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The wondrous Dwindling Heights is well designed and gives Tilo plenty of opportunities to use his mousey avoidance skills and disguises to help characters. Although there is occasionally too much backtracking, Ghost of a Tale holds a memorable journey in its tiny paws.
A Way Out pretty much succeeds in spite of itself. The storytelling is amateurish and a weak third act threatens to sour the whole experience. However, the hours before that are the dreams co-op games are made of.
For most of my time spent playing Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, I loved the beautiful world and engaging combat - the core of the game. But every once in a while, everything would grind to a halt and I'd have to deal with the overworld strategy mechanics that feel poorly integrated. Luckily, this sequel has enough great moments to overcome those annoyances.
Sea of Thieves has provided some of my favorite gaming moments this year, but the repetitive voyages and reliance on currently infrequent player encounters to keep things interesting mean the seas are a bit shallower than you might expect in a full-price game.
Despite interesting choices that alter events, Batman: The Enemy Within is not quite a stellar experience. Watching Joker come alive as he interacts with Bruce is alluring and the finale is impressive, but the second season squanders the best features of the original season and has the same problems as Telltale's other recent efforts.
I don't think MLB The Show 18 is as good as last year's game, but the improvements over the last two years are solid enough to carry the franchise momentum forward. Hopefully, next year's version will get back to the winning ways and bring more substantial changes.
Far Cry 5 manages to deliver some satisfying open world action with a focus on co-operative play, but a few poor design choices, disappointing story and occasional bugs hamper the overall impression.
Bit Dungeon Plus isn't the worst game around, but it doesn't do anything particularly noteworthy with its mechanics. If you're just dying for a co-op roguelike, I suppose this will do, but you can find a lot of better examples elsewhere.
Aegis Defenders is an indie that has a chance to be a standout of 2018. Most of the key ingredients to a winning formula are here; engaging and addictive gameplay on both the solo and multiplayer fronts, a nice presentation, and just the right amount of innovation.
Surviving Mars has the interplanetary foundations of a good strategy game, but it gets bogged down in its own complexity, micromanagement, and a surprisingly bland setting.
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 manages to improve on its predecessor in just about every way, resulting in a structurally familiar but highly entertaining co-op experience with a surprising amount of depth and variety in its character and difficulty progression.
Yakuza 6 is a fitting end to the journey of Kazuma Kiryu that will not disappoint long-time fans, while also providing an accessible journey to newcomers. Though it does not reach the heights of previous entries in its narrative and optional content, it does deliver a touching tale with a strong thematic core that has even stronger combat chops.
Even as a simple party game, it's difficult to recommend Frantics. There's just nothing that really stands out as a high point. It's flawed in almost every way that really matters and doesn't offer the levels of entertainment one would hope to get from a game like this.
Like the original, Q.U.B.E. 2 keeps the emphasis on smart puzzle design and maintains a core group of mechanics that fit together like a glove.
Distortions adopts the negative connotations of its own name by offering an overpriced mix of poor storytelling, bad gameplay, lack of polish, and an outdated presentation.
Chuchel's overt humor and slick animations will make for an entertaining few hours but its simple puzzles and throwaway mini-games fail to ensnare deep imagination.
Metal Gear Survive is an enticing, challenging, polished and occasionally frustrating spinoff that doesn't devalue the reputation of the franchise, and offers a unique standalone experience that fans of survival games should enjoy getting stuck into.
Novel and cleverly designed, Roguemance makes for a delightful, tempestuous little fling while its ideas are still fresh, but its failure to make the most of them may leave you with a spot of premature exhaustion.
Celeste has a couple of hiccups in its aesthetics and tech, but the core of what Matt Thorson and his team have made contains a wonderful story of endurance and resilience for both the characters and the player, that begs not to be missed.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance deserves a lot of credit for succeeding in its highly ambitious and original realism-driven approach to role-playing game design, though the amount of broken quests and general lack of polish in combination with an ill-conceived save system bring down the experience significantly.