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Blackwood Crossing does a great job with telling a story, but it’s lacking in lustre as a game. The surreal setting, the believable characters, and the plot are all highlights of Blackwood Crossing, and if that is what you’re looking for to wile away a couple of hours, then I recommend it. If you’re focus is purely more on the gameplay side of things, it may be worth waiting for updates to roll out to address issues like movement and fiddly interaction. PaperSeven’s first release shows a studio that has promise in storytelling, but it just needs to fine tune the gaming side a little bit more.
Aaero is a new beginning for rhythm action games, as it draws on the genre’s past strengths and makes them its own. It has a different outlook – completionists may balk at the improbability of a ‘perfect’ run – but equally that could make it all the more alluring to those looking for a true score attack experience that doesn’t give up its wares so easily. Aaero’s setting may be apocalyptic, but its outlook is full of hope for a genre that still deserves its place in the here and now.
Slapping down poor video games never brings me much pleasure, especially those that genuinely show promise. While it has a unique setting and some solid ideas, boring level design and a general lack of imagination when piecing together all of these components leaves me with very little to praise.
PaRappa the Rapper Remastered is a game we’d recommend to every die-hard PlayStation fan, but being a straight-up remaster is a double-edged sword. On one hand it preserves everything about the original game PaRappa fans love, albeit in a much higher resolution, but on the other, it shuns new features or a revised approach to its rhythmic gameplay. There’s a lot of history there as well as some great tracks and one of gaming’s most iconic art styles. PaRappa can be as punishing as it is unconventional but, with an open mind, it may also be one of the best games you’ve experience on PlayStation 4.
Structurally, Blaster Master Zero is a significant step forward for the franchise, but provided you are actively avoiding getting hit, the game is just too easy. Mildly more interesting when driving around in a tank than gunning down mutants on foot, it’s probably a great entry point to the series for more inexperienced gamers. It’s just a shame that this reintroduction doesn’t provide much of a challenge.
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition brings back a mixture if beautiful visuals and fast-paced first-person gameplay that we're rarely treated to. The Duke Nukem add on also works surprisingly well too, with Duke's dialogue working well alongside Bulletstorm's blend of phallic jokes and crass humour, even if he does look out of place in the game's cutscenes. It's a decent remaster that could have been improved further with an updated control scheme, but whether with Grayson or Duke, this is still some of the best FPS gameplay in recent times.
For fans of the series who've perhaps tired of the ceaseless march of movie tie-ins, Lego City Undercover is a hilarious, expansive, brick-infused open-world experience that's begging to be explored.
Thimbleweed Park is a game that will resonate strongly with those who enjoy adventure games, and especially fans of some of the older games in the genre. It is a labour of love and that’s something that shines through the game. There are points though where some puzzles can feel a bit too obtuse in relation to their end goals, leading to a bit of frustration, though that can be countered with the casual mode. Thimbleweed is a strong entry to the adventure genre from the minds of those who helped cement it, though it can be tough at times.
Of all the potential hurdles to snag on in creating a 3D platformers in the style of the late nineties classics, Playtonic deftly avoids the most egregious ones by far. At its very core, Yooka-Laylee succeeds in reviving a format long forgotten and does so with such vigor and passion. However, players shouldn’t expect it to reinvent the genre.
As a spiritual successor to Firefly Diary, A Rose in the Twilight excels in nearly every way. The simple art style of the game makes the gruesome events of the game even more striking, and you feel for this mysterious, troubled girl and her equally mysterious golem companion, as they traverse death traps and monster mazes in search of answers. It’s a carefully constructed narrative that never once feels hindered or neutered by the lack of direct dialogue. Despite a few encounters that were too vague for my tastes, the puzzles and challenges you face in the game are satisfying and difficult in just the right way. It all comes together in a wonderful package with a few stray flaws, but they hardly end up detracting from an otherwise beautiful experience.
A few weeks after the console's release, you have to scroll a little way to reach the bottom of the Nintendo eShop's Recent Releases list to find Vroom! in the Night's Sky. Don't bother. It's complete bobbins.
Old Time Hockey is a slog that tries to masquerade as a pick up and play arcade hockey title. Throughout the main campaign you feel like you’re dictated to play in a particular way instead. The devs have done everything right with the presentation and the commentary yet slipped up in creating a fun game. Arcade hockey games from a decade ago, even two decades ago, laid the perfect foundations to build upon but it feels like the devs of Old Time Hockey wanted to dig those foundations upon and build a series of poorly signposted office blocks where the ice rink used to be.
Managing to be both nostalgic and refreshingly new, Snake Pass is a glorious adventure that brings the 3D puzzle platformer right up to date. Barring some frustrations and a tough difficulty level, there are few indie games that provide such a thoroughly entertaining, beautifully designed experience as Sumo Digital have created here.
Persona 5 stole my heart. It was impossible to believe that the best game of the already venerated series was still to come, and yet somehow everything works wonderfully. I’d rather the dialogue didn’t pad things out as much as it did, but I was captivated from beginning to end, while it successfully brought back mechanics long thought out-dated, and introduced smart changes for the better. An essential RPG for 2017 that you should not miss out on.
Has-Been Heroes has a genuinely inviting and involving combat system that requires real strategic thought to master. However the rest of the game just doesn’t pull together to form a cohesive whole, with brutal difficulty, frustrating permadeath and an under-utilised premise all serving to taint the end product. It does at least benefit from the Nintendo Switch’s portability, and this is where it’s at its best, but at home you’ll likely be turning it off far quicker than Frozenbyte were hoping for.
What you get out of Everything will depend entirely on you. You may get bored within minutes just as easily as you could spend hours wandering around alien continents as a slice of pizza. I'm not sure it can be described as fun in a traditional sense, and it sometimes feels like you are being forced to sit through through a complex lecture mixed with a dash of group therapy, but other times it can be utterly hilarious as you make baby tractors by dancing.
This is a platform that Travellers Tales are looking to build on, and indeed have since its original launch on PC, and with continuing growth there’s the potential here for something essential for Lego enthusiasts. As it stands though, for all of the merit and freedom that Lego Worlds affords, it’s still bound by many of the same problems as its predecessors.
Putting you into cunning espionage themed escape rooms, I Expect You To Die is a fun VR puzzler with a charming sense of humour and dozens of ways to die. Sadly, there’s only a handful missions to take on, making this yet another VR game that’s over before it’s had a chance to really get started.
Visually and thematically, 2Dark succeeds in paying homage to its forebears. Everything else, however, is desperately lacking. Alone in the Dark had twenty years in which to rise and fall but Raynal’s latest stab at survival horror barely gets twenty minutes.
In short, Toukiden 2 is everything a sequel should be. Instead of lazily expanding on the original game, which would have been so easy to do, Omega Force actually went back to the drawing board, completely reinventing those parts that needed work. By streamlining much of the dull admin and encasing the game in a larger open world, Toukiden 2 manages to break free from the pack. As a result, it's easily one of the subgenre's best entries to date and one that, in some ways, is preferable to Monster Hunter.