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Last reviewed: Mina the Hollower · 5 days ago
A referential and joyful deep dive into the world of Batman, the latest LEGO effort from TT Games is elite brick gaming. Legacy of the Dark Knight just wants to be an enjoyable time, and it refuses to falter from that commitment. This new LEGO Batman will be some of the best fun you have all year.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is an excellent action RPG that offers an even more hardcore take on the increasingly popular Soulslike formula. It's fast, frenetic, and hits like a truck, with one of the most mesmeric combat systems we've ever had the pleasure to master. It might scare off more casual players, but those looking for a challenge, well - you can stop looking.
What the game ultimately delivers is a charming, unique debut title from a studio we’re certainly interested to see more of.
Simple but tight, Shadow Warrior 3 is a solid shooter with some occasional flashes of excitement. It's a shame the game's attempts at comedy squeeze the life out of it — and £40 for an eight-hour campaign is barely good value.
Fighting game fans can't really go wrong with King of Fighters XV - a sequel that doesn't shy away from the technical depth of its predecessors. It's obviously still early days, but it feels like SNK has improved upon King of Fighters XIV in all of the ways that matter. Better visuals, expanded mechanics, and, perhaps most importantly, smooth online netcode make for fighter that's hard to fault - even if it's lacking the cutting edge of its peers.
There are other small differences; some equipment is more readily available, you earn gold faster, and there are some fun presentational changes that occur alongside the story. The narrator is different, too, which is perhaps the most notable difference. All the subtle changes add up to an enjoyable, but ultimately very familiar RPG. If you enjoyed the first, this is more of that with some simple twists — a harmless, easy breezy RPG to chill out with.
Gran Turismo 7 is a game for everyone: the racing enthusiasts, the novices, and anyone in between.
Elden Ring is the definitive FromSoftware game. With a refined combat system packing new ideas and an open world perfect for exploration, it sets a new benchmark for titles of this ilk to strive for. This is the Japanese developer firing on all cylinders — far and away its best creation yet. Elden Ring is an utterly essential PS5 title.
Despite its shortcomings as an entry point for new players, there's a lot packed into The Witch Queen worth appreciating – we haven't even mentioned the new Glaive weapon type that combines melee with long-range attacks, the hugely enjoyable new Lost Sectors, or the overhaul to the Void subclass, bringing it more in line with Beyond Light's Stasis. This pushes the number of viable types to "two", which isn't great, but Arc and Solar should be getting a similar upgrade in the (hopefully) near future. Seasonal content will continue to deliver story as 2022 wears on, but obviously the quality of it cannot be judged yet – the expansion isn't even complete at the time of typing, what with the new Raid yet to drop. Still, this is Destiny 2 at its very best and a pleasingly vital expansion to what remains a superb game.
FAR: Changing Tides is largely more of the same. With how good the first title is, that's not a bad thing, but it leaves a little something to be desired. Great sound design and music, as well as incredible environmental art, don't quite balance out the pacing issues, hard as they try. Your new vessel has more components to juggle than last time, and it's mechanically satisfying, but you spend too much time doing it. While traveling underwater does add a new gameplay component to account for, the puzzles don't offer enough of a challenge. All that said, Changing Tides is still worth your time.
GRID Legends is a solid new entry in Codemasters' racing franchise. It features the same excellent gameplay you've come to expect from the developer, with some nice adaptive trigger implementation in the PS5's DualSense. The game's main draw - the Story Mode - falls short of providing a compelling narrative, ultimately amounting to a mere distracting backdrop to the true star of the show: the races. Visuals look nice, but perhaps not nice enough for the PS5, and the music is overall a bit repetitive and unnecessary. All in all though, GRID Legends is worth a look, but time will tell if it manages to hold its own against the competition.
While certainly an accomplished piece of storytelling, Martha Is Dead's gameplay is such blatant artifice that it does the narrative a disservice to partake in it. That sounds extremely damning, but there's a lot here to like: the languid pace and detailed nature of the photography sequences are a standout, the graphics are often impressive, and the sheer bloody chutzpah of the whole thing is appealing in a grand guignol sort of way. The game can be shocking in what it shows you, but it doesn't feel exploitative. Horror should be horrific, and Martha Is Dead is certainly that. Unfortunately, perhaps not always in the way it was intended to be.
Cyberpunk 2077 on PS5 is the game that PlayStation fans should have been playing in 2020. While it still falls short when measured against the immense expectations that surrounded its release, everything that Cyberpunk gets right is so much easier to enjoy when the game isn't crippled by technical issues. The main story's a thrill ride, the combat's a blast, and Night City is an incredible open world setting. And the best part is that CD Projekt Red finally has a stable foundation to build upon. It took 14 months to get here, but the future of Cyberpunk 2077 actually holds a lot of promise.
There's an interesting story here and the horror-JRPG vibe is much appreciated, but whatever enjoyment they could bring you is utterly annihilated by the outrageous, egregious amount of grinding you'll need to do to see the game through. Monark is gaming reduced to a thick, treacly sludge to wade through, no cutscene or story beat or reward ever feeling like it was worth the struggle. Just play Shin Megami Tensei while listening to Nine Inch Nails and you'll have a better time.
Overall, Horizon Forbidden West is a huge improvement on its predecessor.
For a game made by a small team it’s very ambitious — but that’s also the problem. Environments are far larger than they need to be, and the title struggles to load in textures and has a fair amount of pop-in. There are also loads of systems, such as party energy levels or crafting, which are never fully explained or seem to be particularly useful... It definitely feels like developer Midgar Studio should have reduced the scope of both the story and some of the gameplay systems, because this may have allowed it to add more polish to the areas that work well. It’s a shame, as the game does have plenty of potential, but it’s a little bit too rough around the edges to fully enjoy.
Sifu doesn't pull any punches. It's a consistently challenging and demanding beat-'em-up, but persistence pays off. You'll be hard pressed to find a more rewarding game on PlayStation - especially one that's so visually striking and polished. Some quibbles with combat mechanics aside, Sifu is a knockout.