Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
While Time Machine VR is not a revelation, is does offer some promising signposts.
Much like Mass Effect III’s wonderful Citadel expansion, this last outing is as much a victory lap, to remind us of the good times and end in the right spirit.
This is what you have waiting for you: a ridiculous and pointless horror story, and a slow death. It’s wonderful.
It feels exactly the way a Warhammer-themed Total War game should feel, and creates tons of dramatic battles and storylines over the course of each campaign. But to reliably generate all that excitement and tension, it secretly disconnects many of the strategic systems that hold good Total War games together.
It’s very silly, perhaps a little too easy in its build up, but tremendous fun.
It's got this weird bubbling heart underneath it, a clear desire to be a great game despite not being able to reach it. It's packed, varied, and so bloody enormous. It's a real muddle, and a muddle for which I've developed a real soft spot.
Propulsive, thrilling and breathless, DOOM is the triumph I never expected. I just can't see there being a better shooter this year, I really can't.
Battleborn isn't a bad game in the sense that it lacks work or effort – the team has clearly put in the hours – it's just that, for me, it's an uninspiring result which can't justify its hefty price tag.
Less erratic and surprising than its ancestors, but much more elegant in its design.
I had a splendid time with Kathy Rain, and thoroughly enjoyed a game where I couldn’t see where it might be heading.
[T]his is still Shadow Complex, well loved, and definitely a decent time. Just a decent time from six years ago and looking and feeling like it.
Few games come close to being this well made, this lovingly animated, and so madly pleasurable to play.
What you need to know is that Mohawk have made a game that creates tension and ruthless competition out of a screen of ever-changing numbers. Every victory feels hard-earned and every defeat can be traced back to specific twists in the tale, and in each of its half hour sessions, there are as many twists as in Civ’s six thousand years.
The star of the show is Sapienza itself though. It’s a beautiful maze of possibilities, flowing toward the sea with vantage and access points sprinkled throughout. Wherever and whenever you create a disturbance, the ripples spread, causing all of the systems that make the game tick to trigger, and creating thrills and farce as they combine.
OPUS is very cute, and while the story obviously borrows heavily from elsewhere, and while the core mechanic will feel familiar to fans of Mass Effect, it was almost a lovely idea.
It’s a blessing for people like me who will tussle with it over a series of lovely evenings or keep it running in the background to fiddle with throughout the day. For others it will be a royal pain in the arse, an utterly inaccessible gem taunting them with its low poly style and seemingly-simple gameplay.
More than anything, it’s left me with a wide grin and itchy fingers, and as soon as I’m done here I’ll be jumping right back into the game.
It definitely makes me very interested to see what developers Lemonsucker do next.
The Banner Saga 2 is a beautiful sequel. There are moments where, as I watch the drama unfold in the dialogue and cutscenes, I almost forget I'm playing a game that came out in this decade. There's an evocative sense of timelessness about the story and world that few RPGs create.
The best way I can think to sum up this feeling is to say I enjoyed Everybody's Gone To The Rapture far more on PS4 and that was because after the first chapter I lay on the sofa watching and listening and luxuriating while my companion dealt with the controls.