Telegraph's Reviews
A truly remarkable strategy game
Cuphead stands alone as one of the most satisfying, enjoyable and well-crafted video games of the year.
This new adventure moves quickly, and feels like Wild Hunt in microcosm; cool moment after cool moment, condensed into a much shorter running time, with less cool distractions to pull you off in every which direction. Having less to do is no bad thing, and this story feels more focused and well paced as a result. Without adding an entirely new continent to explore - something the second expansion, Blood and Wine, promises to do in 2016 - CD Projekt Red still manages to ensure that this world feels interesting, that its characters are compelling, and that its stories are memorable and still have something to say, both narratively and thematically.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is an extraordinary piece of work, with things to say about pacing, writing, world-building and the communication of emotion that feel profoundly valuable to the industry. Along with its peers in this curiously expanding genre of being-in-the-world simulators, it will undoubtedly feed more furious debate about what games should be and what playing them should involve, but its great achievement, for me at least, was to render any such question spectacularly irrelevant during the time that its experience lasted.
Perhaps MGSV's best quality is how in pulling gameplay to the foreground and letting much of the exposition remain optional, it opens it up to be enjoyed by people who have in the past been put off by its weirdness, serving as both the perfect entry point and a satisfying conclusion. MGSV takes the best of a great series and creates a series' best in the process.
Ratchet & Clank stands on its own merits, never relying on fond memories of the 2002 PlayStation 2 original beyond knowing gags. You might be tired of being asked to buy the same game twice, or perhaps you've been burned before by a low-quality movie tie-in, but don't let that put you off, as this is one of the best console exclusives this generation.
While nothing can ever bring back their little boy, I am glad the Greens had that faith. And I am glad they were brave enough to share it with us.
Still, IO’s confident direction with this new Hitman is fantastic. As a sleepy dose of Mediterranean murder, Sapienza is inventive and complex, and delivers a level of replayability that should finally shush naysayers of its newfound episodic structure.
In Blood and Wine, things are quite different. Rather than a war ravaged wasteland, or an archipelago on the brink of civil war, famed monster hunter Geralt of Rivia travels to the southern region of Toussaint - a gorgeous unspoilt stretch of countryside. It truly is a wonderful place to be, lush with colour and an ever present orange sun that bathes the landscape in a warm glow. Its vineyards - famed world-over for their iconic wines - dot the landscape, while its beautiful capital of Beauclair sits visible from almost every point in the land, perched atop an elven ruin on a huge hill. After visiting Toussaint, the rest of the Witcher’s world feels unnecessarily depressing - you won’t want to leave.
A high point for the iconic strategy series
It’s not the most difficult of games, as Kirby titles generally aren’t, but it is enormous fun, and up there as one of my all-time favourite 3DS titles.
Monster Hunter Generations is the pinnacle of a great series
Forza Horizon 3 is what happens when a serious racing game lets the brakes off.
There is a type of artistry in Dishonored 2 that is unique to video games.
While it results in brevity, there isn’t an ounce of fat here. Inside is a game to be devoured in one or two sittings, then, but its impact will be something to savour.
Space-faring popcorn shooter is the best Call of Duty package in years
Imaginators captures a magic that I’ve rarely felt since my late childhood, playing the aforementioned N64 platformers on a Winter’s afternoon. This is how you do games for younger people, this is how you do Toys to Life, this is how you do action platformers in general.
If you went into Horizon Zero Dawn without knowing a thing about it, you would never guess that this open-world RPG comes from Guerrilla Games - the studio behind weighty first-person-shooter series, Killzone.
Chime Sharp is maybe a tiny bit bare bones compared to its competitors, with no multiplayer and fairly short round times, but the focused precision really suits the game here, and it’s nonetheless a fantastic chillout puzzle game, one I highly recommend.
Playing through This Is The Police made me think about morality, bigotry and oppression more than any other video game