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For those who have always wanted to build the theme park of their dreams and haven’t played this on PC, Planet Coaster is a no-brainer purchase. The different game modes offer a good amount of challenge and the creativity and customization are bursting at the seams. The management options are admittedly still lacklustre after all these years and those not interested in the creative aspects and wanting something a little more challenging should probably wait before picking this one up. For everyone else, Planet Coaster is a wonderfully creative and aesthetically pleasing theme park game that raises a very high bar in the sim genre.
There are plenty of jump scares to be had and a good, varied number of interesting interactions to be made, but the question I always find myself going back to is “but does it surpass Until Dawn?” and the answer to that is no. However, it succeeds in delivering yet another chilling experience that’ll keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish and remains to be an absolute pleasure to play.
When it comes to utilizing the power of the Playstation 5, Miles Morales is a taste of what we can come to expect from this new generation. This is a well polished, beautifully rendered and emotionally engaging game that takes everything that made the first so good and amplifies it with some crackling, juiced-up venom. The ensuing explosion produces a real gem and one well worth the price tag to play.
As an introduction to a new console generation, Sackboy: A Big Adventure is a big, bold, colourful platformer that makes up for any visual shortcomings with some excellent level design and a killer soundtrack.
In a bid for Ubisoft to try and remain politically neutral, Watch Dogs: Legion loses any sharpness it could have had with a more urgent and focused message. Instead, what we get is a watered down open-world experience that feels like just another NPC in a sea of open-world players.
Problems aside, I would go so far as to say Dirt 5 isn’t a racing sim at all, more its own unique special blend of racer. It takes the best elements of both arcade and simulation racing, throws them into a blender and whizzes them around until they’ve become something else entirely.
If you can look past some of the frustrating puzzles and have a bit of patience with this, SHUT IN is a decent little game to shut yourself away with for a few hours.
Marvel’s Avengers is just not a fun game. It’s a vapid, boring, buggy, uninspiring mess of a live service that tries to jump on the band-wagon and falls flat on its face doing so.
Look, at the end of the day Fifa will sell regardless of review scores. There are incremental changes across the different games but this is largely the same package, designed to encourage seasoned players to settle in like a comfy, tatty, serviceable pair of shoes – even if those shoes are full of holes and barely stay on your feet. It doesn’t matter what score critics give Fifa 21. It could get a 1/10 from every publication and fans will still buy Fifa. However, it’s hard not to come away from this one disappointed.
With an entertaining but forgettable story and a sparse but enjoyable multiplayer, Star Wars: Squadrons shines through with its gameplay. Flying is incredibly immersive and if you have a VR headset (and the stomach) this one boasts the quintessential immersive experience. For those without though, this feels like a decent but not-quite-great game.
Topics of grooming and sexual abuse are here but distorted into a bizarre romanticized narrative that not only undermines the ideas, it actually damages the game’s credibility. I really wanted to like Suicide of Rachel Foster and I think games as an interactive medium are actually well-equipped to tell these hard-hitting and difficult stories – but not from this perspective. Whether on purpose or not, the tone-deaf narrative promises to tackle these subjects diligently but does nothing of the sort. Instead, Suicide Of Rachel Foster is a game in serious need of a rewrite and difficult to recommend in its current state.
Crash 4: It’s About Time is a wonderful sequel that’s sure to appease fans with its challenging platforming and nods to the past titles. While the difficult learning curve is a little too steep and newcomers may feel alienated by the inside jokes, there’s enough here to make Crash 4 one of the best platformers to crash-land on Playstation for quite some time.
No Straight Roads proves there are no straight roads in the rhythm genre. In its bid to achieve originality the game both over-complicates and over-simplifies itself. The end-result is a composition of beautiful melodies that turn into a cacophonic mess when brought together.
Hyper Scape ultimately falls within that realm of forgettable mediocrity; a mid-level battle royale player that never quite hits the top 20 spot but isn’t the first one eliminated either.
Fall Guys is a wonderful summer scorcher and one of the more unique and inventive offerings in this crowded battle royale space.
Between some irritating bugs and a sorely lacking checkpoint system, Terrorarium is a real marmite game that you'll either love or hate. The map maker is just enough to save this from being a complete disappointment but beyond that there really isn't a lot here that hasn't been done better elsewhere.
Roki is a wonderfully imaginative point and click adventure game. While it doesn’t do anything particularly outstanding that hasn’t been seen before in this genre, it is a tightly written, enjoyable title nonetheless.
Ghost Of Tsushima is a visually stunning game that matches its beauty with an incredibly fun and tactically sound combat loop. The open world is diverse, full of interesting locations to visit and helped by a simple but effective tale about a Mongol Invasion. The game does suffer from the same issues other open world games do too but there’s at least a consistent effort to make Tsushima stand out from the pack. And stand out it does. Sucker Punch deliver a powerful, memorable game that caps off this gaming generation on a high.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps doesn’t reinvent the Metroidvania wheel but it does polish it up in such a way that it feels like a whole new experience. It’s a game that confidently showcases some of the best platforming and environmental puzzles of the year and does so with a picturesque beauty that makes this such a joy to play through.
Assassin’s Creed Unity is not a good game. It’s a buggy, poorly written adventure that received a lot of criticism from the fan-base when it released back in 2014. 6 years later, that criticism is still warranted as Unity remains a buggy, poorly written title that stands out as one of the worst games in the Creed franchise.