I can't get Fish Sticks out of my head. Not the food, but the stray cat with a squished face and stubby legs that I wrangled into my shack in Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel’s new roguelite strategy game, Mewgenics. The shop, the pub, the dentist; no matter where I go, I…
I was, like so many of my 1990s-born peers, a huge Sims girlie. I spent hundreds of hours as a teen and young adult making people I knew, characters from shows I was obsessing over, or original characters I wanted to experiment with, and diligently following their life paths and…
Indivisible may lack the number-crunching aspects of Disgaea, but it embodies the same sense of earnest cheer. It won’t change your life, but it’s a pleasant romp, extremely pretty, and clearly made with a lot of love. All good stuff.
Aside from the plot, I’d say most of what held my attention about Green Hell was how dazzlingly beautiful and technically impressive it was, but the more traditional survival elements are all solid enough that I look forward to playing more.
My opinion of Children Of Morta has improved, and I can see it finding a happy audience. But if I wasn’t reviewing it I doubt I’d have got there. It leads with its worst foot and you have to grind for hours to drag the other one into the dance.
Blair Witch is lumbering and predictable, as horror often is, and the rattling moments come mostly from jumpscares. The rest is a tepid sort of horror.
I can’t overstate the fact that it’s a funny game – funny enough that the humour keeps you going from fight to fight, searching not for the source of your mysterious enemy, or for the answer to all the sub-mysteries surrounding Jesse, but for the next episode of the Threshold Kids.
The question of whether Telling Lies is voyeuristic or not doesn’t necessarily have a bearing on the quality of the game — I do, in fact, think it’s good and enjoyed it. But the idea that it isn’t voyeuristic is some laugh.
RAD is a good time, and it overcame a lot of my initial reservations. I just wish it wasn’t so built on chance, and the all-too-1980s misery of playing through the same parts dozens of times to get to the bits I want.
I don’t think I played a single match that I didn’t enjoy. The game offers an immediately recognisable concept, that manages to innovate and surprise, and it’s entirely unlike anything else I’ve played before. Just like a secret clubhouse, it’s likely to lose its allure if you spend all your time there – but it’s exciting as hell to to visit in a snatched moment.
It’s a game where old-school decisions too often trump good ones. A blast from a past I never lived through, where puerile humour and “area complete” screens tease you about not being a “real player”. Ion’s tongue might be in its cheek, but I’ve got little interest in what it’s saying.
Its entry into the cockpit-based, open-world, space-trucking genre puts this game in an arena with some heavy hitters, ambition-wise. Nevertheless, with a development team of five people and a price tag of only £24, it seems fair that it’s less of a world to live in, and more one to visit for a while. And I’ll certainly be coming back here – next time I want to pick a fight.
Don’t make the mistake I nearly made and disregard it: if you enjoy the tactical and strategic game styles it draws from, you’ll find a game that doesn’t go out of its way to innovate on either front, but one that performs a bloody lovely duet.