Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
The Surge is shonky, inferior and more than a little derivative. But if you fancy a shortcut-filled robotic challenge, it's not all bad. Just be ready to get deprogrammed.
... a really interesting-sounding game, but one that steps on its own toes, its desire to be avant-garde thwarted not only by the over-familiarity of the devices used, but also the clumsiness of their implementation.
Perception falls between two posts. It's premise is strong and the echolocation works well, but there simply isn't enough to do in that old house, other than knock on the walls and listen to tales of times gone by. It's a game that I wanted to like so much more than I do, partly because it's so visually appealing and partly because Cassie is such a likeable character. She deserves a better story for herself rather than to be an observer of other peoples' lives.
Sharp as a spike bayonet in the AI department, surprisingly realistic in areas like morale modelling, LoS and armour penetration, SD's crowning achievement is arguably its interface. It's hard to think of a wargame that makes control feel so effortless or one that communicates unit details so effectively. Beware – a few days with Eugen elegance makes Graviteam idiosyncracy awfully hard to bear.
From the interface to economics, it sports some of the best systems I've seen in a 4X game, and like Endless Legend, it's simultaneously confident and experimental, finding new ways to spice up a genre that can too often be bland.
At a certain point, after a certain incredibly tiresome sequence, a game-ending bug meant I'd have to go through the whole thing again, and I realised that as much as I loved the emotions of Edgelands, I wasn't invested enough in what might happen next to want to persist. Perhaps in a month's time, with more bugs fixed and just the option to tweak the speed a little faster, this could be well worth a look.
Old Man's Journey is a game with all of these prickles of delight but where the interstitial matter often feels humdrum. It's short enough that you can still pick those delights out even if you're not satisfied with the rest of the interactions, but you can't help but wonder, what if it had found a way to make the whole thing shine?
This is stunning. It's just so utterly beautiful, its bucolic scenes hiding extraordinarily lavish and enticing buildings. It's smart but so modest about that, bulging with brilliant ideas. Movement is amazing and refreshing. And despite the guff, the place itself is fascinating to wander. What a treat. Just a slightly expensive treat.
Brute introduces a few twists as you go along that I haven't mentioned here, but doesn't do enough to establish its own identity and step out from underneath the shadow of its inspirations. That doesn't make it any less fun. If you've tired of its inspirations and are looking for something new, then it'll scratch that same itch.
I adore this. I am so frustrated that it's very hard to convince people to pick up an RPGMaker game, so I'm also very relieved it has the To The Moon alumni tag that will hopefully convince people to grab it. Grab it you absolutely should. Yes, it's maudlin in places, and yes, it's undeniably a bit twee, but it earns the right to be by being just so good.
Scanner Sombre is at its best when you're left to your own devices, lonely yet in awe of the sights you see and make, but suffers when the game itself is pulling the strings, whether that be to evoke empathy or terror. I absolutely recommend it, for its four or so hours of dot-matrix world-generation have pleased me greatly, but you should go in knowing that it stumbles over its storytelling hurdles and should instead be treated as, like the titular scanner, a remarkable technological toy.
Prey is a game that's smart about almost every aspect of itself, and yet with that, so crucially modest. It doesn't yank the camera from you, doesn't force you to sit through cutscenes, doesn't demand you sit still and listen to its backstory. It's content to be itself and let you find it, which is a damned rare treat in this hobby. Even more amazingly, for all its array of abilities and powers, you can finish the game without touching them, perhaps even find a narrative rationale for doing so.
It comes so close to being something I love and then it has a hollow core.
Horrible to control, horrible to listen to, really surprisingly ugly to look at, and and all-round mess, I've no desire to put myself through this. So, I shall state for the record: Maybe it's amazing! I mean, it obviously isn't, because it seems unlikely they'll fire the voice cast and implement a new control system some hours into the game, but I can't assure you they haven't. What I can assure you is I've been here too often, seen this too many times, to put myself through it again.
Under Leaves either needed a lot more to do in a level, or a lot more levels, to feel substantial. As it is this plays out like a demo, over just in time for you to be ready to get to the meat of it. However, that's somewhat counterbalanced by the low price tag.
By throwing out most of Spore's traditional mechanics in favour of a cross between Katamari Damacy and Nested, Everything gets closer to sublimity. And though I don't think it gets all the way there – not for me, not right now – the silliness is constant and delightful.
Shock tactics so persistently silly that they become the equivalent of a flaming bag of poo on a doorstep. I will always defend the right of horror fiction to be horrible, but never excuse it for being so dull in its depravity.
What elevates it from a fascinating and gorgeous experiment in presentation to an immediate contender for my game of the year is the way that the broader narrative informs the stories it contains, just as the house is home to its many rooms. Without casting judgement or becoming didactic, Edith Finch explores both the good and the harm that stories can do, and how folktale, imagination and superstition can lift us up and dash us down.
It's precisely the kind of horror game I love – grotesque but not gross, and interested in thoughtful pacing and escalation rather than jumpscares and shocks. Also, linear though it is, there are some collectibles I'd like to hunt for and the whole game is short enough that I'll happily play it again, or watch someone else playing.
While decent RTS campaigns increasingly feel like my white whale, I can usually depend on Relic for something better.