Dealspwn's Reviews
The Incredible Adventures Of Van Helsing II is a quality dungeon crawler offering solid action, hours of fun and an anarchic upbeat personality - for £11.99. Here's hoping that the third game turns the trilogy into a single superior RPG and underdog success story.
In Sheep's Clothing exists solely to flesh out backstory and set us up for the finale, making this review and the number at the end completely pointless. But on its own merits, this latest episode feels like a step sideways and a frustrating tease, especially when much of it probably should have been incorporated into earlier chapters and lacks impact at this late hour. As ruthlessly gripping and stylish as ever, though. I'm still enthralled by The Wolf Among Us, but Episode 5 absolutely must deliver and prove that our choices really mattered.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is big, dumb, fun no matter how much MachineGames might have tried to force it to be otherwise. The alternative history explored here is fascinating, if a little under-explored, but it's the boom and the blast that'll keep FPS fans coming back. A respectably lengthy game with modern looks but buckets of old-school spirit, The New Order is a silly, inconsistent, overblown treat. But give it a couple of weeks.
The procedurally generated stages and piped horror-movie tropes just don't work for Daylight even for one playthrough, never mind multiple visits. The frame-rate is choppy and the environments are dull rehashes of every haunted house gaming has dragged us through over the years. As a download, I can only delete it -I'd rather burn it.
Transistor is masterful. You'll come for the astonishing art direction and thoughtful storyline, but stay for the sensational combat that continually offers new opportunities and challenges long after your first playthrough comes to an end.
Always Sometimes Monsters is a fascinating, utterly engrossing morality play, delivered as a Game Maker adventure that constantly asks questions of the player. There have been games that deal with difficult decisions before, but perhaps none so deftly as this. Always Sometimes Monsters is a marvel.
Expedition's two outstanding maps and decent-yet-ugly third wheel are easy to recommend to regular Titanfall players. However, it's clear that Respawn will need to deliver new gametypes, features and extra raw value soon.
Super Time Force delivers the depth of Braid with the intense SHMUP satisfaction of an old-school run and gunner, letting you assemble a ridiculous army of skateboarding dinosaurs and Uzi dolphins by abusing time paradoxes. Something we don't get to write often enough.
There's a lack of ambition on show here with the graphics and the story, but the combat is the best seen in a Spider-Man game thanks to some snappy controls and a responsive counter-system. The web-swinging could have been better, but Spider-Man is still by far the best gaming character to get around New York with.
Sir, You Are Being Hunted brings rock-hard stealth survival to our pleasant pastures and dark satanic mills. Though overly large maps and lengthy backtracking can replace tension with tedium, its unmistakeably British character and unique gameplay fusion wins out, at least for patient players.
Bound By Flame wears its inspirations on its sleeve, and its chest, and its legs, borrowing cues from pretty much every ARPG around. Its an earnest attempt by Spiders, as are most of their games, but the elements here feel slapdash and dishevelled. At best, Bound By Flame might offer a spot of B-movie-esque filler while you wait for Dragon Age and The Witcher III. At worst, it's a clunky, hot mess of a game with an over-inflated price and little to offer of any distinction.
Titan Attacks! is a fantastic SHMUP that packs nostalgia in spades, yet feels fierce, fresh and fun in the execution. Gorgeous visuals, addictive upgrades and unpredictable enemies bring Space Invaders bang up to date in style.
Child of Light proves that cheap downloadable RPGs can be done right after all. Visually enchanting and featuring a clever twist on classic turn-based combat, this puts many full-sized RPGs to shame. Even with painful rhyming dialogue and generic story, you'll find yourself hooked to the end.
This bite-sized brawler delivers addictive time attack gameplay and satisfying combat for an appropriate price. Though you'll want to engage in short doses to make the most of its limited enemy types, Croixleur Sigma is perfect for pick-up-and-play action and delivers significantly superior value for money than its predecessor.
The Elder Scrolls Online is a brave attempt at combining two seemingly polar opposites, but it ultimately fails to build a continuously compelling world, compromising too much on either side. It's an MMO that can't hold a candle to likes of Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World, and an Elder Scrolls game that can't hope to be as deep and rich in content and solo experience as Morrowind and Skyrim. The allure of an online Tamriel is strong, and when the game's disparate parts align, it really is a bit special, but those moments are too few and far between to recommend for a game with this much of an inflated price point.
I finished the episode with most of the hidden items under my belt in just over four hours, which in addition to the three hours of Episode 1, feels like a fair return for the season pass' asking price. The gameplay and AI feels stripped down, but this is all about tying up the loose ends. As we've come to expect with every Bioshock game, the final revelations are nothing short of breathtaking and every shot from last few minutes is framed so beautifully that you'll want it on your wall. Irrational Games, you will be missed.
NES Remix 2 crafts addictive and wacky challenges out of a dozen legendary games, trading on nostalgia yet letting us enjoy classic Nintendo moments in totally new ways. Its fantastic library, anarchic level design, spirit of competition and surprisingly subversive bonus game provides great value for money - and never once cracks our rose-tinted specs.
The Last Federation lets us become the shadowy puppet master behind a simulated galaxy, which we can unify or destroy at our whim. Whether applying political pressure from behind the scenes or blasting pirate fleets with energy cannon fire, this recklessly innovative indie gem has the polish, fun factor and sticking power to match its big ambitions.
Trials Fusion brings the series' addictive and challenging physics-based gameplay to new platforms and the next console generation, and does so with style. Though the loose FMX tricks system underwhelms and a few features are MIA at launch, it's still a huge serving of tightly-honed thrills, humiliating spills, compelling competition and user generated content that deserves your attention.
You'll need to be a massive Lego game fan to get the most out of this latest tie-in, as it's one of TT's most by the numbers efforts yet. Riddled with technical glitches, samey combat and surprisingly dull replications of the movies' set pieces it's a harder sell than it should be, more so because it's missing the final third until December. As ever though, you may keep coming back to it, as the collectibles are as moreish as ever, despite the increasingly roundabout way of finding everything. Still, I'd rather play this than watch the movies again.