Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
I had a genuinely good time with it for at least 75% of the time I spent playing it. If you’re actually into the series as a whole, I imagine you’ll have an even better one.
There’s slow-burn greatness in Phoenix Point. It’s a game where you might be exploring a site, bracing for ambush, but instead find an abandoned theme park dedicated to a novelty boy band of hedge fund managers called the Lucrative Lads.
For better and for worse, Shenmue III is a perfect continuation.
I’ve absolutely loved this. It’s so refined, so well crafted, so supremely gory for something with such deceptively simple presentation, and has a difficulty pitch that feels always challenging, but remarkably fair.
If you can look past its obvious pacing issues – and some of its more gratuitous character designs – Atelier Ryza is a solid slice of JRPG comfort food that goes down easy and might just leave you asking for more. If you’re part of that in-group – and you likely know if you are – you’re in for a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Bum-bo may have to deal with a lot of crap, but it’s all well worth pushing through.
Its saving virtue is that it is a right biggo, a thoughtless blast of blockbuster ‘splosions, a popcorn game, the grand kahuna you can point to when some bore starts burping on about how single player is dead
Overall, despite all the frustrations, I enjoyed being a broody detective cat. I just wish the game itself was as strong as the story it was trying to tell.
In all the time I played, nothing really of any interest poked its head up from behind cover.
I’ve not been a professional games reviewer for that long, and I’m not ashamed to admit I was frightened by the prospect of offering my opinion, publically, on a work of this size and importance. Truly, this is a Monday to hate more than any other.
It’s an accomplishment, and it’s certainly better and more original than the vast bulk of games in the physics-gimmick subgenre, but I respect it a lot more than I like it.
Given the scarcity of successors, then, I see no reason why Microsoft shouldn’t just keep making this game bigger and bigger and bigger, lumping all the bits together every few years and slapping it down with nicer animations, until it’s got ten thousand missions and includes “Dudley” as a civilisation because they ran out of ideas. That would be fine by me. Long live the (Age of) King(s)
I can’t really recommend it beyond its being a pleasant enough child-friendly diversion, but it feels cruel even to judge it that harshly. There’s certainly a good afternoon or two of harmless fun in it. There’s a split screen mode too, with its own maps full of co-operative and competitive challenges, which I can absolutely imagine annoying my sister on.
A staggering technical achievement; a deliciously gooey shooter; the most accurate mud simulator outside of actual mud; a great advert for the healing power of peaches. However you approach Red Dead Redemption 2, there’s something to impress here. And on PC, it’s at its most impressive.
Abandon Ship can’t escape FTL’s shadow. It’s too similar to avoid being judged based on the high bar its spacefaring cousin set, but it falls far too short of that bar for me to like it. Turns out those water pumps aren’t worth manning after all.
Planet Zoo is a game where you can build your own zoo. It’s buggy, intermittently opaque, frequently saccharine, and – barring an eleventh hour miracle – it’s my undisputed game of the year. Because here’s the thing: it’s a game where you can build your own zoo. And by thunder, it delivers on that promise.
But most of all, Manifold Garden makes me break out in a cold sweat. I cannot help but imagine myself, trapped in an endless kaleidoscope.
Afterparty as a whole is surprisingly funny. I did actual out loud laughs sometimes, not just strong exhalations through my nose.
I’ve had a very splendid time with this, and have much splendid time left with it. A proper fine achievement, and a game worthy of measuring against the mighty Metroid.
The failure spiral is rough, but we started to turn it around. We struggled on for a few more years, but I made one too many poor decisions. It was all over, and my people were lost to history. I loved every minute of it.