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Arkham Knight isn't perfect, and it's not messing with our Game of the Year awards after all, but it's still a very enjoyable Batman game - and at the end of the day, as night falls, isn't that the main thing?.
Jump into an online game and you'll have a great time, but with one or two friends at your side, Vermintide is a serious contender for the best multiplayer experience of the year. This one's going to stick around for a good, long while.
While the game never abandons its forgiving approach, increasingly ambitious and interesting level design and a steady drip of new items and skills continue to provide a satisfying new challenge throughout the game's accomplished story campaign. Crookz is a very enjoyable crime caper, and one of the most pleasant surprises of the year.
The Park has solid atmosphere and pretty good scares, but it also has an unremarkable heroine and an inconsequential plot. It might be a decent curiosity if you're looking purely for the video game equivalent of a haunted house, but its high price and short length make it difficult to recommend.
Sword Coast Legends fails to deliver on its promises both as a solid RPG in it's own right and as a digital Dungeon Master toolset. The limited options available to creators are unlikely to yield anything memorable and the single player story section is marred by poor pathfinding, limited scope and shoddy writing. Overall an immense disappointment.
WRC 5 is a completely competent, inoffensive racing game, but it lacks the features that have become standard in the genre. Whether you're a fan of simulation or arcade-style racers, there are many better alternatives out there.
I appreciate what I saw in my time with Ancestory, but I can't help but think that with how much it appears to use other popular card games for its foundation, it could have stood to have a bit more variety in key places. It is nonetheless a rather enjoyable time.
A great improvement over its humble origins, Deathwatch's engaging tactical systems and great progression elements also serve to highlight the odd fact that the next essential Warhammer 40K strategy title isn't a homegrown PC effort at all but rather, one born in the often reviled realm of ultra-casual games and microtransaction misery. If you have any prejudices about mobile games, look past them and get stuck in – Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch Enhanced Edition is the real deal.
Bedlam is a neat concept that has managed to result in a game that's utterly bankrupt of creativity, polish, or fun. It's a game that went so wrong at every turn that it makes you just feel bad for its developers. There's nothing here but a bunch of half-hearted references and wistful nostalgia for old video games, both of which you can get plenty of for free on the internet.
Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode One is a promising start to Telltale's latest venture. As someone with only a passing knowledge of Minecraft, the story and characters were interesting enough to pull me in, and the manner in which the first episode ends suggests that there's some fairly major diverging paths to be resolved in Episode Two. It's nothing particularly new, as Telltale games go, but I think that playing with a more family-friendly property has been good for the studio.
Ultimately, Skyhill brings to mind 11-bit Studios seminal survivalist opus This War of Mine, though in doing so it invites comparisons it can't possibly survive as the former feels much more reduced in scope and flair than the latter. While entertaining for the most part then, Skyhill's ease of play and encouragingly gentle roguelike mechanics are not quite enough to allow the game to reach the ambitious heights of the structure that it takes as its namesake.
There's still work to be done – the end-game still fizzles out unspectacularly, and it's disappointing that each world's exotic alien lifeforms still act as little more than troublesome barbarians – but Rising Tide is an excellent first step on the road towards a better Beyond Earth.
Wait and hope for some major patches for now, but even then Armikrog still won't feel actually finished. Shame.
The Escapists: The Walking Dead is a decent puzzle game, but lacks the complexity and freedom of its predecessor by offering basic, linear goals. With many concepts from the original shoe-horned in regardless of theme or enjoyable gameplay it ultimately falls a little flat. Fans of the TV show will certainly get more out of this, it does have a certain charm but sadly doesn't quite work and feels like a missed opportunity.
All in all, Heroes of Might and Magic VII is a solid addition to the series. The game has plenty of content, beautiful visuals, and a terrific soundtrack to drive the story, but load times and unit balance need to be addressed if the game intends to be at the top of the series. And for goodness sake, do something about those scenario introduction cut scenes.
Nevertheless for this Dragon Age fan Trespasser was a hugely satisfying end to Inquisition, and the final choice alone will have huge ramifications. Roll on Dragon Age 4.
Grand Ages: Medieval remains an acquired taste, but it's certainly the most accessible game in the series to date. The trading mechanics are intuitive enough to avoid confusion, while remaining complex enough to encourage micromanagement and enjoyable risk-reward tinkering. Simplistic combat and a lack of variety mean that it begins to run out of steam by the end-game, but if you're looking for a more relaxed approach to world domination, Grand Ages: Medieval is a perfectly solid option.
A trip to the psycho circus is far more enjoyable than it might first appear. Penarium is an excellent game that delivers quality fun with or without friends. The graphics and story are a perfect platform to deliver this unique platformer to the masses. The pacing works well to move players through the game's grinding levels to the beat of a perfect soundtrack. Players who enjoy this type of game will find gold here, and players even remotely interested should dive in without fear.
Blood Bowl 2 is a faithful recreation of the board game with improved visuals and a cleaner UI than previous installments. The AI is as poor as ever but multiplayer is really where Blood Bowl 2 shines. The inclusion of only 8 races is extremely disappointing though as is the lack of overall polish the game has. If you already own Blood Bowl Chaos Edition, sadly Blood Bowl 2 doesn't really do enough to justify owning both unless the multiplayer community decides to migrate. It's still a lot of fun though, especially in multiplayer.
It may be short, but it is also easily affordable. If you've got a little extra change in your bank account and feel like trying something out of the ordinary, I'd recommend giving Euclidean a try.