Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
The Wood Elves are a worthy addition to Total War: Warhammer’s burgeoning list of fantastical armies. Distinct and terribly tricky, they make the game feel new again, while forcing half-arsed commanders like myself to up our game.
If you’re interested in the games these tables are based on, you might get more out of them than I have. Hearing a Fus Ro Dah sample when a ball is saved doesn’t do anything for me, and if I have to hear a Nuka Cola reference one more time I’ll tilt the table so hard my computer will slide right off the end.
For all its enthusiasm, openness, and Red Bull product placement, Steep can’t overcome a mountain of small problems.
Slick, beautiful, gently challenging and supremely well designed, it’s a stunning piece of work. Oh, and I need to make sure to remember to mention the music – ambient gorgeousness, which you can hear here. Sometimes I get annoyed with a puzzle, have to walk away for a bit, but when I come back I wonder what I was thinking. Perhaps that sort of approach is more suited to a phone, but this remains a game that plays very well on PC, and looks utterly stunning in its conversion.
There is no deep understanding here, you won’t have your mind changed, and it certainly doesn’t have any of the emotional impact of Papers Please. But within its own barmy universe, it works! It’s a good chunk of fun, and easily survives at least a second play to see how much you can mess with people’s lives.
Full-fat survival games often fall flat because of a general lack of motivation – you are simply surviving to build, or to get better stuff. It’s grind by another name. And while the Division cannot in any way boast that it is free of grind (it is a gnashing monster of grind), the survival mode itself is much more focused
This has an intensity that vanilla Skylines does not have, this race against time element, this coping with cataclysm factor. You don’t have to play Scenarios – you can just have disasters as a randomly-occuring risk in a standard game. But the Scenarios do provide a backbone to something that sometimes seems a bit stuck on the fence between ‘game’ and design tool.
Is it currently fun? Undeniably. It’s gross, silly, and more than a little thrilling, and while the matchmaking system is a bit rubbish, there are always plenty of active servers to choose from manually, ensuring that you won’t have to spend much time looking for a game. But for that single mode to remain fresh, a frequent injection of new stuff is going to be necessary. Thankfully, Tripwire have already confirmed a mace and shield weapon combo that’s on its way, which should be great for tanks, and some new monsters are in the works too.
Like Cities: Skylines, Planet Coaster gives new life to the management genre, and even if the launch version does little to improve what I've played during the beta, this would still be essential for anyone who dreams of packing in their old job and running a theme park.
American Truck Simulator is my game of the year. Again. If we get more states in 2017, it almost certainly will be my game of the year then, too.
Really, what this is is The Martian compressed into a fraction of its length, with minor interactivity in a few key scenes. It feels like it should be a promotional freebie for the movie, not a $20, 40-minute game that actually costs more than the bloody Blu-Ray does.
[T]his is more than a triumphant return – it’s an improvement on the original in almost every way, and as close to a masterpiece as anything I’ve played this year.
Muddled? I am. There’s so much going on here, but I never really feel like I’ve got a proper grip on it. It feels like a puddle the size of the Atlantic – this vast concept, but too gossamer to sink in deep. Huge stories, but minor roles in them. Exquisite detail, but all going by too fast. And yet, pretty good with it. Just not as good as what’s come before.
Compared to the variety offered by the alternatives this year, I don’t see why either Battlefield 1 or Titanfall 2 won’t scratch the same itch, and then some. This raises a far more worrying question for CoD as an ongoing and risk-averse phenomenon: how long can it afford not to innovate? At some point even the faithful, even those incredible knife-wielding ninjas, will tire of running over the same old ground.
It is a pretty decent VR title though, with a strong conceit and pleasant scenery. That makes it notable enough. To be honest, what it really needs is support for sticking your arms out at your side and flapping around like Big Bird, but perhaps the later Vive version and/or Oculus Touch support might let us live out our Michael Keaton mid-life crisis fantasies.
After a few campaigns, it’s left me a little cold. Topical it may be, but the lack of engagement with issues and their effects makes it hard for me to see the theme (both animal and political) as much more than a lick of paint on a fairly well-worked but narrow game of numbers. Perhaps that’s what electioneering actually is but if I had to cast my vote, I’d be sticking with the push-and-pull policies of Democracy rather than Political Animals’ detatched campaigns of territorial control.
It’s a tough game, in which I often feel like I’m grinding my way toward the top rather than discovering brilliant new tactics or innovative strategies. That makes me feel a little distant from my team, and makes this a game to play while burning through podcasts in the background rather than to focus all of my attention on, but I’m enjoying the challenge.
Infinite Warfare’s story mode is an expensive-looking spectacle without a single idea of its own, mechanically or narratively. Even Ethan the robot’s attempts to salvage the Marine vs Navy vs Army banter by playing off some well-worn robot tropes can’t save the story or dialogue from being hogwash. Even the rare glimpse of interesting ‘burning asteroid’ level design can’t redeem the rest of the grey corridors and flaming city streets. As for how good it looks (and it does look very good) that is no saving grace.
You probably already know whether you want a new Football Manager in your life right now. If you do, this is a better option than last year’s edition, particularly given its improvements for those playing long-term saves. It’s evolution not revolution, but that was needed given how much the match engine and transfer intelligence seemed to be creaking after years without a significant tune-up.
What a treat. And a surprisingly deep one, with compelling moments you’ll want to talk about. It’s a pleasure to control, it has impeccable difficulty balancing to keep you moving forward while always feeling like you’re being skillful, and all in the prettiest of pretty pixel graphics. Triumphant.