Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
Shadow Warrior 2 is anarchic, excessive, ridiculous, occasionally spectacular and almost entirely wonderful.
THUMPER is the videogame you should play today.
Get into the flow and there are moments of pleasure to be found. Nipping from shadow to shadow, flinging a shadow blade at a distant foe, evading attention, and reaching a goal, occasionally feels neat. But these moments tend to come as a run of luck, that doesn’t involve bumping into any of the game’s issues.
A MOBA in a non-cutesy, non-fantasy setting, with just enough respect for the genre's tradition while having the courage to keep things slow, uncomplicated and strategic. Here's that slap on the back, space videogame. You deserve it.
Across the board the game fails to support a footballing strategy or philosophy called anything other than “FIFA”.
It’s poop, which is disappointing. And it doesn’t help that you have to switch off one of a whole bunch of hideous German techno/thrash metal music stations every time you start a vehicle. That’s weird. It didn’t entertain me, it didn’t distract my son, and it’s very broken. Maybe it’ll be a cult classic by Giant Machines 2023, but not yet.
If Slayer Shock is to have a long afterlife, it will come not from binging, but from slow, careful forays into its Hellmouth.
I love that they reached so high, but I really wish they'd thought harder about what it was they were trying to balance on as they did. Ambition wasn't thwarted by technology, but just a lack of common sense. I find myself still wanting to recommend you play it, not least because the action is mostly fine, if very repetitive, and therefore there's nothing that's actively unpleasant about playing it – you can experience the wonders it has to offer, just for the price of grinding through the okay-ness of it all.
It’s a gentle seafaring tale I’m looking forward to playing through with a child when I next see my smaller family members but which I’m more than happy to play for my own enjoyment as well. I think I’m on my sixth distinct playthrough at the moment and still discovering new things.
t’s very funny, very sharp, and most importantly, a lot of frenzied fun.
You very rarely get to relax in Colorado. Someone’s always thinking about feeling your collar, and unlike some of the other maps, there’s almost nowhere to run away to if you get found out. The bastards are everywhere. It’s tenser and even more difficult than its predecessors as a result. This is much more of a pure stealth map.
Oh, this is a bummer. What a lovely setting for a game, and a potentially intriguing society, as AI develops and perhaps the flaws of humanity begin to be revealed in robotic kind. It could have been a fascinating exploration of the human condition, or just a really nice sci-fi tale.
It all neatly works, no fuss, no show. It’s graphically dull as a ditch, there’s no music, scant plinky sound effects – this is an austere production. But it delivers a huge pile of smart puzzles without pretension, which turns out to sometimes be enough.
I did step away from the brink of criminality. So few games are capable of putting humans together like this in a den of villainy and letting them become slowly corrupted or instantaneously redeemed. Hackmud does this and does it very well. It is like the early internet it so perfectly mimics: a world of confusion, paranoia and possibility.
I love being exposed to new places and histories, but the distancing of Aurelia’s structure had me looking for a way to get closer; that brush with the familiar pulled me right in for a moment and I wanted more of the same.
[The price] is a lot for two hours, and as I think I’ve perhaps covered above, it’s an abysmal game. The Welshest game I’ve ever played, but still abysmal. Great TV show for the most part, but one that keeps annoying your viewing pleasure by asking you to click on a dot. Graphics are amazing, though!
Straightforward, simple, but slick and solid. Cossacks is comfort food, but it feels sufficiently of today despite its cheerfully throwback heart. I had a good time, and most of all I realised that I’m more than ready for this once so staid of genres to come back in earnest.
If you’re a little bit curious, or if you enjoyed any of the games with which it shares its DNA, Virginia may be one of the oddest and most fascinating things you’ve played in a long, long time. Vivid Virginia is a hell of a lot more than plain old “walking.”
Sorcery! has been spectacular, each episode better than the last, and the fourth a towering triumph. It has been such an intelligent combination of trusting a quality source material, while being bold enough to take enormous steps away to innovate and explore even better ideas and possibilities. Everyone who cares about RPGs needs to take a look to see how much more they should be expecting from their genre, and to have a really bloody good time.
In its present state, Duelyst is fantastic, and with time it's likely to only get better.