Europa Universalis 5 is a forever game. Insofar as you might be able to play this grand historical strategy forever, but also because - my god - it takes forever to play. After a mere 45 hours of conniving, trading, battling, and scratching my head at menus, I have just about…
In the realm of pixel artistry, action platformer Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is a pretty work of dither and parallax. It's full of set pieces reminiscent of a misremembered arcade's heyday. Between the more standard run 'n' chop levels, there are jetski chasedowns, motorcycle…
For a low-stakes open world cycling game, Wheel World has a lot of lore. You wake up in the forest and discover a spirit called Skully, a ghost who offers the player a rusty bike and immediately ejects so much fantasy jargon and frontloaded backstory that I started to think it…
"Fine" is a funny word. It can mean something is sublimely crafted, but it can also be used in a withering sense. It's fine. This is fine. But there's another, calm and casual sense in which you can say something is fine. Like when a friend handing you some tea apologises…
In Mecha Break you play as a booby anime statuette. She is the one driving the mech. This is a leery game of lasers and ass shots, and sometimes even manages to elicit moments of exciting robo-a-robo combat. You fight other players across a splatter of multiplayer modes, and may…
I am getting a real kick out of Rematch. As a football game, its closest analogue isn't FIFA or eFootball, but a certain nitro-boosting sports 'em up that has been going for ten years. I've already seen it jokingly described as " Rocket League without cars." An infuriatingly…
You are a thirteen year old stuck in the shape of a T, arms aloft forever - what do you do? Well, in To A T, you simply go on living your everyday life. This kid-friendly town explorer is both a low-stakes comic adventure and a commentary on living contentedly with a disability…
A survival game lives or dies on the personality of its world. Subnautica is a wonder because its world is a wonder. Abiotic Factor is a cracking farce because its world is a lab staffed by idiots. Dune: Awakening, meanwhile, has the fortune of coming with a pre-packaged world,…
I have spun out on wet tarmac again and I am furious with myself. JDM: Japanese Drift Master requires a different mentality to most other racing games. Drifting around a corner is not the side gimmick that you'll do a few times during races. Drifting is the race. In this…
I am falling asleep at the wheel of a big bulldozer. RoadCraft is not necessarily a boring game, but it is so meditatively slow, lumbering, and bit-by-bit that I find myself dozing when I'm supposed to be, um, dozing. Some of this is down to simple tiredness, but there's also a…
I've arrested someone who did not deserve it. The chump was carrying counterfeit jewellry and I lazily slapped on the cuffs without reading my police handbook. I'm about to get that book thrown at me. When I sit at my desk at the end of a shift in cop sim The Precinct, I will…
Excuse me, waiter, there is a Tetris in my deckbuilding soup. As a combination of roguelike deckbuilder, tactics game, and tetramino tile-builder, Drop Duchy is an interesting mash-up when it works and a somewhat messy experiment when it doesn't. It's intriguing to see the parts…
"I. WANT. NINA. PASADENA. DEAD!" This is a distressing thing to hear from the mouth of a space pirate boss, much less see punching onto the screen in bold red text with every word. That's you, see - Nina Pasadena, deep freeze insurance commando. You eavesdrop on the angry rant…
In the boss fights of South Of Midnight, you've got to find a pulsing wound on the body of the monster and strike it to cleanse the giant beast of its "stigma". In truth, these creatures are analogues for human characters, sometimes people who have literally transformed into…
I cannot review Psycho Patrol R in any way that matters. I could approach this mech-piloting, bullet-hungry immersive policing sim like any other first-person shooter with RPG elements, and tell you about its levels, storytelling, and gamey features. Or I could evaluate it on…
