AltChar's Reviews
For newcomers, this is genuinely one of the best entry points the franchise has ever had, and it's a chance to understand why Halo mattered enough to standardise so many console shooter conventions in the first place. For long-time fans, it's a faithful, gorgeous retelling with good bonus missions on top of that.
Great combat, awesome boss designs, and a soundtrack that knows exactly when to go from mournful to metal make Dinoblade some of the most fun I've had with a game in a while.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu takes a familiar horror co-op formula and pushes it into stranger territory, creating an eerie experience that thrives on atmosphere, mystery, and a constant sense of unease.
DOOM The Dark Ages - Revelations brings back the brutality, speed, and chaos that all DOOM players love, while at the same time showing us a different side of the character that loves ripping and tearing the most.
The Alters: Last Variable is precisely what a DLC should be, and I mean that as sincere praise and not just an empty compliment. It doesn't chase the "basically a sequel" trend other studios have been leaning into. It takes a loose thread from the base game's ending, builds a smaller, sharper story around it, and hands you back every mechanic you remember, whether you like them or not
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a confident, good-looking swing at something quite different for Square Enix's HD-2D lineup. The combat is satisfying, the visuals are some of the best pixel-inspired work I've seen on PS5, and the performance never got in the way of any of it.
Nearly perfect back then, genuinely perfect now: Black Flag Resynced is proof that Assassin's Creed franchise still has its soul.
The biggest expansion yet for globally popular Dave the Diver trades the Blue Hole for a jungle lake and somehow ends up feeling like a sequel rather than a DLC.
With patches and patience, Gothic 1 Remake could become essential. Right now, it is a promising and frustrating experience in roughly equal measure.
IO Interactive’s long-awaited James Bond origin story isn’t just the best 007 game ever made. It's one of the finest action games of the generation.
An unforgiving alien planet, brutal bullet-hell combat, and a mystery slowly eating away at reality - Housemarque came back with another game full of chaotic combat and eerie atmosphere that demands your full attention.
Directive 8020 is a compelling, frequently terrifying, and occasionally flawed piece of interactive horror that confirms Supermassive Games as the undisputed masters of their particular craft. The story is excellent, the atmosphere is exceptional, and the sound design is frankly some of the best work the genre has ever produced. The repetitive stealth mechanics and the stiff character animations can be characterised as weaknesses, and they hold the game back from going even higher on my scale, but they do not come close to undoing what the game gets so right.
Mixtape is a remarkable piece of work. It is the kind of game that reminds you why storytelling in this medium can be so extraordinary when the right people are given the freedom to follow their instincts all the way to the end. Beethoven and Dinosaur have created something deeply felt, visually inventive, and musically brilliant, and Annapurna Interactive have once again demonstrated why they are the publisher I trust above all others to deliver games that mean something.
Wax Heads brings an offbeat art style, a rich soundtrack, and an emotional story behind the simple act of recommending records to unknown people.
Adorable Adventures is exactly what it says on the cover, a warm, charming, and surprisingly varied game that asks nothing more of you than to follow your nose and enjoy the ride.
Vampire Crawlers is a well-constructed dungeon looter with quite an engaging card combat system, let down by repetitiveness that arrives a little too soon and a complete absence of any story whatsoever.
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss has a story worth being part of and a mystery worth following, but everything surrounding it struggles to keep pace with its own ambitions.
I've never played as an octopus before, and Darwin's Paradox makes a compelling case for the concept. A cute protagonist, gorgeous environments, and a Pixar-like presentation that brings back the feeling of watching an animated movie as a kid, the difference being that the antagonist isn't a character, but the systems of the game.
Replaced is a stunning achievement in art direction and atmosphere that just needed a bit more time in the oven - but what's here is well worth your time despite the rough edges.
Pragmata is a triumph of incredible video game design that nails almost every aspect of what makes games such a fun and engaging experience.