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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.
Those Who Remain certainly won't be for everyone and there will undoubtedly be a good portion of players that take one look at the early, clunky mechanics and outdated character models and turn this off. That's a shame though because if you can get past some of the initial jankiness, Those Who Remain opens up to produce a pretty enjoyable (albeit flawed) Indie horror experience. The sound design is great, there's some nicely placed jump scares in here and the story is engaging enough to actually answer the numerous questions raised early on about what's going on and why this town is blanketed in a nightmarish veil of despair. This won't win any awards for being the best horror of the year, nor is it likely to be a title you return to in a hurry when you finish it. For £15.99 though, if you can look past some of the graphical issues and bugs and take to the story being told, there's enough here to make for an enjoyable enough play-through that's actually worth experiencing despite its flaws.
How To Train Your Dragon is, in theory, a movie franchise rife for decent video game adaptations. With plenty of lore, world building and material to draw on across both the TV and film platforms, it’s surprising then that the games haven’t managed to take advantage of this as much as they should. Despite some fun dungeon crawling mechanics and a simple, original story, New Riders fails to deliver a compelling and memorable experience, devolving too often into the usual tropes you’d expect from this sort of movie tie-in.
It's a bitter pill to swallow because Mortal Kombat 11 is actually a really fun and enjoyable fighter. It's gory, gruesome and full of some of the most absurd, crazy fatalaties in the series' storied history. The fighting has multiple layers of strategy too, ranging from X-Ray moves, counters, interactive environments and more. This game should be a high 7/10 or even an 8/10 but I just cannot recommend something with such predatory microtransactions in. Mortal Kombat 11 could be great, but it suffers a gruesome fatality at the hands of its microtransaction-riddled infrastructure.
The Blackout Club is a multiplayer game with a great concept but questionable execution. Acting as a stealth title and boasting a unique premise, The Blackout Club blends core sneaking mechanics with a handful of stock missions that slowly reveal more about the world around you as you play. Held back by some clumsy AI, a repetitive mission loop and a distinct lack of challenge until deep in the experience, The Blackout Club is an experiment worth checking out but unlikely to be something you stick around with for the long haul when the game ironically becomes much more enjoyable.
If ever there was a game that embodies the term wasted potential, Atlas Fallen is it. There’s some nice ideas in here, but none of them are executed all that well. They’re muddled with a myriad of disappointing and poor elements that just do not work. Atlas has well and truly fallen here but at least it’s not as bad as Forspoken. Which, I guess, is one saving grace.
For a walking simulator, you’d think that Starward Industries would have at least nailed down the walking. Instead, it’s arguably one of the worst parts of The Invincible. Walking sims can be great if they have an interesting story (which this one does, in fairness) but with such laborious, sluggish mechanics to accompany that, this is way more of a chore to get through than it should be.
Oxenfree II doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it also doesn’t really spin in a way that makes you feel the momentum of a good story or gameplay mechanics you can sink your teeth into. This is an underwhelming sequel with lackluster characters and a profound lack of anything substantial to help this stand out like the original did.
As a tranquil Indie experience, SEASON certainly isn’t bad but it's not a particularly good game either. It does have some stand-out moments and the general worldbuilding is pretty good but everything else around that is woefully substandard. Traversing the world on your bike is surprisingly dull (don’t expect to fall off your bike or find any physics applied to this), while both the animation and general mechanics at play here leave a lot to be desired. SEASON's simplistic design is both its biggest selling point and its Achille's heel.
Conceptually at least, Close To The Sun is actually a really intriguing game. Combining elements of Bioshock, Sherlock Holmes and first person horrors, Close To The Sun attempts to capture the same wonder found in those titles but fails to really capitalize on that as well as it perhaps should. Admittedly, the opening few chapters are pretty good at building up the tension but soon after the game devolves frustratingly into a series of chase sequences and puzzle-platform sections that don’t always work well with the narrative.
If you're a little fatigued with the usual Far Cry formula and are looking to try something a bit different, steer clear of New Dawn. Despite its pretty visuals and reasonably well implemented RPG mechanics, this is largely an unchanged Far Cry experience. The enemy AI is woeful, the game suffers from the same poorly paced story beats as Far Cry 5, while the gameplay loop is almost virtually unchanged. However, if you're looking for more of the same, you can't really go wrong with this one. A little short in length and light on content nonetheless, New Dawn is simply a DLC add-on flaunted as a full priced stand-alone game and it just doesn't do enough to justify this.
Fifa 20 has all the parts to make for a competent, impressive footballing title this year. I played Pro Evo last month and was pleasantly surprised by the fluidity and realistic football on display in that title and wondered whether Fifa could compete on the pitch. In a way it does, at least for a little while. Matches are genuinely balanced with a good use of physics and improved animations, but various glitches and bugs hold this game back from ascending to the level it should hit. The career mode is almost entirely unplayable if you want a realistic experience and unless you're prepared to put some serious time into Ultimate Team, Volta's short story mode may not be enough to keep you coming back for more.
While Gran Turismo gets a lot right, it also gets a lot wrong too. The microtransactions and insidious roulette gambling are absolutely disgusting and have no place in a “AAA” game. Oh, and that’s before mentioning the mandatory always-online connection too. Without them this would be an easy 7.5/10. If you can stomach the inherent flaws and don’t have a history of addictive tendencies, Gran Turismo 7 is a decent racing title on the track but it misses a podium finish by spinning out on the home stretch.
Reverie Knights Tactics is a simple tactical RPG, one with a lot of potential that’s never quite explored as much as it perhaps should be. Despite its story flaws and simple battle tactics, this is still a fun game to play. With no microtransactions, predatory lootboxes or noteworthy bugs at launch, this is not a bad title to splash £20 on.
It’s such a shame then that the narrative fails as badly as it does because when it comes to gameplay, most of It Takes Two is brilliantly designed. Much like The Last Of Us Part 2, this is going to be a narrative that divides many people. Unlike TLOU2, the mature themes here are tackled immaturely, with a weird tinted veil that completely brushes over the complexities of the issues being discussed. Gameplay-wise, this title is a blast to play through. Narratively though? This one’s a clanger.
If you like what you see and you’re not put off by the stilted controls and obtuse puzzles, you may gain some enjoyment from Tormented Souls. It’s a worthy spiritual successor to horror titles from gaming’s past even if it doesn’t do a lot to stand apart from them.
Away from the diluted AAA experience and the quirky Indie market, Biomutant slots somewhere in the middle, taking the best and worst aspects that these two extremes have to offer.
If you like police procedurals or walking sims, Observer: System Redux is essentially a collaborative wired hybrid of the two. Tying both these genres together, Redux’s augmented bulk is held in place by a murder mystery that consumes the bulk of this 6-8 hour game. If that sounds like your jam, Observer: System Redux is definitely worth a play - and it's incredibly pretty too. For everyone else on the fence, Redux's gameplay leaves a lot to be desired and is probably a better option to rent than outright buy.
Flying around as Tony Stark is a lot of fun but gamers expecting something akin to the recent ‘AAA’ experiences on the platform will be left disappointed. Baby steps of course but Iron Man VR should be viewed as a foundational stepping stone for greater things to come rather than a solid, sculpted work of art.
Shadow Of The Tomb Raider ultimately bows out this trilogy of games with a whimper rather than a roar. The gameplay may be a little better this time around compared to Rise but the disjointed nature of its various mechanics make this game more frustrating and under-developed than it should be. I love Tomb Raider and have played almost every game since its original on the Playstation all those years ago but Shadow Of The Tomb Raider feels like a cruelly ironic name for this final title; a game overshadowed by what’s come before and never once looking like stepping out of the darkness and becoming a shining beacon for the franchise.