Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
It delivers on what it delivers. The movement is fast but sturdy, the combat nifty, and the artwork is really lovely. Its choice of greys and muted greens and blues doesn't do it enormous favours, and each area is pretty monotone. Animations are great, and the world is pleasingly detailed, but it also feels flat and dulled.
Torment is the weird, wordy, wise and wicked roleplaying game we've so desired during these long years of heightened spectacle. Not a total triumph, no, but close enough.
No, you don't need to have played 1999 weird fantasy roleplaying game Planescape: Torment to enjoy this spiritual sequel. There are references and commonalities, but they're not in any way necessary to understand or appreciate it. What is required is a reasonable degree of patience, and an enjoyment of reading and of big ideas.
Stories Untold is bleak and disturbing, novel and experimental, and most importantly when doing all that, very clever. It's smarter than you'll realise, in fact. And why it's smart is all in the experience of playing, not to be given away in the process of reviewing. A pain in the arse for me, but worth it for you.
I started off really not liking it, I grew to completely love it, and I walk away from it with so much love but a wobble of doubt. It's by far the most elaborately graphical piece of interactive fiction, but in being so it suggests it's going to be other things too, and it's hard (certainly at first) to let go of all that, just let it be what it is.
Sadly it's all too brief and only stands up to one playthrough, realistically. I'd definitely be up for a dedicated bundle of a half dozen vignettes like this, though. It utilises and clearly understands exactly what it has in Resi 7's best element – the twisted Baker family – and keeps its hands clean of the excess that characterises Resi 7's final act.
So, is all this worth [the money]? I wouldn't say so. You could blow through it all in three hours, and it's unlikely that you'd play most of it ever again. The only elements of it that I'd say you even need to see are Bedroom and Daughters, but even those are one-shot affairs.
Unexplored is almost certainly going to be one of my favourite games of the year.
It starts ugly and ends ugly, without enough humour or horror in between to shock or surprise. I'm not convinced its mingling of arcane silliness and actual suffering quite works either; it's a bit like Martyrs with gross sex jokes.
Halo Wars 2 is simultaneously conservative and inventive. It's definitely trying to evoke traditional RTS games – which is not entirely a bad thing given the recent dearth of them – especially when it comes to the campaign, but elements like base construction and Blitz mode make it stand out enough that it doesn't feel like you're just going through the motions for the hundredth time.
The characters in the world are a lovely design, and the whole place is very pretty. It has some great music, and it plays in dynamically dependent upon where you're flying in the city. But it's glitchy as all hell, flight not letting you satisfactorily swoop and swish as you might like, with your bird unable to take off from far too many places it can land, and clearly there is such a high expectation that you'll get stuck clipped into the world that it monitors for it and respawns you after a few seconds.
Overall, I don't know exactly how I feel about For Honor. It sometimes feels like a Ubisoft hired a bunch of scientists in white coats to observe Dark Souls PvP from behind reinforced perspex and experiment on it with Dota DNA in a mad attempt to recreate a tame monster in a safe environment for their own nefarious ends (profit). What they've made is an interesting chimera, something that is both more accessible but sometimes just as unforgiving.
I completely love it. This is such a smart game, cleverly delivered both in style and execution, taking familiar puzzle ideas and making them feel bewilderingly original via its split-screen single-player co-op. I
This is charming and silly and gentle and fun, ridiculously intricate and lovingly crafted. It's not hardcore, it's not going to outfox you, but it doesn't want to be doing that. This is one of those instances where you wish "casual" hadn't become a meaningless nonsense term in gaming, because it would nicely capture the feeling of a puzzle book that's magically come alive, a Where's Wally where you get to poke and prod the characters. It's a calm, calming and pleasingly silly game.
It moves along at a good pace, introducing new puzzle concepts thick and fast rather than overly relying on what's been before. And like I say, it looks absolutely lovely as it does it. Simple reds and greys are portrayed with a deft use of texture, a lovely papery style to the defiantly 2D design.
The result is a really splendid example of the form, with enough original ideas of its own within the standard to make it interesting. It’s a good, solid game, that’s occasionally extremely tough, but always fair.
Despite its flaws, Tales of Berseria has numerous interesting stories to tell. If the developers had cut the flab and focused almost exclusively on the cast of characters – with some combat thrown in – then I think this would have been a must-play. As it is, I think it’s still worth playing if you’re a fan of story-focused JRPGs, as long as you know you’re strapped in for the long haul.
A House of Many Doors has so much lovely writing and is so ambitious. It’s also so entirely in the shadow of its spiritual sibling. As a result it can’t hope to escape constant comparisons even if it proves preferable to the narrative tastes of some players. It’s the Dannii to Failbetter’s Kylie.
This isn’t going to entertain the brainboxes who demand Stephen’s Sausage Witness before they’ll get out of their four-dimensional beds, but for a chilled puzzling time, they don’t get much better than this. It’s really splendid.
At a certain point it starts to feel really not OK that you’re interfering in this person’s life. You can send unfinished emails, and, well, worse, and I love that it includes this. Because at that point you really start to ask questions about what you’re doing here, and at that point the game becomes something more, something bigger than just a narrative you’re experiencing – it crosses over into feeling a teensy bit real. I love those moments. It’s to A Normal Lost Phone’s credit that it achieves this.