GameGrin's Reviews
Hardcore fans of the genre and Daedalic Entertainment will find enough to like here with the developer's trademark stunning art, believable voice acting and interesting setting, but an underwhelming story prevents 1954 Alcatraz from matching their stellar previous efforts.
Ground Zeroes is a short, but perfectly formed, experience. With outstanding graphics, a fully immersive playground and new features, Ground Zeroes still very much feels like classic Metal Gear Solid, but the new Fox Engine, particularly accompanied with next-gen technologies, brings it off the rails and gives the classic franchise the scope and settings for an even more incredible experience. Snake is back!
Overall Garden Warfare is a game that takes the core strengths of shooters and makes them accessible to all. Its presentation is fantastic and infects the game with charm at every turn. If you're looking for a fun time, PopCap gives it to you in spades. By ratcheting up the fun and lowering the seriousness, Garden Warfare gives its players what everyone wants from a video game: A good time.
It's short, it's bonkers, it's hilarious and it's barely a game.
Despite a slight dip in the overall Walking Dead experience, A House Divided is just as integral an addition to the opus as any other episode. Desperate decisions in the heat of the moment and QTE battles with walkers and the living are kept to a minimum, making gameplay suffer but allows more scope for the story to expand.
The Stick of Truth may be a little light on challenging gameplay, but the simple yet fun RPG mechanics, coupled with writing that matches the TV series in satiric gold, makes this the best South Park game you'll play for a very, very long time.
The LEGO Movie Videogame is not the best example of a LEGO videogame, and will never be hailed as a highlight of the franchise, but it maintains enough of the charm to make it an enjoyable enough experience for fans of the series.
Thief is a disappointment. However, laying beyond its shortcomings with movement mechanics, combat and narrative, is a satisfying core of theft and stealth that can, at times, still have you feeling like a master thief. If you're looking for something to waste hours collecting digital trinkets on, and feeling like a total bad ass thief while doing so, then this may be for you. For anyone looking for a story-driven, combat-focused, narrative-based experience you'd be better off looking elsewhere.
You might want to stay away if you plan to play alone, but with its extremely responsive controls, lightning-fast pace, and easy-to-learn combat, Nidhogg is one of the most enjoyable and competitive local multiplayer games on the market.
A cracking game, not without its flaws but a hugely enjoyable romp throughout. Variety in gameplay and an attempt at any sort of engaging narrative would've helped make Strider a flawless release.
Lords of Shadow 2 may not surpass its predecessors' surprise rise to AAA status, but MercurySteam's last foray into the series still provides a fitting, if sometimes flawed end to the trilogy.
A game of two halves, Lightning Returns isn't a brilliant end to the XIII trilogy that you may have hoped for, but it's enjoyable. Just try to ignore the coma-inducing story.
Great graphics, huge, varied and interactive battlegrounds and a quasi-intriguing story are drastically hampered by shoddy RPG systems, flawed combat and terrible customisation. There's a fairly good game here hidden underneath a mountain of broken gameplay mechanics.
The overall sci-fi themes are interesting and might lead somewhere, but without tighter mechanics and a broader set of outcomes, Consortium just sits as a wannabe Mass Effect that doesn't quite understand the difference between a game of Guess Who? and a video game.
In the end, Octodad is an interesting and amusing title, a good game to pick up and play with friends for short gaming bursts. If however, you are liable to fits of rage then for the love of God, avoid.
Smoke and Mirrors is an excellent follow up to a strong start, and while it may not live up to the excitement of the previous episode, it nevertheless makes a worthy successor. Episode 2 will shock with twists, drive the narrative forward and allow the player to steer Bigby through it all in a style that suits them.
The core mechanics of Strike Vector are brilliant, the flying feels high octane and thrilling but the game wrapped around them is frustrating and shallow; neither the game modes nor the maps really feel like they force you to make the most of what your little ship can do.
Infinity Ward's first map pack for Ghosts is a largely by-the-numbers update to its multiplayer. There's nothing here you haven't seen before, but for fans, the extra content should help to extend the replay value of an increasingly repetitive franchise.
OlliOlli is a game that sounds good on paper, but in the end, doesn't work. By the end, you realise you're just going through the same routine, except this time you're flicking the analog stick a bit more than you were a few minutes ago. Only take this one if you're really desperate for something to play when you're on the bus.
Good-looking with a nice idea at the forefront, Max: The Curse of Brotherhood's execution leaves a lot to be desired. Clumsy controls, questionable physics and collision detection all ruin an otherwise decent effort.