, and playing in this universe is, unsurprisingly, really bloody boring. There's not one thing that X Rebirth does that Albion Prelude or, indeed, any of the X games doesn't do better beyond a few visual treats. Even when the bugs are fixed, the bizarre design choices will persist, as frustrating and counter-intuitive as they were at launch.
Despite the promise of its setting and philosophically informed morality system, Broken Roads fails to set itself apart from or come remotely close to matching the many post-apocalyptic games it's inspired by.
Skull and Bones promises the pirate adventure of our dreams and falls far short thanks to a sparse storyline, lack of personality, and gameplay that oscillates between frustrating and boring.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League offers some fun, frantic action, but it gets lost in shallow, repetitive mission structures and frustrating narrative sensibilities.
Hellboy Web of Wyrd's sharp art direction, warm voice performances, and goofy if basic combat struggle to shine through in a roguelike that is otherwise too messy in too many ways.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood is peak mediocrity and lacks any real meat to make it stand out from the rest of the pack.
Outward will appeal to people have enormous patience. But if that isn't you then it'll simply feel like a time drain. Jason Coles
Obsidian's dark RPG deserves a better expansion than Bastard's Wound.
All these problems could be fixed in the coming months - the bugs can be patched out, quests can be rewritten and made more varied and lively, crafting can be balanced to make it worthwhile, and the number of dynamic events can be increased. Something can be done, too, to encourage team play. But, until then, there is no reason to start playing.
Consortium is a tragedy. There's an extremely clever game to be found within, but only when it works. It's just the first part of a planned trilogy, and I have so many questions that I won't be able to help myself, I need to play the second part. But I can only hope that it's not held together by chewing gum and sellotape again.
Betrayer is an FPS where the shooting is lackluster and the enemies annoying. An adventure game where investigations are restricted to looking for objects on the ground. It is carried by artistic flair and - when it works - impressive audio design. As the violent encounters started to drain me of my energy and the plodding search for clues started to drain me of my sanity, I weathered it all because of my burning need to finish the story and my mission. I needed to put these souls to rest. But mostly I just wanted it to be over.
Had I not known that this was the work of Jane Jensen, I honestly wouldn't have believed it. And when there are so many adventure games coming out during this renaissance, it's hard to see why anyone would choose this over, say, The Walking Dead or one of Daedalic's traditional, bloody hard adventure games.
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.
I have no doubt that some folk will dismiss Sacred 3 because it bears no resemblance to the previous core games in the series. But that's not why it should be avoided by most. It's simply not fun to play. The writing is abysmal, the combat is all sizzle and no steak, and, for a rather short game, it regurgitates a hell of a lot. It never rises above mediocrity, but often sinks below it.
Call of Duty: Ghosts offers very few reasons for all but the most obsessed fans to take a look. Most of the time it revels in being mediocre and cowardly by the numbers rather than outright terrible, though there are moments where it manages to be both. If this isn't a wake up call, showing once and for all that churning out more or less the same stuff year after year only serves to dilute the quality of a franchise, then I don't know what is. It's completely shameless, and it's undoubtedly going to sell phenomenally well.
With its awful characters, inconsistent voice acting and combat hampered by problematic enemies, what little there is to enjoy is whittled away. It's something to be tasted when absolutely starved for RPGs and could provide enough sword and sorcery shenanigans to tide one over until something more appetizing comes along, but it's unlikely to prove fulfilling.
Alone in the Dark is a weak survival horror pastiche largely devoid of original moments. The occasional dash of character in its 1920s Deep South setting can't make up for repetitive puzzles and the feeling we've seen all of this before.
Where life finds a way, Exoprimal has lost its purpose. Defined by boring combat and a lack of innovation, I'm left feeling like that Brachiosaurus in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – hopeless and yearning for more.