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It had a chance, and with plenty of nods that will please fans The Edge of Reality should have been the ultimate Doctor Who gaming experience. Instead, dull puzzles and a surprisingly flat atmosphere – along with a dreadful use of the Weeping Angels – leaves The Edge of Reality somewhere that should have remained undiscovered.
Tormented Souls ticks all the right boxes in regards to old school survival horror. It’s paying respect to those that came before, but unfortunately also highlights the frustrations and nonsensical plot-driving puzzles that we’d left behind. Think less critically, however, and there’s a new experience in the genre. Survival horror is still surviving.
You’ll feel the pain of betrayal and probably laugh a few times along the way in Bloodshore, an FMV game about a dystopian, televised battle royale tournament. The acting throughout is of a high quality, offsetting some very cheesy lines of dialogue and a few narrative beats which needed far more context. While it’s not quite as good as Good Gate Media’s previous output, there’s still a few evenings of entertainment here for fans of the FMV genre.
A slick, well designed game, Demon Turf is packed with personality, in part due to its 2D/3D hybrid visuals. Like a tour of the best the genre has to offer, this is a 3D platformer for those that grew up on them and fancy a hearty yet deeply rewarding challenge. It’s only let down by a handful of bugs which will hopefully get fixed via a patch.
Boasting an incredibly unique, creative and gorgeous aesthetic with an exceptionally intriguing, well-told narrative, The Eternal Cylinder manages to still be rewarding even when its gameplay and mechanics become tedious and uninteresting. You’ll certainly be tired outrunning this circular vortex of death, but the tale is worth seeing through for the sights along the way.
As of version 1.0.7 of the game, there’s a number of mildly frustrating bugs and issues which take the shine off of To The Rescue! Hopefully, Little Rock Games has the opportunity to patch these as beneath its hiccups, it feels like there’s a good game here. The concept is cute and original, the art style is clean and the game play loop can be quite moreish, so long as you can push though its core annoyances.
If you like big-breasted anime females then Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars has got you covered. With lacklustre story, shallow hack-and-slash mechanics and ancient graphical presentation, there’s little here worth your time. If you’re a fan of action or RPG games that are anything more deep than a puddle, Ninja Wars ain’t gonna be the one, basically, especially if you don’t fancy balancing barely-glad animated women on peaches.
Pumpkin Jack might not add anything ground-breaking to the genre, but it’s an adventure platformer that tastes like home. Reminiscent of old school games such as Medieval, Spyro the Dragon, and Bugs Bunny: Lost In Time, it’s a joyful experience with a wide variety of game play. Albeit a bit clunky with controls and combat, the humour, dialogue and character capturing that Halloween spirit exceeds those trivial irks.
t’s beautiful to look at and has an engaging turn based combat system but Echo Generation has a few core issues that undermine its best qualities. An unfocused narrative leads to confused and unclear quest lines which, combined with some curious design choices, means the game doesn’t manage to fulfil its obvious potential.
Jackbox’s formula always remains consistent with hits, favourites and some skippable entries. Jackbox Party Pack 8 is no different. Although it’s not the strongest pack of 5 in the collection, this game still brings a wide variety of party games that can cater to almost any gathering.
As a package, Tandem: A Tale of Shadows is a game I’d recommend to puzzle game fans – with some caveats. The game world itself is brimming with character and intriguing little details. The puzzles that are housed within it are quite inventive, making smart use of top down exploration and a complimentary chiaroscuro inspired side scrolling platformer. It’s the story – which doesn’t fulfil its potential – and some rough edges that prevent this game from really challenging the genre’s best though.
Sporting two of the best FPS experiences of the early 2010s and the original, mindblowing graphical powerhouse that busted many a rig in 2007, the Crysis Remastered Trilogy offers hours of solid, smooth and satisfying FPS action. Not all of the improvements hit the mark, but the core of these titles is left intact. If you’ve never played Crysis before, now’s your chance to save the world in style with your ass-kicking Nanosuit. Just watch out for the first impression.
A chilled and deeply satisfying golf game, A Little Golf Journey combines small scale courses with a pleasant soundtrack, a varied art style and a real sense of adventure in a really pleasing way. Even if you don’t like golf as a sport, the environmental puzzles and quirky narrative in this game make for a gratifying experience, even with an occasionally unwieldy camera.
In My Shadow has all the fundamentals of a puzzle game, but feels lack-luster when up against its rival puzzle platformers that have been released this year. Despite housing an engaging story, with a unique premise and lots of levels, it just feels mundane, tedious and repetitive to play, especially with its punishing difficulty curve.
It may have a half-baked premise, but don’t let that put you off of Ghostrunner. The gameplay far outweighs it, and once you get your head in the game, it’s so utterly rewarding. Hard, yes, but oh so incredible when you grasp it. Lose yourself in the visuals and synthwave as you rise to the top.
It won’t be winning any Game of the Year awards but Chasing Static is a compact narrative thriller worth an evening of your time. Its story isn’t as engrossing as those of its peers and it can be a touch confusing at times, but a mix of crunchy, nostalgia fuelled visuals, high quality audio and a great script make for an interesting combination.
A graphical facelift will be appreciated by fans, and make it easier for newcomers to experience a cult classic. However the game itself has not been improved and shows its age across its dull repetitive combat, stilted animations and decade old ideas. The Remaster doesn’t shed new light on a game that might have been better remembered remaining in nostalgic darkness.
If you have a squad of like-minded buddies ready to lose many an evening to slaying some zombie infested hordes, Back 4 Blood will provide you plenty to satisfy that urge. It doesn’t quite capture the greatness of its forebears and it stumbles over itself with its erratic difficulty curve and repetitive nature, but Back 4 Blood has immensely satisfying, if simplistic, gameplay mechanic. This is a veteran, war-torn survivor who’s maybe danced this bloody dance once too many times, but it knows damn well how to deliver that co-op fun.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl doesn’t bring anything new to the table, instead offering a certainly competent if not hugely exciting brawler with a confusing roster of characters cynically chopped up seemingly for future monetisation and very little to actually fight for in terms of unlockables for the fans. The fundamentals are here, and the Sports modes are terrific fun, but there isn’t much else to get too excited about when the content included is this lacking.
Phoenix Point is a game I desperately wanted to love. It has exceptionally complex and deep mechanics, solid turn-based combat systems and fun global strategy gameplay, coupled with a decent story and some decent new additions to provide it its own identity. It is also, however, riddled with technical problems, inconsistent mechanics and frustrating difficulty spikes. Like a true phoenix, it can rise with glory when it wants to, I only wish it didn’t thud back down to ashes so frequently.