Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
When playing DMC4: SE you can see how certain parts of the design had grown archaic.
When all was said and done, I felt that my curiosity had been rewarded rather than rebuked. Her Story recognises that we have a habit of slowing down and craning our necks when we pass an accident, but it also trusts us to temper that urge with empathy. Maybe if we were separated from these events by a window and a motorway lane rather than a screen and impassable years, we'd slow down enough to pull someone out of harm's way.
Lego Jurassic World ends up being a middling entry for TT's enormous franchise, but a middling entry by them is still enormously better than most other family games.
Thankfully, the game never becomes grim. That light-hearted cartoon style shows its worth, allowing the game to lean heavily on the cruelty of crime in its mechanics without ever tipping into grotesque displays of violence or pain. This would not be the place for such things – the game asks you to experiment and play with life so often that it has to retain the feel of a toybox. And it does so, handsomely.
There are many good things within Massive Chalice, but they're frustratingly kept at arm's length from me.
It's extremely rare to come across a game in which all of the details of that design intertwine so effectively. And then you realise it lets you redefine a lot of the parameters individually instead of having monolithic difficulty levels and, wow.
It's a game that dearly wants you to have fun, and fast. It's quick, colourful and without pretension. The map-specific gimmicks inject dynamism into matches that, given its relatively reduced hero complexity, might otherwise risk strategic stagnation.
Hatred fails in every way. It fails to be a fun, entertaining game. It fails to be a technically competent release. And most of all, it fails to be a controversial, shocking experience.
It's a flawed masterpiece, but make no mistake, it absolutely is a masterpiece – one of the best RPGs ever created, and a true tribute to Sapkowski's stories.
NEON STRUCT is a game about hide'n'seek as paranoid fear, not superthief glamour. It gives you large, heavily-guarded maze-like spaces and asks you to find your own way around them, whether it's by roof or street, by stolen keycard or opened vent, by planned strikes or pure evasion, by gadget or by wits alone. Welcome back to Liberty Island. You're not safe here.
[I]t is a beautiful-looking and well-written game, in a way that adventures far too rarely see. It's a game that proves to me that I'm right to demand so much more from point-n-clickers that get eulogised despite their enormous flaws. It has restored my faith that the genre deserves high expectations, even if it occasionally fails to meet them. And it's a long, detailed chunk of hefty sci-fi, with some careful character work.
Sunset is a wonderfully atmospheric slow burner and a valuable addition to a medium where the predominant approach to conflict is to just give you a big old gun and invite you to get stuck in.
It's one idea done well, consistent and compact. As Bunnylord might say – Not A Hero might not be cooking with floppin' sexy gas on all cylinders but it's a facemurdering good time nonetheless.
Chroma Squad is a decent game but, far more importantly, it is a little time capsule, a big tribute, and a perfect period piece for big kids.
Despite my uncertainty about some of the specifics, it's a game that has me firmly in its clutches and I'm happy to be there. Maybe it's a hug rather than a clutch.
In Kerbal Space Program, we have a perfect game of experimentation. Checking to see what goes wrong and correcting your next trial accordingly. When struggling with my first launches and landings, and the tricky controls, I was close to believing it was a game of impossible luck. But it is so far from that as to make the initial belief laughable. Instead, it is about accruing and applying small units of knowledge, one on top of the other.
Wizard Wars is a smart piece of design and worthy of far more attention than you probably imagine a free-to-play multiplayer spin-off deserves.
[F]ifteen quid, lots of bullets, lots of steampunk Nazis and some monsters too. If that's (still) your poison, you can't go far wrong with this.
WWE 2K15 is a lot like the WWE itself – burying its female performers, mishandling its roster, screwing up its own booking and failing to establish characters. I say that as a fan. But maybe if we want a daring, innovative wrestling game, we'll need to wait for somebody else to jump into the market.
It's a shame the same anything-goes mindset doesn't apply to the mission structure and the story, because the dryness, repetition and general rudimentary air is what will ultimately keep me from coming back for more, but if you want a few hours of XCOM-lite with cyberpunk trimmings and the option for co-op, you could do a lot worse than Shadowrun Chronicles.