Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
Like the best open world games, it's a factory for anecdotes and you'll create plenty of gems in its company. That's worth celebrating, no matter how derivative the various machines in that factory might be.
The Remastered edition might not be quite as modernised as we'd hoped, and it's sorely in need of a little more PC-specific TLC, but it is such a pleasure to have it back, so much happier on a modern monitor and good speakers than the original edition, and with non-crazy controls too.
If you're looking for a game to soothe your twelve-week-old snot-ridden baby to sleep at 5.30am, I can recommend nothing more highly. My boy stared at it like it was made of magic, and eventually drifted to blissful sleep. It's hard to deny this biases my opinion of the game quite significantly.
It's a comfortable game, lots to do, very silly, definitely fun to play. But it's also sitting still, putting its feet up, rather than surprising us with something delightfully new.
If you've never played the remake at all, it's worth visiting the mansion again just to meet Lisa Trevor, and if you've never played Resident Evil at all, now's the time. It's a slice of cultural history that has exerted enormous influence but has mostly avoided direct imitation. When something is this well-crafted, the flaws of a counterfeit are obvious.
Most of the game is about painfully slowly walking your paper person to the next glowing spot on the ground, and pulling at the big glowing circle that appears, then painfully slowly walking back again.
Most of the time, Elite works. The excitement, even the boredom, of the game is still preserved for me as something I am happy to have paid for. But it would be a poor reviewer indeed who did not mention that the sim's rough edges have not been satisfactorily sanded down.
Tower of Guns mixes up its shooting with platforming and freedom of movement, but Ziggurat battles its way to the top of the pile by scratching my Isaac and Serious Sam itches simultaneously.
Warhammer Quest fits snugly onto a very specific shelf in my gaming library. It's not a game I'd miss if it were gone but, like a crossword puzzle or a Peggle, it's a perfectly acceptable side dish while my mind is multitasking. It's advantage over a crossword is that it doesn't require the attention of my linguistic lobes so I can more easily listen to people talking on a podcast while I'm playing.
[I]f you like games about getting better, where you're mastering deep systems and having your skills progressively tested, then Ground Zeroes is the best 50-hour demo you'll ever play.
The philosophical side of the game won't be for everyone, and you can largely leave it alone or skim the texts if you really don't get on with it. I really enjoyed digging into the archives so I'd recommend giving it a good go, but ultimately it shouldn't get in the way of enjoying the excellent puzzle side of things.
What we've got here is a mildly absorbing romp through an extremely generic setting, delivered with no sense of aplomb.
It's an accessible wargame and a good place to start for those familiar with the fiction and looking to make the jump to hex-based warfare.
With that said, don't take away too negative an impression of GW3:D. Though what it adds doesn't do much for me, what it brings from GW2 is simply brilliant, looks better than ever, and has never been on PC before – and everyone should try Pacifism mode at least once in their life. Parts of GW3:D are wonderful. But the most telling thing is that they're all contained in 2D rectangles.
All told though, no previous Telltale game has made me feel this tense and this wary. It's dangerous. Its pacing is nothing at all like the show's, but its ever-looming dread very much is. I only hope the rest of the series similarly refuses to pull punches.
Far Cry is a series still struggling with that balance, between offering you the freedom to do what you want while enforcing the limitations to make what you want meaningful. I think it's also only a game away from needing a gritty, Bond-style reboot back to its Far Cry 2 roots.
Tales From the Borderlands might not pack the emotional punch of The Walking Dead at its best, or the style of Wolfamongous in full swagger, but it's bloody good fun.
It's only £4, and I'm in no doubt that what felt to me like a cynical result didn't come from a cynical place. My guess is it came from too small an idea, too ambiguously delivered, created with a passion that doesn't reach the player.
Ultimately, I have hugely enjoyed my time with it so far. Occasional bugs aside, Blizzard are terribly good at this by now. The mood in my guild has been buoyant, and while a ten-year-old MMO is not the most accessible prospect for a brand new player, significant efforts have been made to make it somewhere that everyone can join, enjoy and call home.
Whether This War of Mine truly succeeds in saying anything more than 'war is hell' I don't know. Equally, I'm not at all sure it needs to. We play a lot of wars, and it is surely only fair to sometimes be reminded that war is not really about a muscle-bound American man saving the day. It makes its point very well, in that it is harrowing, it is careful, and its increasingly deadly Groundhog day approach supports rather than disrupts the atmosphere of extreme strife. It's without doubt effective and impressive at what it does.