-
5 (6) 4 (14) 3 (12) 2 (5) 1 (1) 3.5 starsAverage score of 38 user reviews
-
Alternate history certainly repeats. 0
Call of Duty: Ghosts is as competent of a wheel-spin as you could hope for. The CoD series had been teetering on the brink of stagnation for a while, and Ghosts is really where the wind appears to have come out of the sails a little bit. The single-player campaign is perhaps the most inventive part of the package, offering the kinds of ridiculous set-pieces that the series does extremely well. Huge space missiles, levels that switch between the perspectives of an invading force and the air suppo...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Deus Ex Approxima 0
Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes the grand ideals of the original Deus Ex and reduces them to their barest bones in much the same way the Invisible War did. The small levels and relatively small number of actual options available to you in any given situation mean that the game feels a lot less free-form than the original did a decade or so earlier. You can shoot, sneak or hack your way in, that's about it. Skills are acquired at such a rapid pace throughout the game that you'll never really feel...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Captain Toad goes on a bite-sized adventure 0
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker takes the very enjoyable mini-levels from Super Mario 3D World and spins them out into their own (basically) fully fledged game. The gameplay remains just as fun as the levels from 3D World, and the game manages to create dozens more of these levels without letting its ideas become too stale. The majority of the game is spent hunting gems, stars and hidden objectives by solving your way through levels that primarily rely on an Escher-lite use of perspective to foo...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Constant Plateau of the Tomb Raider 0
Rise of the Tomb Raider is another example of the bland, big budget game. While the combat can occasionally be a little too loose, the climbing and exploration gameplay is engaging and the set pieces are exciting, if perhaps too empty of actual interactivity. The story is sincere, but completely wooden and uninteresting, though it manages to drive the game along adequately. The extra collectibles are almost entirely meaningless (save for the quite interesting Hidden Tombs, which each provide a u...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Everyone who likes video games should try Inside. 0
Meticulous and moody, Inside is a perfect realisation of the game it wants to be, whittled down to its core and then dressed up again in some of the best art and style in years. In the vein of Out of this World or Abe's Oddysee (Or Limbo, Playdead's last game), Inside is a side-scrolling puzzle/platforming game that never lets any of its ideas outstay their welcome and moves forward with a pace that maintains its downbeat atmosphere whilst staying interesting for every moment of its admittedly s...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
An amazing single player game, let down by weak multiplayer components. 0
Doom is just as incredible a modernisation of decades-old gameplay as Wolfenstein: The New Order was 2 years ago. The games could go hand in hand with the kind of progression those original games they are updating in terms of what a revelation Doom feels like today when compared with the likes of other shooters, Wolfenstein included. Doom's single player campaign contains some of the best arena style combat of any first person shooter ever made. It's fast, tense, overwhelming whilst never confu...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
The gameplay has very much been charted by now, but there's more heart and playfulness than ever. 0
Uncharted 4 is a spectacular way to end a series that's always been about spectacle. Tying up the loose narrative thread running through the games, the lessons that Naughty Dog appeared to learn with The Last of Us on the importance of character-driven narratives have taken hold, and the game has a more engaging story than the previous 3 combined. That's not to say it's perfect on that front, the flashbacks especially are a little irritating, but the plot is delivered very well in the smooth, we...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A terribly written story fails to drive a poorly designed game. 0
I've never understood the praise that Spec Ops: The Line received for its story. (SPOILER WARNING) The sub-Call-of-Duty twist at the end of the game that a bunch of things had been in your characters head was cliched and ineffective. The progression of the game-y elements of Spec Ops turning against you, loading screens calling you a killer and a monster etc., was a cool idea that was delivered ham-fistedly. And speaking of hammy fists, the white phosphorous scene maybe sums up my problems with ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Fun, but slightly worn. 0
Jak and Daxter is a fun 3D platformer with large and attractive worlds mixed full of decent collect-em-up challenges, which unfortunately finds itself let down by poor combat and a few too many frustrating or uninteresting areas and objectives. The game is one of the last "traditional" platformers of the era (save for the also-ran Vexx type games that would trickle out over the next two or three years), and perhaps as a result of its coming at the tail end of the lifespan of an oversaturated gen...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
3D Castlevania done right. 0
Dark souls is a gorgeous, intricately constructed and tightly honed game. The combat is fantastically balanced, and the world is a mysterious and confounding joy to explore. A massively replayable game, with so much depth, detail and ability to effect the world and characters around you in often small but fascinating ways. It presents itself fully formed, unwilling to compromise, and this works incredibly well. The infamous difficulty of the game is certainly there to some degree, but is certain...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A high-concept puzzle game unable to express itself clearly. 0
Right up front I will be honest and admit that I did not finish this game, so I understand if that's an issue and if you'd prefer to ignore this review. The reason I didn't finish the game is because it is incredibly confusing. I've played and completed difficult puzzle games before, The Witness being one of my favourites in recent times, and the big difference between something like The Witness and Antichamber is that The Witness was able to express its puzzles in subtle but detailed ways. Anti...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
More of the same, with some inventive twists. 0
Spyro 2 (Ripto's Rage or Gateway to Glimmer depending on your region) is very much a game for those who enjoyed the first Spyro. It's plenty more of the same sort of thing, but with a sense of inventiveness that wasn't perhaps as present in the first. Still plays extremely well, still looks great and is still just as fun as the first game. It should go without saying that those who weren't a fan of the first Spyro won't likely have their minds changed by Spyro 2, but those who ate up the first a...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Fun, colourful platforming. 0
Spyro the Dragon is an energetic and enjoyable game. The bright, cartoon graphics are crisp and attractive, and the gameplay remains enjoyable throughout. The game suffers from a small degree of repetitiveness, but is consistently fun enough that it's not really a huge issue. It's a solid, tightly controlling and easily accessible platformer that just about anyone would enjoy. The hoarder's thrill of collecting every single shiny, floaty pick-up in the game is very much the main drive of this ga...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
The infamous "repetetive open-world game" problem mars an otherwise solid game. 0
Tight controls, fun superhero (or villain) action and engaging open-world gameplay make Infamous a good time. The game is let down by its weak story and the eventually repetitive turn that the side-missions and item collecting take, but the game looks nice, the free movement is very well done and the combat is fun and manages to be a little fresher than many other third person shooters. It's probably not going to blow you away, and you will be doing a lot of the same stuff quite a few times, but...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Once, long ago... 0
The broad JRPG template that the original Final Fantasy had a hand in shaping was 20 years old at the time of the PSP remake's release, and is now around 30, and boy does it feel like it. For as much of a milestone as this game will forever be, it is no longer much fun to play. Straightforward and repetitive, it's now difficult to appreciate whatever refinements or innovations Final Fantasy may have made in its time. The improvements in the PSP version are nice, updated graphics and whatnot, but...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Resident Evil 4ever 0
Resident Evil 4 is enormous yet inventive throughout, immediately playable yet massively innovative, refreshingly adventurous and yet tightly designed. The game's lengthy campaign bounces between a staggering number of memorable set pieces, each feeling like a fresh take on the finely honed gameplay that marks a quite astonishing departure from previous entries in the series. Looking back on the game today, its influence over game design as a whole is evident, essentially perfecting the third-pe...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Fantastic multiplayer bolsters an underwhelming campaign. 0
Halo 5: Guardians probably has the worst single player campaign of any Halo game to date. The story is a ludicrous fan fiction that has taken the series pretty far off the rails and into over the top, quasi-anime territory. The levels are all fairly linear shooting galleries with too little variety and few of the set piece moments that Halo games have been great at in the past. Luckily, the multiplayer mode is in the best place its been since Halo 3, with excellently tuned new game modes highlig...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Fantastic puzzle game, nothing more. 0
For all of its gorgeous visual wrapping paper and kind of pretentious presentation, The Witness is an amazingly engaging and intelligent puzzle game, nothing more. Not that it needs to be anything more, the game takes its very simple line-based puzzles as far as the concept can be stretched and is constantly fascinating. The puzzles are so smartly designed, filling the game with the kind of "fuck I'm a genius" moments you'd want from it. The puzzles are so inventive, that to describe them in too...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Closer to watching paint dry than watching a fire. 0
I have nothing against whatever is the actual name for the genre often (un)affectionately called the "walking simulator". I like stories, I like short and even linear game experiences. Firewatch is an excellent story, told poorly, wrapped inside of an incredibly boring game. Without giving anything away, Firewatch's story deals with heavy themes and tries to do so in a unique way, with an excellent narrative concept of futility tieing the whole thing together towards the end. But it all falls so...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Short, simple, and a little too wobbly. 0
Grow Home does not feel like a complete game. The pretty visuals and very nice sound effects are pasted on top of a thin game. In controlling a small explorer robot on an alien planet, you're tasked with awkwardly climbing around sparse, featureless environments in order to find dull collectibles which give you largely uninteresting movement and control upgrades in order to help you climb higher. There is no challenge to the game other than the awkward, momentum driven controls. You stumble your...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
An excellent stealth game trips up occasionally. 0
There are moments in Splinter Cell that make you feel like a well-trained super spy. Thinking on your feet to overcome a deadly situation, planning out and executing a complicated plan involving subterfugey gadgets and silently eliminating enemy combatants from the (beautiful) shadows are all common occurrences in this game, and they really are a lot of fun to experience. Other moments have you fighting will occasionally cumbersome controls, repeating certain sequences that devolve into little ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A drop in campaign quality shakes an otherwise steady ship. 0
Despite the Call of Duty series' reputation as a tentpole multiplayer game, I have always enjoyed the campaigns for what they have been: overblown popcorn action rides driving you from one bombastic set-piece to the next. The first two Black Ops games did this fantastically, even bettering Infinity Ward's efforts post-CoD4 in many respects. After last year's Advanced Warfare updated the Call of Duty gameplay with a fresh sense of speed and dynamism, complimented by an engaging take on the CoD si...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Plain. 0
In keeping with the reboot rulebook, Tomb Raider aims to offer a more realistic interpretation of the series’ gameplay, which was starting to feel as ancient as the tombs themselves hahaX1000. Essentially this “more realistic” take comes in the form of covering Lara Croft in cuts and bruises and asking a voice actor to record a few hundred versions of a pained grunt, whilst keeping a very similar jump/climb/shoot loop of the older games. This isn’t necessarily a problem, ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A game suffering from an identity crisis. 0
The Metal Gear series is one my all time favourites, and The Phantom Pain was promised as its ultimate chapter, a final coda that will refine, reimagine and put to bed all things Metal Gear. Right off the bat, it is certainly not that. In many ways this game is as ‘Metal Gear’ as ever, but in many other, fairly significant ways, this is something else entirely, and not perhaps the game that Metal Gear fans were expecting. Expectations should perhaps be left at the door when reviewing...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
It's not the size of the boat... 0
Ground Zeroes is an odd little quasi-preview for MGSV proper, which provides one real story mission (which will last around 2 hours at most), as well as some fun side missions and extra audio tapes and such, serving as the sort of Tanker chapter to Phantom Pain’s Plant chapter. The missions themselves are very enjoyable, particularly the main story mission, the extras are fun and the visuals are fantastic. It’s the reimagined Metal Gear gameplay that steals the show here though, the ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
The game you made up when you were a child. 0
The thousands of Super Mario romhacks containing everything from seemingly impossible levels to the kinds of automatically playing musical theme parks that have been overflowing from the depths of the shadiest romsites to the most popular Youtube channels have finally got a legitimate platform to exist within. Super Mario Maker contains smart and intuitive level editing tools for the original Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World and the New Super Mario games that offer a lev...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Tony Hawk 3 keeps the combo going. 0
Tony Hawk 3 builds upon the inventiveness of 2 by adding another game-changing move in the revert, allowing for combos to be maintained on ramps and half-pipes. The levels are once again inventive and interesting, the graphics and music are decent and some of the objectives throughout the campaign can be a little obscure, but most are just the right level of challenging and very fun. Doesn’t quite have the same level of focus in level design that 2 had, making it feel a touch more shamboli...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Underwhelming new ideas alongside more of the same. 0
Spyro 3 is, once again, more of the same Spyro. The levels are good once again, the gameplay is fun once again, the game looks and sounds nice once again. You really will know if you want more Spyro or not. The one aspect of the game that takes a huge dive from the previous 2, though, is the skateboarding mini game. It controls horribly and is completely uninteresting. You also take control of three other characters, each with slightly different gameplay styles to Spyro, and these sections aren&...
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Hearthstone (iPhone 6+) 0
Blizzard's free-to-play card game is a simple yet satisfyingly deep aping of Magic: The Gathering. The gameplay is the pretty standard creatures/spells/resource management type of collectible card game, and Hearthstone's implementation does very little to bring many new ideas to the (card) table, but what is here is a solid and approachable game. Each of the 9 characters and their unique card sets are interestingly different from one another, and the game seems well-balanced. The content is deli...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Batman: Arkham Knight 0
The (purported) final of Rocksteady's Arkham games can't quite escape from under the shadow of Asylum's unexpected brilliance, due in part to its apparent nervousness to stray too far from the conventions established in that game, but is still a fantastic conclusion to the series. The fundamentals of the game are much the same as City, with the same progression through open world type side missions showcasing various Batman villains, along with a somewhat apocalyptic main story for Batman to slo...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X 0
Tony Hawk 2X represents the pinnacle of the series, the tight gameplay and level design of 2 mixed with the graphical upgrade and smooth, steady framerate that would come with 3. The game also includes all of the levels from Tony Hawk 1, so effectively that single player mode is in the game as well as the levels themselves for multiplayer or free skating, as well as 5 new levels made specifically for 2X (all of which are a little underwhelming, unfortunately). This is the best version of the bes...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A dull game set in an enthralling world. 0
The Witcher is a pretty bad game which you have to play if you want to read a very well-written choose-your-own-adventure book. The combat is simple and usually quite dull, often becoming a game of “watch the icon change and then click the mouse”. There are occasional moments where the overly complex potion-brewing mechanics come in useful, but even then the whole system seems so obtuse that it’s easy to dread these sections. The systems in the game are actually quite simple, i...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Metroid Prime caves to peer pressure. 0
METROID PRIME 3: CORRUPTION (2007) closes the Prime trilogy out with another well-playing, good looking game. This time the story has taken even more of a focus, with full cutscenes, speech and all, which is perhaps the largest flaw in this game. The story is terribly written and acted, and serves only to make the game feel like it’s imitating something like Halo rather than playing to the strengths of the series. Most of the actual gameplay is pretty familiar Metroid stuff, exploration an...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Metroid Subprime 0
METROID PRIME 2: ECHOES (2004) takes the groundwork laid by the first game and does little to expand on it, which leaves a still great yet somewhat familiar game. The new dynamic here is the dark world vs. light world trope that Nintendo wheels out every now and again, it’s used fairly interestingly here, with the “what happens in one version affects the other” stuff coming out from time to time, but the main difference is that the dark world is much more dangerous than the lig...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Metroid Prime 0
METROID PRIME (2002) is an utterly fantastic game. The level design is smart and creative, the gameplay controls and plays perfectly (the jumping in particular is just about the best implementation of these mechanics in any first-person game), the game is challenging yet fair, mysterious yet intuitive, fresh, original, inventive and on top of all this it looks and sounds incredible. The game has more story than plot, relying on atmosphere and world-building to give the game a purpose, but the re...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Sloppy controls undermine a well-presented game. 0
Donkey Kong Country’s visuals were a big draw at the time of release, and though they still clearly do things with the SNES hardware that are technically impressive, they just don’t look good anymore. Stiff, awkward animation and blurry, indistinct and washed out colours override the spectacle of seeing the quasi-3D sprites. They’re not awful, but certainly not great. The biggest problem with the visuals though, is that they seem to have had a negative effect on the gameplay. T...
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
An improved and experimental sequel. 0
Wildly different to the first game, but better in almost every way. The action is fast and varied, the sprites are large and the sound is improved, but the biggest improvement is in the pacing and progression of the game. Everything makes sense, every secret is at least hinted at and there shouldn’t be a point where you can’t figure out where to go next. The biggest problem with the game is that it is far too difficult, but playing with the infinite lives cheat (Game Genie) makes for...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Fun gameplay marred by illogical and obscure puzzles. 0
The main problem with the Legend of Zelda is that its puzzles often seem arbitrary and completely obscure. Having to bomb multiple walls for which you are given no clues and which show no difference to any other wall in the game is just moronic. There are obscure puzzles which can be solved by paying attention to the hints the game gives you and keeping some sort of notepad/map combo going, but some of the things which the game requires you to do to progress seem impossible to just intuit in the...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful.
Use your keyboard!
- ESC
Log in to comment