Guardian's Reviews
Moral murkiness helps preserve the tension across Swansong’s duration. There’s always something at stake – your life, the masquerade, your integrity – and that does a lot to infuse some meaning into all the talking and scouring rooms for notes. I doubt that Swansong is set to become a vampire RPG of legend, like 2004’s Bloodlines, but it nonetheless makes vampires scary again.
Gory asymmetrical horror is a demonically fun, well balanced power struggle with boomsticks and bonus Bruce Campbell
A noble environmental message provides the basis for this delightfully uncomplicated adventure, but elements of performance are amiss
This grainy, gore-soaked katana caper slowly morphs into a compelling meditation on vengeance
Presenting a series of impossible choices, this darkly comedic game stretches the player's moral scaffolding to its limits
A decaying cyborg with a human mind struggles to survive aboard a space station in a superbly written, if not exactly original, slice of scuzzy sci-fi
It's been a while since a video game got us up and moving like this, and happily it's as entertaining as ever
Overgrown theme parks feature in this kid-friendly, cinematic romp through a cutesy wasteland
An Olympic swimmer explores the roots of her compulsion to succeed in this dreamlike 'interactive poem'
PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Warner BrosJourney through all nine movies in this gag-filled crowd pleaser that even makes The Phantom Menace bearable
A game that wants us to think about the contradictions and complexities of being alive, but not very deeply
Singlehandedly manage a steampunk sailboat in this ramshackle but glorious anti-open world game
This fun D&D-infused cooperative shooter treads a line between fourth-wall prodding and juvenile, with unicorn queens and hi-tech weaponry
Zelda-like adventure game starring an adorable fox recalls a pre-internet era when games felt like secret worlds
With sumptuous attention to detail, the series' 25th anniversary edition is its most reverent and irresistible yet.
A jaw-droppingly beautiful sim with an obsessive attention to detail that ensures the franchise's penchant for charming eccentricity is alive and well
This is a massive world, astonishingly rendered and seemingly limitless in its creative diversity
Creative Assembly/SegaThis sprawling medieval fantasy brings together romantic and classical strategy game design with spectacular results
I don’t think I’ve seen half of what Forbidden West has to offer. It bored me sometimes with endless dialogue and exposition, but is equally generous with things to do and places to explore and creatures to unwisely provoke. Unlike many open-world games it is continually offering you something new, and a couple of the tools you acquire later in the game really open the whole place up. It’s got the spirit of a Metroid or Tomb Raider-style puzzle adventure on the scale of an Assassin’s Creed. And once again: by god, it is beautiful. I’ll happily endure 10 minutes of being lectured about terraforming, in exchange for marvelling at these sunken caves, forbidding plains and mechanical T-rexes.
More than a quarter of a century since the cuddly critters were first sent in to battle, the magic of those early adventures has finally been recaptured