
There are many good things within Massive Chalice, but they're frustratingly kept at arm's length from me.

There are many good things within Massive Chalice, but they're frustratingly kept at arm's length from me.

NEON STRUCT is a game about hide'n'seek as paranoid fear, not superthief glamour. It gives you large, heavily-guarded maze-like spaces and asks you to find your own way around them, whether it's by roof or street, by stolen keycard or opened vent, by planned strikes or pure evasion, by gadget or by wits alone. Welcome back to Liberty Island. You're not safe here.

[F]ifteen quid, lots of bullets, lots of steampunk Nazis and some monsters too. If that's (still) your poison, you can't go far wrong with this.

It's a shame the same anything-goes mindset doesn't apply to the mission structure and the story, because the dryness, repetition and general rudimentary air is what will ultimately keep me from coming back for more, but if you want a few hours of XCOM-lite with cyberpunk trimmings and the option for co-op, you could do a lot worse than Shadowrun Chronicles.

Dungeons 2 [official site] is a strategy-management game which borrows heavily from Dungeon Keeper - to whit, you're an…

I'm frustrated that there's a great game here, laid a little low by grind, by sub-racing game insta-death factors and irritating, quote-drenched dialogue. This is, at heart, a small and simple game which tries to make itself bigger with unnecessary frippery rather than expanding its worthy core. It's perfectly serviceable as a land-based remix of FTL, but your next great, chaotic adventure Convoy is not. Yet.

No numbers, no inventory to speak of, but so much to do, so many ways it can play out and plenty of snowballing consequences. Its superficially simple 2D art occasionally flares into high prettiness too. We might not have Red Dead Redemption, but Westerado is an enormously satisfying consolation prize.

Dungeon Keeper has always felt important to me, and I’ve rarely analysed why, for the same reason I don’t question why …

Battlefield: Hardline is a stupid game. I quite like it.

If it's playing I can close my eyes and feel what HLM made me feel. Because my associations for HLM2 are confusion and frustration more than exhilaration and escapism, the second doesn't seem to have power. But there are some lovely pieces in there for sure.

Cities: Skylines [official site] feels like the response to a question. That question is “what, exactly, do people want…

Hand of Fate [official site] is a CCG/roguelite in which a masked, magical figure challenges you to play an increasingl…

Please note this is the last instalment of a multi-part Wot I Think (done that way as we didn’t have pre-release code) …

Look, Sunless Sea isn't for everyone. It requires patience, and it requires no small amount of imagination. For those who have those qualities, or are prepared to try and acquire them, I would say that Sunless Sea is an uncommonly rewarding roleplaying game, and an essential one.

Grim Fandango (official site) is considered the end of Lucasarts' imperial period (no pun intended): its first 3D adven…