Includes RPS, Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Last reviewed: 007 First Light · 5 days ago
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…
Fran Bow made me smile more than any other game I've played this year. That might come as a surprise if all you've seen of the game is a couple of screenshots feauring gore and dead kids. Fran Bow opens with a gory murder scene and then traps its young protagonist in a creepy institution for (criminally?) insane children. But that initial setting and the dark tone are just a small slice of a story that spans worlds and perfectly captures the beautiful, delightful nonsense of Alice's Adventures, an inspiration that is imprinted on the game.
I enjoy a lot of things about Act of Aggression: the bloody, orgiastic spectacle of it. The tactical combat that puts a premium on winning the battle for map vision and positioning. The nuanced faction differences. But Act of Aggression is also a game that obscures information rather than reveals it, and attempts to bewilder you with a million minor choices rather than a few clear-cut strategic decisions. In sharp contrast to Eugen's previous work, my first enemy is always the game itself.
Despite some characterisation wobbles and a somewhat perfunctory final mile, STASIS is the best adventure game I've played in years. It's also one of the most impressive horror games I've played lately. The tiny team behind it have done remarkable things, far in excess of what many, much larger studios seem capable of. Those studios should be afraid – be very afraid.
At its best, Satellite Reign has more in common with Commandos than Syndicate. It's a splendid construct, built to endure and to sustain repeated playthroughs in various styles, but I can't shake the feeling that, minute by minute, a little more chaos and unpredictability would go a long way.
If you've been round the neon block a few times already, then Hong Kong's going to feel pretty familiar, despite being perfectly solid and having a few new toys plus a wider, more ostentatious stage than ever before.
In many of the later [missions], bigger and more multi-path, I was reacting instinctively, taking risks and having them pay off, finding a groove. There was flow and joyfulness. The good game at the heart of all the frequently irritating bluster and padding shines through.
Rite Of the Shrouded Moon is a quiet, careful joy, spinning an impressive tapestry out of relatively few threads.
It's a reasonably short game for £14 – perhaps an afternoon's stuff to do first time through. But it's so unrelentingly lovely, and such a rare pleasure to be experienced without constant worry about being shot in the back of the head, or eaten by a wolf, or running out of time, or any of the other ways games so desperately want to concern us.
Rocket League [official site] is our Game of the Month for August, so Adam, Alec and Graham gathered to kick the tyres …
Good performances, some very nice animation (albeit embarrassingly similar to Telltale's look), and a couple of passable puzzles, just aren't enough to compete with some astonishingly dreadful design decisions, the monstrously slow pace, agonising traipsing, unskippable repeated dialogue and laborious cutscenes, violently pisspoor platforming and action sequences, complete lack of introduction or explanation of who anyone is for people new to the long-dead series, ghastly controls, cheap and tacky on-screen prompts, obviously designed for tablet interaction, and god-awful instant deaths.
I have no interest in finding out where the plot goes, because so far it's Arbitrary Events In The Lives Of Wooden Characters, but I do want to find out which dramatic places it will show me next.
The Swindle is a minor diversion at best, without the comic timing or cunning to turn anyone to a life of crime. A weekend of crime, perhaps, at most.
Smart, subtle and sinister, Cradle is a wonderful work of science fiction that doesn't quite fit inside the space Flying Cafe have designed for it.
It certainly doesn't get to join the elite group, but if you're after some ARPG entertainment, it more than fits the role. I'm far from finished, after spending a hefty amount of time with it, so there's a lot on offer here, not least with the incentive to replay older sections to perfection. Turn the voices down, put a podcast on, and sink in.
It's everything you could want an expansion to be.