A tedious, albeit relaxing open-world scavenge-em-up with seemingly no ambitions besides being bigger, less original, and less focused than the game that preceded it.
However stunted and underexplored its more traditional gameplay segments might be, Quadrilateral Cowboy is a clever, creative, elegantly delivered jaunt through a retro-cyberpunk world that’s just warped enough to make sense.
A not-half-bad meeting of twin-stick bullet-hell and contemporary 3D brawler mechanics that’s brought to life by colourful boss designs and elegantly-balanced difficulty. Immensely satisfying.
The kind of game that would surely earn the accolade of “cyberpunk bartending at its finest” if any other game had ever tried cyberpunk bartending. A character-rich visual novel that's as stylish as it is weirdly compelling.
A polished, varied isometric shooter with a dollop of strategy about blowing up makeshift mechs and flattening a cyberpunk SimCity build, one apartment block at a time. Difficult to get comfortable with, but rewarding once you do.
Dangerous Golf shoots low, and lands lower still, but taken as a stress-relief toy with oodles of jaw-slackening domestic demolition, it’s not a half-bad effort. Save it for a lazy Sunday.
Strangely compelling in spite of its shortcomings, Shadwen is an unusual stealth game with a head full of ideas that never quite get the support they need to bear fruit. Worth a try.
A lovingly-crafted tribute to old-school survival horror that sadly doesn't bear resemblance to the classics so much as the obscure bootleg that your uncle brought back from his trip to Japan. The authenticity isn't worth the lousy design.
A polished, charming, endlessly surprising twin-stick roguelike celebrating all that is rooty, tooty, point and shooty.
If you’re in the mood for some light, undemanding puzzle solving soaked in a delicately-constructed atmosphere, The Guest can provide, but sadly it takes a lot more than that to create a rounded, satisfactory experience.
A brilliantly finely-tuned - albeit somewhat malnourished - piece of arcade first-person action for the bunnyhopping, circle-strafing, monstrosity-massacring crowd. Highly recommended.
Exploration through stylish worlds with a dash of subtle, paranoia-inducing surrealism makes this a strong—if somewhat tedious—walk-em-up, but for a game building off the memory of a literary legend, the actual narrative leaves a lot to be desired.
Oxenfree spins a supernatural mystery with some truly brilliant touches, but without especially interesting characters or mechanics, it's little more than a spectre of its true potential.
Just Cause 3 is a big, messy, slightly-samey sandbox that excels at destructive physics experimentation and not much else. Good for unwinding, but gets old sooner rather than later.
Turns out that the barriers to entry on this cult classic were a lot bigger than a rough translation and some poorly-aged textures. A perfectly competent re-release of a fascinating, harrowing, and utterly draining experience for those with unshakeable persistence.
Sublevel Zero breathes new life into the 6DOF genre, but does it with the unfortunate side-effect of crippling insubstantiality. Good for a taste of claustrophobic zero-gravity combat, but without the depth or breadth to follow through.
Transformers Devastation is not quite Platinum's A-game material, but it's more than we could've ever possibly expected from a franchise tie-in. A tad anemic and weighed down with extraneous systems, but a damn fine experience nonetheless.
The first game in a very long time to put an honest smile on my face. Smart, silly, and unfailingly creative from beginning to end. It's not much of an RPG, but only because it's too busy accomplishing so much more.
Digs up a subgenre that hasn't been touched for nearly two decades, turns it around, and aptly demonstrates what we've all been missing out on: a unique tactical stealth-action experience that's at its best when things go off the rails.
A stealth game built to satisfy the central tenets of the genre in the most discrete, distilled, trimmed-down way possible. Certainly well-crafted, but simply not that engaging.