Daniel Starkey
Speedball 2 definitely has the speed down, but the barebones multiplayer limits the fun.
A brilliant, addictive downloadable that is designed to target and trigger the happiness center of your brain.
Violett channels Salvador Dali and Tim Burton in a surreal and challenging tale.
Nidhogg is a strange, unholy pastiche of lo-fi aesthetics and surprisingly deep, albeit minimal play; taking cues from decades of arcade-style 1v1 fighting games and modern indie darlings.
Banished is a clever network of interlocking systems and mechanics that accomplish a lot with very little.
Fantastic atmosphere and stellar writing make Shadowrun: Dragonfall a great adaptation of its cyberpunk source material.
Cloudbuilt succeeds remarkably in proving that how a game feels and what you do within it can tell stories all on their own. The monologues contextualise the gameplay, and knowing that Demi is pushing through her own recovery maps cleanly onto the difficult jumps, complicated wall-runs and well-placed shots. Cloudbuilt is a game in which you'll die a lot, and that's not an accident. Demi's progress is slow and painful. Yours will be too, but that in itself carries meaning. Sometimes the quiet, narrow victories are the most meaningful.
Warlock 2 is a strong sequel that deftly builds on the solid foundation of its predecessor. Unfortunately, not all of its ideas are fully realized.
Always Sometimes Monsters isn't the first game to get clever with morality. It's not the first game that's had a few grey areas. It also isn't about either of those. It's about perspective. It's about empathy. It's about who we are and why we do what we do. That narrative is one of contradiction and hypocrisy, because that's what real people are about.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II taps the spirit of classic action role-playing games and delivers a great combat system and an exciting world.
If you'd like to pick up just one of the new factions, that'll only run you 10 pounds, and with that you can start playing one of the best World War 2 strategy games ever made... alongside its near-perfect predecessor, of course.
While Distant Worlds may be a paragon of its style, I can only recommend it to a select few: those with beefy computers and plenty of time to really dig into the meat of this stunningly elegant and impressively wide-ranging bit of software.
Xenonauts is an excellent strategy game that casts you as Earth's only line of defense against an apparently omnipresent extraterrestrial threat.
Light should be better than it is, but it was doomed from the start. Very few great stories have come from such an uninspired setting, and hiding all empathy and humanity behind a haughty desire for a slick minimalism doesn't help. Light is admirable insofar as its visuals and music create a sharp world with a brilliant artificiality about it. That works, in a way, with its narrative, but it can't stop the whole thing from being just plain boring. You go where you're told and do what you're told even while you're told that the thing you want most is your own freedom. It doesn't make sense on any level.
Halfway is an emotional tale of mystery and survival that occasionally lacks the courage of its own convictions.
Velocity balances platforming and shoot-em-ups as well as modern aesthetics and retro play to create a nearly perfect action experience
Wasteland 2 is an intricate and triumphant return of a role-playing classic.
Smash Bros. is a cavalcade of cartoonish violence and chaos, and it's never been better.
As someone that simply waits and arranges the location of towers, I felt as if I was incidental. Any other character in the game could just as easily have replaced me, and the plot would remain largely the same. Still, there's something special about waiting. About that patience. As I saw wave after wave of alien soldiers ground to shreds by my turrets, I was sad. I wasn't out for blood. I wasn't revelling in the destruction of my enemies. I was defending myself. I was waiting.
Never Alone carries the sensibilities of its inspirations, and it feels and looks just as it should.